Something's Wrong With Max
Max
I noticed something was wrong with Max one rainy day just before winter set in. It was cold enough to snow but I guess God had decided that he wanted it to piss down freezing rain instead. It was that time of year when the sun’s hot but the wind was cold and when nothing good seemed to happen.
"Has anyone seen Max?" my dad had said that evening as we ate dinner over candlelight. My mom shook her head, sipping her red wine. The pot roast in front of us tasted soggy like the rain. It made my stomach flip just looking at it. I don't think any of us noticed he had slipped through the doggy-door earlier in the day. Usually on days like this, he came back on his own volition; Max hated the rain.
Max had been around as long as I had been alive; he was that stereotypical, suburban labrador retriever that had gotten so old he couldn't see and was basically a crusty decrepit mess. It was a wonder to my friends and family that he was still alive. He had a bad habit of urinating on the floor that he had developed in his twilight years, which would send my dad into an inconsolable rage. "Damn Dog," my dad would grumble across the house.
In the last year, it had become clear to most people that Max was slowing down, in fact when I asked my mom what was wrong with him one day when I noticed he had been asleep for longer than usual, she just said, "Max is just getting old." Still, a lot of people would hear Max's snorting as he slowly trotted around the house and look at him with this sense of disgust and pity, like he had some kind of illness or sickness that was beyond words, the same way that the privileged look at the poor or the same way people react when they hear someone coughing in public.
One of my uncles was visiting for Thanksgiving that year, took one look at him, and asked my dad, "are you gonna put him down soon?" My dad just shook his head. In truth, I think the reason we didn't was because Max was always Max: a slightly overweight Labrador that stayed a little harsh in temperament, yet always seemed just happy enough to still be here. Living on a farm, you usually can get a better sense than the average folk when an animal's time has come. Max's time just hadn't come yet, my dad knew that I thought.
My dad and Max always had an interesting relationship. When Max got stinky, which given how often he rolled in poop outside, was once a week, my dad would take Max in the shower with him. At night, Max would always lay at my dad's feet and watch TV with him on our color display. I wonder if Max knew we were the only ones in the neighborhood with a color TV. That "damn dog," as my dad would call him, would thank my dad by peeing at the front door in the morning. One time, one of my dad's friends came over for dinner and talked about his daughter's hamster getting into the oven, then asked my dad, "you think Max is gonna die soon?" My dad just responded half-jokingly, "God willing.”
This all goes to say that even though Max was ancient, decrepit, and grumpy, he was predictable, so when he didn't come back one rainy day, I think my whole family feared the worst.
"I'll go look for him," I announced, tired of the meal by then anyway.
"Wear a raincoat," my mom shot back, still into her wine and not actually really caring about the rain or Max.
The Shed
Max had this way of grunting sometimes when he was asleep that sounded like he was struggling to push out a bowel movement. It sounded more like a wild, guttural boar than a dog. It was nasally and unpleasant sounding but unmistakable, as no other domesticated animal on God’s green earth makes a sound comparable to his grunts.
Max didn’t often whine, in fact, he would usually snort or let out a deep bark to communicate with us. As I walked through the rain that sobbed down from the grey skies and past the woodshed at the back end of our property, I heard a grunt just beneath the steady rumble of the rain.
“Max?” I called out.
↟↟↟
The woodshed was a tiny little building that had come with the property when my dad first bought it. Its walls were constructed from ancient, nearly rotting wood and it was capped with a tin roof. My dad rarely used our fireplace because he said the heat bill wasn’t too bad, only when the power went out in the dead of winter, but when he did, he’d walk through the snow with a wheelbarrow and fill it up with wood. He’d maybe cut down three trees a year to stock the shed, but otherwise, we rarely ventured over there. Plus, there usually were a lot of spiders and beehives that made it an even more unattractive place.
Max; however, when he was roaming around in the heat of summer, would use it as a place to rest, so we put a couple of old towels down for him to lay on so he didn’t have to lie on the gravel floor.
As I stood in the rain at the entrance to the dark and cold shed, I immediately knew something was wrong with Max. He was lying on his side on top of the towels, his wet fur letting off a pungent odor even in the rain. I could see his beady black eyes look over at me. His tail slowly wagged in response to me.
“Max, buddy, you okay?” I whispered out.
Max grunted back.
From what I could see, nothing appeared to be wrong on the outside. There was no blood matting his fur, nothing to suggest he’d gotten into it with a Coyote or racoon. In the dim sunlight piercing through the clouds, I could vaguely make out liquid slowly running in the fur around his belly near one of his fatty tumors. It was thicker than the rain water that he’d collected and ran down his side, pooling in a not-very-deep puddle over the towel.
Max grunted, this one shallower than the one before. He kept wagging his tail.
I reached down to pet him and feel his belly, hoping I could feel what was wrong with him, only for my hand to meet a sticky, slimy substance that was warm to the touch, like a pus from an infection that was oozing out from him.
“Dad!” I called out to the house.
↟↟↟
“It’s an infection, alright,” my dad said after the two of us had wrapped him in the towels and carried him back inside to the living room. Max so far hadn’t moved a muscle outside of his tail. He would grunt every now and then, but otherwise, it was like he was unable to walk, like he was now just a warm body.
“We oughta clean him up and take him to the vet tomorrow morning. I’m gonna need your help.”
I cringed at the thought.
“Sometimes, this is part of the responsibility of having a pet. You gotta take care of them.”
“Is he gonna be okay?”
My dad didn’t reply. I don’t think he knew what to say.
The Bath
My dad wrapped Max back up in towels, so he didn’t leak any pus on the hardwood floor and Max just snorted uncomfortably.
“Help me,” my dad said with a grunt as he put his arms beneath Max’s front half, while I quickly moved alongside his back half and put my arms just in front of his hind legs.
Max was heavy; while not a huge dog by any standards, he was awkward and dense, like a waterlogged piece of wood. I could feel the dampness on the towels as it dribbled out from inside of the dog, a couple of drops landing on the hardwood floor with gentle splatters. We had only picked him up a handful of times in his life, primarily to load him into my dad’s truck, but now it was like he was just dead weight.
“What do you think happened?” I finally asked my dad as we moved through his bedroom and into his bath with the big walk-in shower. By then, little streams of the fluid were oozing down my arms. I could smell it now that we were inside; it was a sweet and hot odor, like milk left out in the sun.
“Must’ve cut his belly open outside and no one noticed.”
“Why’s it all sticky?”
“Bacteria,” my dad said plainly, elbowing the light-switch and then the shower-fan switch.
“Huh,” I answered, Max’s weight crushing the circulation in my arms. He didn’t so much as jerk away as we struggled to carry his body onto the tile of the shower, pulling the dirty and now stinking towels away from him as we put his paws against the ground. I prepared to release my grip.
Max grunted again.
“Hold him up,” my dad said, turning the water on, pointing the removable shower head to the corner so the cold water that came pouring out didn’t splash on Max. Max’s tail wagged against my arm excitedly. A sign of life.
I moved alongside my dad and Max, holding onto Max’s belly and trying my best to ignore the sticky feeling against my skin.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I whispered, softly tugging on his fur to keep him from resting his belly on the ground. Max grunted in protest. There was another splattering noise beneath the sound of the water.
I looked down at my leather boots; a milky light fluid was pouring out from Max’s slit in a thin stream.
It splattered onto the tile and my shoes. I was tempted to say something, but then dad was spraying Max down with the shower head. As if in response, the fluid came out in thicker spurts, like someone had turned the faucet inside of him to max-power. It was chunky, drooping out in globs that went gluck gluck as they escaped from him. I had to hold back my urge to throw up.
“Dad?” I asked.
“I know,” he said coldly back, turning up underneath Max where the fluid was exiting from. I looked down to the floor; small drops of grey things that looked like strings were mixed into his escaped fluids, which I at first thought was just discoloration, but they moved independently from the water and pus and swam away from the drain like they were themselves living. The pus itself barely even went down the drain, seeming to instead pool around our feet. It was almost too thick.
“What the hell Max?”
My dad took his washcloth underneath Max’s belly, wiping the area around his opening. I didn’t know what he was thinking: Max needed stitches, just spraying him down with water wasn’t going to help.
Somehow, after a minute or so of this, he stopped leaking pus. My dad, as tight-lipped as ever, kept his hand on the removable-shower head, spraying at the sea of cream that had spilled out from our pet without a word.
I was holding my breath, trying not to breathe in the fumes as he turned the water off, leaving puddles of water behind and more of those wriggling strings on the tile. They were worms.
“Parasites,” my dad said, too nonchalantly for my comfort, “Max is sick. We need to take him to the vet first thing in the morning.”
The Worms
It was hard to go to bed that night. Max had been there my entire life and thus far and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t so much as gotten sick, much less spewed worms out of his belly. When I finally slept, it was a dreamless night. I recall being woken up by the feeling of something slimy curling against my skin.
I shuddered out of bed; it was still dark outside. I threw the blanket down to the floor, still feeling the sliminess from my sleep and was greeted by the sound of Max howling into the night through the thin walls of the house.
I slammed my door open, running as fast as my feet could carry me down the stairs and into the living room, flipping the lights on as I did. Just beyond our couch and in the middle of the living room stood Max, his snout raised to the ceiling and letting out an almost human wail. For a second, I sighed a breath of relief; he was walking again. Maybe it all had just been a bad dream and he was just howling at something that went in front of one of the windows.
“Max?” I called out, studying his fur. He cocked his head to the right. His skin and fur seemed to shimmer, vibrating with the movement of something beneath his skin.
Max let out a soft whimper, and then like roots tearing through the ground, worm-like tendrils seemed to burst from his belly, expanding the hole and shooting white pus across the wood floor. They were each about the width of my finger and dark brown in color, erratically reaching to the ground beneath Max and smacking it, like they were trying to grab onto something, anything at all. They all moved independently, groping through the air at impossible speeds, coiling against one another and hanging out from the dog’s cut open belly like they made up his internal organs.
“DAD!” I hollered out.
Max grunted, his voice deeper like it was in two pieces, his original grunt and the grunt of something deeper, darker lying within him. He lowered his head to the ground, cowering near the floor as the tendrils retreated back inside of him, disappearing.
My parent’s door came flying open, my dad dressed in his flannel pajamas. How had the howling not disturbed his sleep? I looked back at Max and for that brief moment, he had returned to being himself. He was trembling, seemingly scared of the monsters living inside of him.
“What's he barking at?” my dad snarled, stopping past the couch.
Max whimpered, still cowering against the floor, thick puddles of pus beneath him, but no sign of the worms that had been reaching out of him like demons from the underworld.
“Something's wrong with Max,” I pleaded, hoping my dad would say we should take him to the emergency vet. I didn't have the words to describe what I had seen, like an alien ripping itself through our dog. It had always upset me a great deal when people talked about putting Max down Max and it still did, but for the first time, it made sense. No vet was going to be able to fix Max.
“Yeah, buddy, I know. We gotta take him first thing in the morning.”
“No, dad, it's- it's worse. There's something inside of him. It came falling out of his belly like a monster.”
I knew my words weren't doing the gravity of the situation justice. My dad looked at me, sleep still in his eyes.
“At least he's walking now,” my dad said, looking at me like I was just an irrational kid scared of some infection and trying as always to be the protector.
“Whaddaya say we wrap him in some gauze, get the doggy cone so he can't rip it off?” my dad added.
I said nothing. Gauze wasn't going to stop the worms from getting out.
My dad wasn't going to wait for my approval.
“Go to the laundry room. I'll get the first aid kit, you get some towels, a fresh dog bed and the cone. I think it's in the garage. He's gonna be okay, I promise.”
Max looked defeated as we laid out a spare dog bed for him, my dad used some gauze and old sheets to tie a tight wrap around his med section, and I swabbed the floors with wood cleaner and old towels that I threw in the garbage can once we had soaked up all of the pus. I noticed now that the worms that had been in the shower and leaked out of him were absent now, as if they had grown and were the things reaching out of him.
“Dad,” I begged as we snapped the cone around Max’s head, “I think those parasites got a lot bigger. I saw them hanging out of him and squirming around.”
Max looked up at me, his eyes empty of all emotion now, just a hopeless flesh cell.
“I'm sure the doctor will tell us something in the morning. Just try and get some sleep, okay? I'll leave my door open and listen,” my dad said, explaining it away like it was nothing.
The Split-Decision
It should go without saying that I locked my bedroom door that evening and squeezed tightly under my blankets, praying to God that the monster inside of Max didn't know how to open locked doors.
Maybe my dad was right, and it was just a normal parasite living inside of Max and there wasn't anything to worry about. As a semi-well-adjusted adult now, I know that the scariest of parasites, even the ones from the Amazon that take over the dead bodies of ants, don't come within spitting distance of being as horrifying as the monstrosities that had taken up residence in Max’s body.
I was just an impressionable young lad then and the world was still unknown and frightening. It was easy back then to rely on the comforts of someone else assuring you everything was okay. If I wanted to fact-check my knowledge on parasites, I'd have to go down to the library and trust that the information there was current and accurate. It was easy (at least in terms of going to my room without a pure, Eldritch trauma haunting me to my core) to chalk it up as some exotic parasite that had come from Max eating some bad water or something of the sort.
This sense of comfort was further massaged by my dad handling it all with the greatest sense of nonchalance, as if this was just another average Tuesday in pet ownership. My fears were further alleviated by Max seeming to eventually lay down once we had cleaned the floor and wrapped him up in gauze.
And so, the early dark hours of the morning passed by without incident. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, allowing me to see my old analog clock on the wall by the door. Sunrise was at about six thirty and the vet had to open early, so all I had to do was wait it out until then. In those days, there wasn't much I could do in terms of entertainment unless I wanted to read a book, so to pass the time, I stared at the wall, unable to sleep after what I had seen that day.
It was about five in the morning when I heard something from Max again. This time, there was a soft whine from beyond my walls, followed by some gentle pawing of the floor in between the door and the wood floor beneath it.
I froze. Max had a considerably difficult time climbing stairs in those days, so the fact that he was outside of my room meant he had dragged his body upstairs in his advanced condition.
Max whined again. He wanted in.
I didn't dare open the door or answer. After what I had seen popping out from his belly, there was no telling what the thing pretending to be Max might do if he climbed into bed with me.
He let out a series of short, shallow cries.
I thought for a moment. Maybe the best thing to do would be to stay up with Max. If it was just a normal parasite, I could just walk him outside and maybe that would make him feel better. What I had seen was horrifying, yes, but there was little indication that it was malicious.
Like a fool and on altruistic impulse, I flipped my room’s light on, the carpet chilly against my bare feet, then clicked open the lock. I heard Max’s feet patter against the floor excitedly.
It's just the dog, I thought to myself, taking a deep breath. Nervously, I twisted the knob and slowly pulled it open, revealing the dimly lit hallway leading to the stairs.
Max stood in front of me, his tail wagging and tongue out. There was no pus beneath his belly, nothing to indicate that anything was wrong.
I sighed in relief.
What came next sounded like that moist, fleshy noise that comes when you peel a large sunburn or blister from your skin, only louder. THAWP! came the noise from inside of Max, followed by the sound of what I can only compare to a tree in a storm creaking as it came down on a house.
Max whimpered.
The black, wet meat of his snout seemed to stretch, then little red holes popped up like pimples up his head, in between his eyes, and then at his jaw, as if he were a piece of paper with a tear edge. Max yelped and I could only stare as the skin and fur separated into two halves, streams of blood leaking from the canyon that began to form through the middle of face and down the back of his neck. Blood, creamy pus, and smaller, wriggling worms fell through the newly opened hole, bones snapping as his skull split in two, leaving bodily debris on the wood.
I looked into the gap that had formed through him, his tongue freely hanging out, chunks of his brain visible on either half of the poor dog, his head now a V shape. Sets of twirling worm-tendrils swam through the air like flying rubber hoses between his right and left half, wriggling and holding him together as new parasitic veins.
There was another loud snap, a sound like a zipper being pulled, then his jaw followed, tender meat separating and pulling apart down to where his neck connected with his body, a Cerberus in the flesh. His exposed, crooked and brown teeth stuck out in the flesh canyon, the worms pulsing and throbbing as they explored each half of him, others tearing from his neck veins, esophagus, and trachea, and thrusting through the air.
A black hole had formed at the end of his neck, from which protruded four of the worm-like appendages, like a new mouth and like each half of Max’s former head was a beak that protected his fleshy entrance.
Max was gone, the beast was here to consume.
His blood splattered across the floor, through the frame, and then stained the carpet beneath my feet. His tongue dripped out from the newly separated right half and streams of saliva oozed out, hanging in between his meat and jaws.
Max whimpered, his dead, bloodshot eyes studying me. The tendrils slowed for a second, seeming to size me up as if he was debating what to do with me.
“MAX!” my dad's voice roared from the end of the hall. “Max” shifted its body, its legs twitching as it turned and stumbled to face him.
My dad was blocking the end of the hall, still in his flannel pajamas but with the family double-barreled shotgun in his muscular arms.
I didn’t have time to say anything. The thing that used to be Max jerked its right head up, the worms snaking through and molesting the air angrily.
“STAY!” my dad roared, squeezing the gun’s trigger. I covered my ears, watching the slug soar into Max’s chest, exploding through spoiled meat and sending pieces of the dog through the air like he was a rotten pumpkin. Max squealed like a pig, teeth, bone-fragments, worms, fur, and blood spraying through the air, splattering the walls in a red mist and denting the wall paper. I stood with my mouth agape, watching powerlessly as my dad jammed his finger against the trigger before the chunks of Max’s body had time to even hit the floor.
My legs turned to jelly then, and my ears screamed in agony. I thought I was deaf as I stared at the puddle of pus, blood, bone fragments, and tiny dancing worms in chunks of meat that had once been our dog.
↟↟↟
Max (or any of his pieces) never made it to the vet that day and dad let me stay from school after I had showered the blood and pus off of my skin. Wordlessly, my dad disappeared upstairs the rest of that morning with rubber gloves, a mop, bleach, and a trash bag. He stuffed both of our clothes and Max’s soggy dog bed in the fireplace and made his first fire of the winter with them; the hallway outside of my room distantly smelled of bleach for weeks after. As for the wallpaper, my dad used a pocket knife to scrape it off and then put a fresh coat of paint where the blood had been splattered. In the meantime, I slept on the couch downstairs
That weekend, after he had done some serious bleaching and stain removal, he invited my uncles over to tear up the carpet in my bedroom and replace it under the guise of a renovation project. As for the chunks of Max that were left over, I have no idea what he did with them, but I never saw them again.
My dad and I never spoke about what happened with Max after that day. Maybe we didn’t want to ask any questions about how it had happened, for we considered it a stroke of luck that things didn’t get any worse. In fact, any mention of Max soon became a taboo, a surefire way to kill any living conversation. His photos disappeared from the frames around the house and then memory of his existence became as relevant as a passing dream or thought.
My mom was the same: she never mentioned Max again and never so much as asked if I missed him. Even when I had children of my own and we were visiting her one Christmas in a nursing home, she didn’t offer so much as a whisper as to what had happened that Autumn when I was a boy. My parents lived full lives after that, both living well into their eighties and eventually, they were buried together. My family never got another dog and as my kids grew up, it was easy to come up with excuses why we shouldn’t have one. Cats, hamsters, even damn ferrets, those were fine.
Sometimes at night, it’s easy for me to picture Max’s soulless, starless eyes glaring at me from either side of his split head. That’s why I find myself drifting into thoughts about him so often. That’s why I’ve written my thoughts about him down.
THE END