Chapter 28: You Want Me To Do What?

The lingering sewage stench burned my nose. The bacon almost gushed out of my stomach. “Ew, no. What is it? It looks disgusting. There’s a Purrberus hair in there and something that looked like a tongue!”

He gave me one of his chilling smiles. “It’s the cure for your dog suit.”

“I don’t want that poison inside of me,” I barked. “Please, can’t you do it some other way?”

Mister Gentry’s smile grew colder. “No.”

“It looks awful,” I gagged.

“It looks like a chocolate dessert,” said Mister Gentry.

I wagged my tail in excitement. “Dogs aren’t supposed to have chocolate!”

Mister Gentry sighed. “It isn’t chocolate. I only said it looked like it.”

“I saw what you put in it,” I said. “Some of it looked alive.”

“I should have thought twice about giving you premium bacon,” he growled.

The fur along my spine raised up in spikes. I scooted back under the desk.

“You are in no position to complain about my methods,” he went on. “You have two days to eat it. After that it will lose its magic. Enjoy it now or reap the consequences.”

“I’ll take my chances waiting for Addison,” I said, poking my head out.

He waved dismissively. “So be it. Farewell, Coralie. Try not to dilly dally. Remember... two days, starting right now. Let us be on our way, Purrberus.”

They vanished. A strange lull fell over the house. I crawled out.

To my great relief, the grandfather clock, the framed stuff, file cabinets and the rest had all been restored, the mess mysteriously cleaned as though nothing had happened, except for the Chimbrelis. That still lay a smoldering ruin.

I jumped up on the brown plaid armchair to see what Mister Gentry had done to the desk drawers. An elegantly written envelope addressed to Addison lay on the desk. He’d find it soon enough.

Nothing seemed amiss. Then again, I wouldn’t necessarily have known if he’d taken anything other than the gloves and the marble. Those were plenty.

I jumped down. The evil pudding or whatever it was supposed to be sat as if daring me to take a bite. It was alive, I was certain. It still reeked like a sewer.

My stomach rippled. There was no way I was going to eat it.

Two days. I could go that long without eating. Clyde’s food was an option if I got desperate.

All I had to do was wait for Addison. He’d have to spend some time recovering first. But l did not doubt his power for a second. He would be able to cure me somehow or would know someone who could.

I hated that this was definitely, unavoidably going to stress out his heart. It was exactly the opposite of what Dr. Lowe said to do, except Dr. Lowe didn’t count on me ending up in a necromancer’s basement or getting cursed by a demon lord.

Besides, the evil pudding was probably just another dirty trick being played by Mister Gentry. Addison would probably tell me not to trust it.

I paced around the house in circles, losing track of time and abandoning any more planning. Finally I curled up on Addison’s armchair and fell asleep.

Clyde came out of hiding. I woke up to him biting my right ear hard enough to draw blood. I fled upstairs and hid under my bed again.

A sharp cracking noise came from the office. Clyde screeched and galloped across the house. Had the pudding just try to kill him, and was I next? I prayed to whoever might be listening that Mister Gentry had not returned.

I crept back downstairs to investigate. The house was empty. Whatever happened to Clyde was a mystery, but I suspected the evil pudding had something to do with it since it stank worse and was glowing like an ember. My nose wrinkled in disgust.

The next few hours I spent wandering back and forth between the office and the front room couch to stare out the window, where the streetlamp cast a circle of warm yellow light. It was now fifteen past three in the morning, according to the hallway mantel clock.

I flopped to the floor in the office and stared at the dish. What kind of sick practical joker was Mister Gentry anyway, to put my name on it in capital letters?

The pudding’s glow and the odor had died down. Curiosity got the better of me. I stuck out my tongue as far as it would go but, forgetting it was not my usual tongue, it flopped out of my mouth and managed to smear the evil pudding all over it.

In a heartbeat I was across the room trembling in the corner.

It tasted appalling, putrid as rot, like licking the bottom of a trash can. It filled my head with the most repugnant images that could ever be dreamed up. The texture was just as terrifying, alive, as if it had slithered up to meet my mouth. My tongue felt violated.

What didn’t get drooled or spat out made its way into my stomach, which nearly flipped itself inside out. This time I managed to hold it together and not get sick.

I staggered up to my room so I wouldn’t have to looked at the cursed dish, and crawled into bed. Memories of Addison slumped over the desk and his stricken face as they were putting him on the gurney haunted my mind. How long would it take for him to recover? A month? Longer?

Guilt squeezed my heart that I couldn’t go see him, in spite of what Mister Gentry claimed. That was probably a lie too.

Rage lit up in me. Those idiots at Rufus’s and their idiotic nightmare summoning spell! This was their fault. At least the demon lords had them. But of course Mister Gentry and Purrberus couldn’t resist showing up to bully me again.

Exhaustion interrupted my thoughts. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was chained up in the neighbor’s yard, which was surrounded by tall, wide hedges. Addison was calling to me out the window that dinner was ready. I barked frantically but he didn’t know I wasn’t Coralie the person anymore. His voice faded away.

It was light out when I woke up. The wall clock read ten past eleven. My parched mouth had a sooty aftertaste.

I had some of Clyde’s water in the kitchen, then ventured to the office to check on the evil dish. It looked undisturbed. I went back upstairs to bed but Clyde’s hungry howls interrupted more strange dreams a few hours later.

Using my snout, I managed to open the kitchen cupboards that had his food, very glad that we kept it on the bottom shelf close to the floor. It didn’t take long for me to tear open the bag with my teeth. Kibble poured all over the place to his gluttonous excitement. He seemed to have accepted me being a dog, at least while his face was buried in a bag of his favorite food.

My own stomach began churning. The tipped over doughnut box still sitting tantalizingly on the table was empty. Clyde had finished them off while I was gone.

It was either go hungry or suck it up and have some of his Premium Pet Foods liver flavored kibble. It was dry and nutty, and not fit for consumption by people who have recently been turned into dogs but still have human taste buds.

I quenched my thirst from Clyde’s bowl and went back to bed. We’d be drinking from the toilet soon.

The phone woke me up a little after six that evening. Hopefully it wasn’t anyone important. I wandered between the front room and the office again, thinking about Addison’s return.

The evil pudding looked the same. I got this weird feeling it was laughing at me, even though it was just sitting there.

“Eat it quickly, you are wasting time and magic!”

Mister Gentry’s voice came from behind me as I was watching the pudding, expecting it to wiggle or something. I jumped a mile and spun around. There was nobody there.

I barked to argue with him about how disgusting and unfair all of this was and waited for him to answer, but he didn’t.

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Clyde and I sat at opposite ends of the front room couch as the room grew dimmer and dimmer. The street lights flickered on. People walked by our house chatting, laughing, oblivious to my dramas.

I dozed off. Something heavy falling over in the office woke me up. I rushed in but nothing was out of place. Maybe I dreamed it.

Hunger gnawed at my stomach. More liver kibble was not on my menu. I used my paws to pry open the lower cupboards. There was nothing edible that didn’t require a can opener besides a box of unseasoned breadcrumbs and a bag of rawhide chews for Clyde.

Everything else we kept in there was either a small electric kitchen appliance or a hand towel. When was the last time we’d gotten groceries?

As I was chewing open the box of breadcrumbs, something else fell over in the office, heavier this time. I heard Clyde’s footsteps scurry down the hall.

Once again there was nothing out of place. Did we have a ghost? I heard a noise coming from the black dish, as if it moved slightly. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

Sudden anger sprang up, driving me to bark and snap at the dish. It lay there harmlessly, but I knew in my heart it was not. I just wanted it to go away.

For the next hour I crouched in front of the dish, staring, willing it to do something. Sleep came before anything else happened.

My stomach woke me up early in the morning. Clyde had already helped himself to the breadcrumbs. Chewed bits of box and crumbs were scattered through the kitchen.

A few hours later the doorbell rang. I vaulted onto the couch to spy out the window. Nobody was there. It had been raining off and on for a few hours. The street was deserted.

Around noon I went in the office to take a nap on Addison’s armchair. How else was I supposed to pass the time while waiting for him to get home? This would all be over then. Soon I dozed off.

Snickering came from the black dish, or that’s what I dreamed. A giant crash startled me. As usual, there was nothing to be seen. I dozed off again. Another deafening crash.

By then I was wide awake. The snickering came again. I know I definitely heard it that time. I almost gave myself a hernia barking at it. The pudding stayed silent. It felt like it was tormenting me. I pushed the dish with my nose out of the office to the hallway where it wouldn’t bother me anymore.

My stomach was insistent on finding food. I headed back to the kitchen. There was nothing except for some liquefying bananas on the counter. Clyde had gorged himself on the kibble.

The office door slammed so hard I thought it would shatter its glass pane. I ran out to investigate. Everything went silent as soon as I was standing near the dish in the hallway, exactly where I didn’t want to be.

You’re running out of time, Coralie, I heard a small, scratchy voice say.

My ears turned back and my tail slow wagged. “Shut up, shut up!” I barked, wishing I could throw the whole thing out the window.

Wait til Addison sees the mess in here said the voice. Wait til he sees you.

Suddenly, the dish shot down the hall to the kitchen. Before I knew what I was doing I took off after it. From there it led me on a wild chase into the front room, the library, up and down the stairs, back to the office, doing that annoying, mocking little laugh the whole time. The door slammed shut and locked with a sharp click.

Now I was really trapped. I jumped up and scratched at the door, but it was no use. I had no key and couldn’t use one with my paws anyway. The sarcastic little snicker came again. I whirled around.

Looks like you’re stuck with me, it said.

Rage erupted in me, worse than I’d ever felt. Nothing made sense. It hadn’t for days. I was fed up.

I howled profanities at the dish, at Mister Gentry, Purrberus, Roanna, Harte, my parents, and anyone or anything else I could think of to blame for getting me into this mess, or for screwing up my life in general, with the sole exception of Addison.

The person I blamed the most though was myself, for thinking I was was smart enough to trick a demon lord, and for messing around with anything magic-related in the first place.

Addison didn’t deserve this. And I wasn’t going to let an evil pudding or whatever it was have the last word.

I knew what I had to do. If I wound up dead, hopefully Addison would be able to figure out what happened.

You don’t have the guts.

I glared at the dish. Slowly, hesitantly, I choked down a tiny bite and vowed not to be sick. In a weird way, I saw myself as getting revenge against it. Instead I coughed and spit out most of it.

Pitiful. Is that the best you can do? You’ve sealed your own doom, you know.

The rage roared back. I bared my teeth and dove into the evil pudding snout first. I had to shut it up.

I took one wretched, violent bite after another, tearing it apart, dismembering the hideous, fleshy thing, and tried not to think about what I saw Mister Gentry put in it. It was like chewing through a sewer flavored lump with a charred aftertaste.

In reality there wasn’t that much in the dish but it seemed to get bigger before it got smaller. Pretending it was something else was impossible. My runaway imagination was already making it worse.

I don’t know how long it took. I lost count of the bites because each was more sickening than the last.

At the end, I flopped over, too sick to move. What I’d eaten sat in my stomach like a painful lead weight. My body felt infected.

The scratchy voice was gone, replaced by a dreadful feeling like I’d been just been tricked into poisoning myself, and that Addison would come home to find me dead.

Would he know it was me? Would I be me, or...I abandoned the thought, it was too agonizing. So much for following his imaginary advice not to trust it. What an idiot I was!

The office door swung open. I lay curled up until I was able to crawl over to Clyde’s water dish. Empty. It didn’t matter. I was probably dying anyway.

Panting, I hobbled to the bathroom. It took me ages to lift the toilet seat with my snout. Then the lid kept bonking me on the head as I tried to drink. I made it up the stairs and crawled up on my bed.

Hours later I awoke burning up and feeling like my stomach was turning inside out. Rain hammered against the dark windows. I was still a dog. My heart sank. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

If I survived and was stuck like this...well, if Yvette had learned to live with it, so could I. Lightning flashed, followed by low booms of thunder. I dozed off, somewhat comforted by the thought of being in an exclusive club for unfortunate victims of magic.

I woke up to the phone ringing off the hook. Halfway out of bed I saw that I had returned to my human body. The relief and surprise made my legs go wobbly. I missed the top step and tripped over Clyde who happened to be napping there.

The phone stopped ringing. Clyde didn’t budge. I growled. He fled. My heart skipped a few beats. I don’t know which of us was more surprised by the demonic sound I made.

It was nine thirty. I had a half hour to shower and clean the house before Addison came home and decided to go back to the hospital. The unexpected growl would have to be dealt with later.

Minutes later I was staring at my restored self in the bathroom mirror. My wet hair flopped worse than ever. Did I look as terrible as I felt? I brushed my teeth again, just another day in the life of someone who was now probably part monster.

No sooner had I swept up the rest of the kibble in the kitchen than a car horn tooted. My heart leaped. Finally, Addison! Things would go back to normal, whatever that was for us. I tried not to think about the weird animal noise that came out of my mouth earlier.

A familiar black car was parked out front. I froze as cold terror washed over me. They tooted again.

I was only braver for having Addison there, even post heart attack. Blood rushed in my head as I went outside to meet him.

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