The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
“Adventures of Bill and Othello — chapter four” by Julie Tran
With a smash, the glass shattered. The German shepherd had hit it with a crowbar that was now being wielded like a battle flag.
“Show no mercy, my brothers and sisters!” the big dog cried. The bodega’s alarm had begun to wail. “No mercy at all!”
Bill and Othello had no idea what it was they were to show no mercy to. The bodega was bare of humans, even though it was only six o’clock, leaving behind an abundance of sandwich meat, bread, cheese, vegetables and condiments. But the dogs around them seemed to have no heed for the food. They had come solely to destroy.
Othello, on the other hand, had come solely to eat. Yanking Bill eagerly by the ear, the bulldog pivoted them out of the direction of the carnage to dive behind the counter, crouching into the corner next to the waste basket. All around them, tables were being flipped over, glass surfaced punched in, and chairs rendered to sticks by the jaws of many canine duos and trios. Bill’s brain was throbbing inside his skull. What the hell was going on? What had the black cat gotten them into?
Othello, however, seemed supremely unconcerned. He reached up quickly to the up-tossed sandwich bar above them, then slapped into Bill’s hands several slices of meat and two pieces of wheat bread.
“There’s no server,” he said simply, layering his bread and meat and lettuce. “Hope you know how to make a sandwich.” And he bit into the meal.
“How can you think to eat in such a time like this?” hissed Bill. “Your evil cat friend’s sent us into trouble! We’re in a mob, Othello!”
“I’m sure there’s a good explanation for it,” said Othello wisely. He bit into the sandwich again. “And I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to put up with Lucy in the dog bar, Bill, because the food here is damn good.”
Behind the counter, in the general area of the bodega, the German shepherd was still roaring at the top of his voice. But so did the alarm. And, coming in from a not-so-far distance, so did the police sirens.
“COPS!” howled the German shepherd. “RUN! RUN!”
Bill slapped the sandwich out of Othello’s hand and jumped to his feet. With much shouting that was lost in the general tumult, he roused the bulldog, and they hopped over the counter again and squeezed themselves in the panic-stricken stream for the door, finding themselves pressed up against the chihuahuas from earlier, Stanley and Stan.
“Run, dawgs!” squealed Stan.
“They’re gonna throw us all in the pounds!” moaned Stanley.
The ruthless shoving of faces and paws ejected them from the broken door just as the wailing police cars skidded shrilly to a stop, opening to an outpour of men in blue. In a frenzy, Bill and Othello clambered with the two chihuahuas down the street, dived in the first alleyway they found, ran through it, ran the length of the other street, cut to another alleyway, and down into an office building’s parking lot. It was only here, panting against a Honda Civic that Bill found the breath to scream.
“What the damn hell was that?”
“An attack!” Stan answered without missing a beat.
“Why?”
“Surely you know!” exclaimed Stanley.
“I know that we got ourselves involved in a mob!” said Bill furiously. “As if the humans could think any lower of us ownerless dogs, you just had and go and give them reason to!”
“We’re not a mob!” Stan protested. “We’re just looking out for each other! Clearly you don’t know, or else you would’ve shut your pie hole!”
“Know WHAT?” yelled Bill.
“Jerome’s a dognapper!” Stanley yelled back. “For dog fights in the city! He used his bodega and his cats to lure all the dogs there, drug ‘em, and nap ‘em! This is revenge, revenge, you judgmental moron!”
Othello held up a paw. “Hold up, now. What do you mean, Jerome ‘used his cats’?”
Stanley shrugged. “Well, it’s no secret that cats know everything, innit? So sometimes we would ask them for good places to dig or to eat and so. Well, some of ‘em lead us straight to Jerome’s to get napped!”
“No!” exclaimed Othello.
“Yes!” said Stan, chiming in. “We never would’ve known if some of our kind hadn’t seen them dogs walking in and not coming out! Including — including —” the chihuahua choked, tears filling up its protruding, ugly eyes.
“Including our brother, Stanford!” Stanley finished with a wail, and the two chihuahuas burst into tears. Bill shot Othello a look.
“Don’t you even start —” begun Othello, but Bill cut him off.
“Your cat friend led us right there!”
“Lucy would never let us get dognapped!”
“It’s a cat, Othello! They want to see us all get dognapped!”
“Stop being a racist!”
“Stop being an idiot!” shouted Bill, stomping his feet. Now that the adrenaline was draining off, the scruffs and cuts on his body was beginning to sting. He noticed that Othello, too, was bleeding, but from the muzzle. The effect of blood on his bulldog face was rather frightening. Othello glared at him.
“I’m an idiot?”
Bill hesitated. The sight of Othello didn’t invite much impulse for aggression, but his temper was flaring like a flame high and right through his skull, and it got the better of him.
“Yes, you’re an idiot,” he said in a nasty voice. “You and this lot,” he gestured to the weeping chihuahuas, “are the reason why the humans think they have to be our owners, why they think that without them, we’re total trash! You’re bringing down the dignity of the species!”
“Bring down the dignity of the species!” scoffed Othello mockingly, his enormous chest swelling with indignation. “That’s rich, coming from a mutt!”
Bill’s jaw fell open. Suddenly he felt very big and very small at the same time, and that tiny space within his ribcage had expanded, then contracted, then expanded again, as if in a seizure, throbbing with hatred as he bored his eyes into Othello’s stupid, loathsome, bleeding face.
“You think you’re better than me, just because you’re from a breeder?” he hissed like a feral cat. “Just because you’re the same as that bougie-a** Miss Salmonella, oh no, Muffin-ellathe show dog? The humans created you for their amusement, Othello! They make you feel pretty and precious, but you’re not precious, and you’re not even pretty! You’re a toy that they find funny! You’re named after a character in a play and you can’t even goddamn read! So yes, I’m calling you an idiot, a goddamn idiot, Jesus be my witness! Do you know why, you breeder-bred idiot? Because your mother and father were probably siblings, that’s why! That’s how it works at the breeder, fool! Did you friend the cat enlighten that —”
SMACK! The world toppled to the left as Bill toppled to the right, his vision bursting with bright dots and stripes. Othello had slapped him across the face like a bear, and through his watery vision he could see the gigantic figure towering over him, its face bent down to roar in his ear.
“YOU SHUT YOUR CAT-LOOKING MOUTH, YOU GODDAMN MUTT!”
“Hey now! Hey now!” intervened Stan and Stanley loudly, pattering over to stand in between the two. “No need to get violent,” said Stan, hoisting Bill up by the armpits. But Bill him off and backed away.
“Violent?” he spat, straightening himself. “Like you lot were just now?”
“Well, that was a different business alt’gether, innit?” said Stanley.
“A mob’s still a mob!” Bill snapped. He was glaring at Othello, and Othello was glaring right back, both of them heaving from anger.
“Well, why were you even there, then?” asked Stanley.
“A cat told us to go there,” said Bill spitefully in Othello’s direction, “to look for something to eat.”
“No!” gasped Stan.
“That got nothing to do with it,” Othello cut in with vehemence. “We were trying to sell some booze.”
“Booze?” asked Stanley with interest.
“Yeah, booze. Booze delivery service,” said Othello, and then he explained about Carl and the dog bar. “We’re trying to find customers. I’m Othello, and that son of a b**** over there is my associate, William Shakespeare.”
The mere sound of the introduction reignited Bill’s temper. Heatedly he cut in, “No, I’m not.”
Othello looked at him. “You’re not what?” he asked roughly.
“Your associate,” he spat, like the word itself tasted foul. “I’m not working with you anymore. I’m going back to the dog bar.”
And he turned, gritting his teeth to stop himself from limping from the wounds, and walked steadily out of the parking lot. He didn’t stop until the dim yellow lights of Carl’s dog bar faded into view on the long, long street of 71st.
Carl greeted him back with the grin, but it slipped right off as he saw the state Bill was in.
“My God, bud, what happened to you?”
In an exhausted kind of voice, Bill recounted the events of the afternoon. It had been too long for only half a day. As he talked, Carl and Biscuit the Poodle worked on his wounds.
“Well, that sounds like a hell of a trip, bud,” said Carl solemnly, patting Bill on the back. “And Othello’s got no right to call you, well, that word.”
Bill’s face suddenly got very warm, but not from anger. To his horror, he discovered that he actually wanted to cry. Luckily, Biscuit came to his rescue.
“Well, darling, we’ve got a bed for you right upstairs, don’t we, Carl?” she said in her usual mellifluous tone. “Why don’t you come up there and take a nap?”
The building that the dog bar resided in was an apartment building, where Carl lived in a small but clean one-bedroom. A small cushion bed was already set for Bill in living room, at the foot of the purple sofa. Next to his bed, on a light-blue rug, was Larry, snoozing away peacefully. Upon Bill’s entrance, however, he snapped awake.
“Oh, hiya,” said Larry. He paused, then frowned. “You look beat.”
“Well, looks aren’t always deceptive, then,” Bill mumbled, crawling into his bed. Then he proceeded to recount to Larry the event of the afternoon and the evening. Before he could finish, however, Carl and Biscuit entered the apartment.
“We closed the bar early,” said Biscuit. “Carl was insistent on looking after you, William Shakespeare.” And she threw Carl a soppy, affectionate look. Bill shuddered.
“Still not feeling well?” asked Carl. Bill shook his head. Carl’s face split into a grin. “We might have something that’ll cheer you up. Some good news!”
“Good news?” Bill asked hopefully, “Did that sonuvab**** Othello got run over by a truck or something?”
Biscuit laughed, “No, darling, no.” And she looked at Carl, who then announced, “We picked a date for the wedding!”
Bill stared. The floor seemed to have dropped out from under him. Or turned into lava. Or crumpled up and imploded like it was within a black hole. Or maybe all of that, simultaneously.
Biscuit took his stare as a prompt to continue, “It’s next Saturday, so mark your calendar, both of you. Carl will give Bill the day off, won’t you, darling?”
“Of course, of course,” said Carl, smiling, though he wasn’t looking at Biscuit but at Bill, who had now begun to tremble in his cushion bed.
“I was thinking you can be my best man, bud. What do you think?”
Best man? Best man. Best man, best man, best man. The word was like rolled-up newspaper, hitting him again and again and again on the head. His vision beginning to darken. It was even worse than getting slapped by Othello.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” said Bill in a voice that wasn’t his. He stood up and climbed dazedly off the bed. “Sure, I’ll be your best man.”
“Where — where are you going, bud?” asked Carl anxiously as Bill stumbled his way to the door.
“I’ve got — I’ve got business,” he fibbed. “Othello … The booze … I just remembered …”
“Well, I’m giving you a night off, bud, you need to rest and —”
“No, I really, really have to go,” said Bill, and he sprinted through the cat flap on the door, shot down the stairs, and ran all the way to the cold pavement of 71st, where he stood panting and wheezing like he had run a mile, trying and failing to gather the thoughts that was banging around in his skull like bullets and firecrackers.
But he didn’t have a chance, for at that moment, the enormous shape of Othello, closed followed by the white, fluffy shadow of a strange cat, hurtled down and street and skidded to a stop in front of a the dog bar.
“William!” Othello wheezed. “William, thank God!”
“What?” Bill asked, alarmed. He stepped back, in case Othello wanted to hit him again, but the bulldog didn’t seem angry. Othello was scared. He was very scared.
“Lucy!” the bulldog wailed. “She’s been catnapped!”
