Walking The Dog

I have another flash fiction to post this week I hope you like it. This time it's horror. Once again it has been edited by the wonderful Penny Springthorpe.

Walking the Dog
By Kev Webb 2009 ©
Edited By Penny Springthorpe.

The dreamer, the unwoken fool
In dreams no pain will kiss the brow
The love of ages fills the head
The days that linger there in prey of emptiness
Of burned out dreams
The minutes calling through the years
The universal dreamer rises up above his earthly burden
Journey to the dead of night
High on a hill in Eldorado.

‘Eldorado Overture’
Electric Light Orchestra

The beads of sweat gather as the eyes flicker and dart beneath the closed lids of you, the sleeper. A dream pervades your darkness, a dream no one else sees, a dream that is life changing and terrifying. A dream that you may never wake from: you are walking the dog.
Your eyes open as if pulled by strings; your heart hammers in your chest while your eyes scream for the safety of light. Why can’t you move? It’s as if someone is sitting on your chest, holding you down; your arms and legs feel paralysed. Only your eyes move in their sockets. They flick around the room looking for any sign of danger. This is the perfect time for attack, the perfect time for the murderer waiting in the corner to step forward and slice your throat, the throat of the so-called innocent.

Feel the warmth of the blood as it escapes and sprays around the room, as the murderer oh so gently slices your skin with the stiletto blade, exposing your open throat to the world. The blade is lifted towards your failing eyes, dripping with your precious life’s blood. The only sound you hear now is the gurgle of your own breath as you draw it in through the gushing blood of the gash at your throat. Your hammering heart pumps your body dry in seconds, rendering your mind and body useless as oxygen is depleted, blood ebbs and your brain dies. Death is mercifully quick.
Or is the murderer somewhere else? Did you check under the bed before you lay down? Is there a blade poised beneath you waiting to pierce your spine, severing your spinal cord? Has this happened already? Is this why you can’t move? What’s that sound? It sounds like a shuffle of feet. Get up! Get up! Don’t just lie there. Move, scream, do something, anything, or you’re going to die.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what these dreams are all about? Why you feel so wrung out afterwards? Did you think they were just dreams with no meaning? Wrong! You are slowly being dragged down the dark road of torment by the hounds of hell. Each dream brings you another step closer to the burning gates. How many times have you woken up with fear ringing in your ears, clutching at your chest? Each dream shortens your life; each dream draws you further in, kicking and screaming, ever closer. Each quickened heartbeat is another one you won’t get back again: another one taken from you. You are born with only so many heartbeats. The more the hounds use up, the less you have to live with and the faster you are dragged to your inevitable conclusion. You don’t even realise your breaths are being stolen. Once you start walking the dog the hounds are always at your side: unseen, undead, unclean, relentless in their pursuit. They have a malevolent master that demands they perform their duties without the need for interference or overseeing.
You could be forgiven for thinking it’s just one of those things. Write it off and go back to sleep. But back in the restful arms of slumber the hounds are waiting. They need you to re-enter the dark world of sleep because that’s when they can drag and pull your soul towards their goal with ease.

Be thankful that the hounds are mostly unseen. They are horribly disfigured and battle scarred. These foul, dark creatures of the underworld are ferocious and dangerous. Rotting flesh hangs from old wounds and bones are visible through tears in their flesh. Maggots drop from the wounds and writhe on the floor, lost now they no longer crawl in their own enzymatic solutions.
The hounds sense the end is near; you have been walking the dog for a long time and didn’t even know it. Now you know, but it’s far too late. You’re at the burning gates. The ground shakes and heaves as the gates are pulled open by the malignant spirits that guard them. You are dragged to your wicked fate and the massive gates swing back and close with a shudder that courses through you, mimicking your own violent shudder. The hounds release you and you struggle to your feet. You look at your surroundings: everything is on fire or smouldering, and the foetid stench of rotting corpses and sulphur fills the choking atmosphere.

The murderer is in front of you, the murderer from your waking dream. He rushes you with the slashing blade and you have no defence. He knocks your hands away and carves at your face; the blade travels cleanly through the skin of your cheek and catches your ear, then is swiftly brought down in one stroke to your jaw. The attack is relentless, you are in hell; nothing you have ever known has prepared you for this. Nothing ever could.

Eternal damnation is just that: you do not die because you are already dead, and you go on suffering the way you are now. Wounds hang open and expose raw nerves. You cannot see through all the blood, and the pain is unbearable.
Where is he? You ask yourself as you try to rise, but then you collapse and pass out with fear still clutching at your breast.
You wake to the sound of a familiar voice.
‘Hey come on, wake up. You sleep like the dead.’
‘Huh? What?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be walking the dog?’