The Twisted Ones

by T. Kingfisher

Bongo is an excellent watchdog, by which I mean that he will watch very alertly as the serial killer breaks into the house and skins me. But if the UPS guy ever tries to put one over on us, Bongo’s on the case. If dogs had religion, Satan would be the UPS guy.

Books on World War II appear spontaneously in any house that contains a man over a certain age. I believe that’s science.

What I am getting at here is that my dog is not a reliable indicator of Bad Things Going Down. (Although hell, what do I know? Maybe that garbage can was sitting right at the nexus of where our world touches another one, and he was baying and charging at it to let me know that eldritch abominations were breaking into our reality. Who knows anymore? I sure don’t.)

“Yeah, and you’d both get et,” said Foxy. “Last thing we need is you two running out and gettin’ in a dick-waving contest with a deer skeleton.” There was a brief silence while we all tried to recover from Foxy’s metaphor.

“My grandmomma. She said if I was gonna date boys, I should always carry cab fare and a condom—” “That is not a condom, Foxy!” “—and if any of ’em gave me trouble, I was to whip that piece out and show ’im that mine was bigger ’n his.”