Anything Can Be Dangerous (2 page)

This being their first date, Greg
steered clear of movie theaters and bass-booming nightclubs,
preferring to find an activity that facilitated one-on-one
conversation. They visited several exotic stores uptown, chatting
while they window shopped, sharing summaries of their lives and
desires. And they got along great. The conversation went so well,
in fact, that the busy shops and crowded walkways soon became
nothing more than background noise to their words, blurring into
static. There were no uncomfortable collisions of interest, no lack
of topics. The two of them seemed to fuel each other, keeping the
dialogue going.

Their journey took them to a coffee
house featuring live jazz, where they got double espressos and
huddled together within the crowd, continuing their exchange using
both words and body language amid the aroma of java, incense, and
pipe tobacco. Around midnight, they ended the evening with a
late-night stroll through the Walker Art Garden, where their mouths
met on more than one occasion.

Greg had already replayed the entire
evening three times in his head, now hoping to hang onto that
euphoric sense of delight he’d felt while in Mia’s presence. They’d
kissed long and meaningfully before going their separate ways, and
he found himself content with the fact they’d not ended up in bed.
He knew she was interested in him, there was no doubting that, but
she wasn’t easy, and he found that appealing. They had another
night planned for tomorrow
—
today,
rather
—
and the anticipation of seeing her
again was an experience of its own.

Greg ascended the front steps to the
porch, thumbing through his keys, when he was startled by the
sounds of the neighbor kid across the street. The surprise struck
him like an icy hand coming down on the back of his
neck.

“
Damn!” he said, looking
over his shoulder.

Ghost pale in the darkness, the young
mentally disabled boy sat on the front stoop of his home, gleefully
clapping his hands and keening, “Eyeee, Eyeee,” into the
night.

Greg shook his head. He’d heard the
eight-year-old late at night countless times before, but this
particular instance clashed with his upbeat mood and made tonight’s
display seem utterly disgusting. Yet again he found himself
wondering how the neighbors to either side could stand it, or how
the boy’s parents could allow him outside at such a time,
especially given his condition. Not that Greg knew what his
condition was, precisely. All he’d heard was the local rumor that
alcohol had played a part during his mother’s pregnancy.

The boy continued clapping
unabated.

“
Eyeee, Eyeee.”

The disharmony of that noise had
doused Greg’s ability to keep the pleasant memory of his evening
with Mia alight, and he hurried to get inside, leaving the boy’s
howling at his back.

3.

Despite the late night, Greg awoke
early the next morning, just after seven, and the sun was already
giving a preview of the glorious day ahead––the kind of day God had
probably meant for humanity to enjoy on a regular basis before some
asshole invented money. Thankfully, it was Saturday, the one day he
allowed himself to take a break from his work.

He got up and made toast and eggs in
the kitchen. Eating by the window, he compiled a mental list of
possible activities for tonight’s date with Mia, fervent in his
mission to recapture the feel of their previous outing. If he
played his cards right
—

Greg’s train of thought suddenly
derailed when he glanced outside and spotted a dead dog in the
backyard.

The sight of the hulking gray shape
slumped against the side of the garage left him stunned, half a
crust of toast still pinched between his teeth. He’d been thinking
about the house and yard, about what he needed to do to make the
place presentable in case Mia came over later, and that’s when he
saw it.

Fur. Ears. Paws. Tail.

He got up and went to
investigate.

He wasn’t even halfway across the lawn
when he recognized that it was Gracy, his neighbor’s five-year-old
German Sheppard.

“
Ah, shit,” he whispered to
himself.

He glanced to the Jacobsons’ house
next door, guessing that Tom and Angela were still fast asleep,
probably unaware that the dog was missing. He wondered if he should
tell them now, even if it meant waking them up.

His mental debate tapered off when he
got closer to the animal and saw the full extent of its condition.
The dead canine lay on its back, legs up, jaws open. In life, Gracy
had been a healthy, stalwart specimen, but now her emaciated body
looked ancient, her skin shrunken tight around her bones as if
vacuum-formed to her skeleton.

“
What the hell?” Greg
muttered. He recalled seeing her playing outside just the other
day.

Bright white fangs smiled up at him
where the dog’s withered lips had peeled back; her nose had become
a fleshless cavern in her skull. Both her eyes were missing, the
sockets dark and empty, and Greg’s eggs and toast seemed to come
alive in his belly when he noticed the flies that had already begun
to explore those twin ovoid cavities.

How on earth was he going to break the
news to his neighbors? He didn’t have a clue. Even to him it was
obvious that the dog hadn’t died of natural causes, and he found
himself fearfully wondering if it had caught some kind of abnormal
disease.

As he pondered that thought, he
suddenly realized that the green-gray mass of flesh that jutted
from the Sheppard’s gaping maw wasn’t a bloated tongue, but rather
a distended length of regurgitated intestine.

“
Oh, God!”

He retreated to the driveway, away
from the corpse, when he caught a glimpse of the garage door in his
peripheral vision.

It was open.

He hadn’t opened it last night when
he’d come home. And he was pretty damn sure it was closed when he’d
arrived.

Collecting himself, he moved to the
open doorway and examined the inside. The overhead light bulb
remained dark, but the sunlight streaming in over his shoulder
easily illuminated the single car space.

There was blood on the
floor.

He saw it right away, a red trail of
quarter-size droplets leading clear to the back wall, vanishing
behind the collection of scrap lumber he kept stacked in the far
corner.

He snatched up a long-handled shovel
from the tool rack mounted near the main entry but didn’t dare go
inside. What if the thing that made the bloody trail was the thing
that killed Gracy? Maybe it was a wounded animal, something
infected with a germ or virus that caused the ghastly deformities
he’d seen on the dog?

He decided that his best bet was to
close the door and call animal control.

He was about to back his way to his
car, intent on retrieving the automatic control box for the door,
when his eyes spotted something protruding from where the crimson
stains disappeared behind the wood.

He squinted, focusing on the
sight.

And suddenly he realized what he was
looking at.

Without another second of hesitation,
he strode inside, marching straight to the end of the blood trail,
where he found the bag sitting behind the lumber.

Sure enough, it was the plastic bag
his computer had come in, the one with the warning. It was
half-full of clotted dark blood, some smeared across its
transparent plastic skin.

He squatted down, still at a distance,
and peered into the gloom between the stacked wood and the wall,
but found nothing other than the bag and its grisly red
contents.

Using the shovel, he dragged the bag
into the open. A pair of work gloves hung on a peg beside the
lumber and he quickly slipped them on. But what should he do? Tom
would likely call the police once he found out what happened to
Gracy, and the investigating officer would undoubtedly want to look
around the scene, maybe inside the garage. He’d see the blood, the
bag, and then what? Would they suspect that Greg was the
killer?

No. That was ludicrous. Greg had been
on good terms with the Jacobsons’ since day one. Besides, he had no
motive to kill their dog. Hell, he liked their dog! But something
deep down told him that he didn’t want anyone else to see the bag,
even if it meant tampering with evidence. If he hid it somewhere,
he could discard it himself later, when no one else was around.
Better yet, he’d destroy it …

Plastic Bags Can Be
Dangerous.

“
Gracy!”

Greg flinched, spinning toward the
voice.

“
Gracy!” Tom Jacobson
called from next door. “Come on, girl. Where are you?”

Greg knew it was only a matter of
seconds before Tom glanced to his right, through the branches of
the hedge separating their properties, and saw his dead pet, forty
feet away.

He turned his attention back to the
bag, uncertain of what to do—

And found it draped across his
foot.

“
Jesus!”

He kicked the thing away, hit the
button for the automatic door, and dodged under it as it descended.
Running from the garage, he went to tell his neighbor about the dog
and suggest that they call the police.

4.

The evening with Mia would’ve been as
splendid as the last if not for the memory of the bag. Its gory
afterimage remained imprinted in his mind, dominating his thoughts
and polluting his mood.

He’d met Mia just after six, and they
decided on a trip to Valley Fair instead of eating out. It sounded
like a great idea at the time. He’d secretly hoped that the
excitement of the amusement park’s rides and the noise of the
crowds would distract him from his thoughts and help him focus on
Mia, but the morning’s experience refused to relinquish its hold
and the cheery atmosphere of the park only acted to further expose
his dispirited frame of mind.

The bag.

The police never found it. That’s what
was truly bothering him.

After seeing his dog, Tom Jacobson
indeed called the police. Greg explained to the responding officer
how he found Gracy’s remains slumped beside his garage and that
he’d also spotted several drops of blood near the door. He never
said that he went inside, though. And he never mentioned the
bag.

Previously, he’d been uncertain what
would happen if the police discovered it in his garage, all full of
blood, but by then he wanted them to find it, especially after …
after it
moved.

He was still having trouble believing
it himself, mainly because he hadn’t actually witnessed its
advance, but it somehow crossed three feet to his foot. And he knew
he hadn’t imagined its proximity to him. He’d felt the weight of
its liquid cargo when he booted it away, its warmth on his ankle.
There was just no mistaking it; the damn thing had moved!
Nevertheless, how could he possibly hope to tell that to the police
and expect them to believe it? Answer: he couldn’t.

So he’d kept quiet, waiting for the
officer to find the bag and take it away.

Only the officer hadn’t found the bag.
He’d done a brief search of the garage, noted the traces of blood
in his report, but that was it. Gracy’s remains were taken by
animal control to be autopsied for possible contagions, Tom got a
case number, and, la-tee-da, life was back to normal.

Or at least it should’ve been. Greg
still hadn’t gone back into the garage since the officer left, and
he was beginning to wonder if he would ever set foot in there
again.

“
Is something
wrong?”

Greg looked up, stirred from his
thoughts by Mia’s soft voice.

“
Sorry. What?”

She gave him a sheepish grin. “Well, I
don’t mean to be blunt, but you don’t seem to be having a very good
time. Last night … I thought we got along great. Tonight feels
different. I know we just met, so if you’re uncomfortable or
something, please tell me.”

“
No,” he answered. “God,
no. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day.”

She flashed him that fantastic
smile.

“
I just … I had a rough
morning, and I guess it’s still troubling me a bit. I
apologize.”

“
Is it something you want
to talk about?”

He hesitated, but decided to tell her.
He felt bad enough making her suffer through the first half hour of
their date wondering if she was the source of his distracted
behavior, and he wanted to put things right. He didn’t tell
her
everything
, though. He
kept the details of his story centered on the shocking discovery of
the dog and his surprise at Gracy’s unnatural death.

“
That’s terrible,” she
agreed. “I hope they catch whoever did it.”

“
Me too.”

To his surprise, talking about the
ordeal did make him feel better. In fact, it helped put everything
in perspective. The bag of blood, the dog’s grotesque carcass;
those things still stuck in his mind, but they no longer carried
the eerie air that had dampened his spirits since he found
them.