Archive for May 9, 2025
MY LATEST PUBLISHED STORY
MY STORY, PETS, PUBLISHED IN THE CORNER BAR
As I mentioned in my post on April 7th, The Corner Bar had accepted my short story, Pets, for publication. It has now appeared and here is a link to the sto
“PETS” by WALT TRIZNA
Copyright 2025 Walt Trizna
Ronald Corey was a mean son of a bitch. His foul nature increased over years of personal disappointment. His life was now going nowhere. His anger was relentless since his wife had walked out the door. Just about everything that breathed hated him and he returned the favor. Turns out, there would also be some beings which didn’t breathe would share that hate. Tall, overweight, a monster of a man in size and personality, he had a rim of graying brown hair bordering his bald head. At 49, Corey was ten years older than his departed wife. He was educated, with an associate degree in engineering but held firmly to his blue-collar upbringing. Unfortunately, he did not hold firmly to employment. His favorite response to management ‘Go fuck yourself,’ resulted in rapid and direct membership to the ranks of the unemployed. His wife, June, was a complete opposite of Corey. Highly educated, holding multiple degrees, she was petite with dark hair and eyes so blue they merited a double take by the observer. Their temperament was also at opposite poles. How they became attracted to each other, never mind married, was a mystery to all who knew them, and eventually became a mystery to June too. June was aware that Corey drank and came to consider it to be just part of his makeup. When not drinking he was different, loving and kind. But once they married his drinking increased, being loving and kind flew out the window. Then came the start of physical abuse. June finally saw the handwriting on the wall, and what she could not see was knocked into her. Corey desperately wanted her to produce a son, but after one year of marriage, June came to realize that bringing a child into the world with Corey as the father would be a disaster. How would he treat a child when he treated her so terribly? Her imagination reeled and her mind produced images that left her disgusted. While he tried to become a father, June adhered to birth control. Corey would yell, “I don’t understand it. The rest of my family is popping kids left and right. What is wrong with you?” June replied, “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you. Go get checked.” She knew Corey had a deep-seated fear of doctors, his entire family did. “Why don’t you get checked?” he shouted back. “Fine,” June said. “We’ll go together,” and that was the end of that. Finally, after five years of enduring the hell of their marriage, June had had enough. Sporting a black eye, she began packing. Corey threw his glass of cheap scotch at their closed bedroom door and felt nothing, no loss – no regrets. Experiencing emotions, other than anger, had long ago departed his being. As she turned to leave tears moistened her eyes. Seeing this, Corey was sure she did not have the guts to go. He waited for her determination to wither, was surprised when she 10 Corner Bar Magazine said, “I can’t take the pets. You’ll have to take care of them until I find a place for them.” The pets were now his responsibility, and he despised them – always had. The dog, Molly, a medium size brown and white mixed breed, was an SPCA rescue. Sally and Sam, the result of friends of friends whose cats produced litters, were two grey tabbies who looked identical, although three years of age separated them. After June was gone his drinking increased and the more he drank the more his rage grew needing an outlet, and that outlet became the animals. If one should chance his way, it would receive a kick or powerful slap sending the poor animal sprawling and running for safety. After Corey had enough of their neediness, he looked at the animals and said, “Now to get rid of you little bastards.” But a short-lived moment of sanity filtered into his brain. The entire neighborhood knew about the pets and would become suspicious if they all suddenly disappeared. “Christ, people are going to jail for shit like that,” he said to himself. You see, he did not even consider putting them up for adoption. He only considered death or abandonment. But then he realized the plan to just drive them to some field and leave them was also out. Damn, he couldn’t remember if Molly had one of those new fucking chips im planted. “Damn animals are turning into computers now,” he mumbled. From then on the animals lived in fear of Corey. In time after constant abuse, fear gradually turned into anger, an anger they communicated to one another as only animals can. Poor Molly spent most of her day huddling in her open crate, seeking the false sense of security it provided. If she left the cage, in Corey’s presence, she would suffer a kick sending the dog running back for shelter. The abuse was relentless and soon resulted in a permanent limp, and also something else, a hate which crossed a subtle boundary. There was another bone of contention, the cats’ litter box. The cats, constantly hiding, ventured out only to eat and use the litter box. The abuse they received when hunger or nature called was relentless, journeying to the levels of Molly’s rage. The source of the cats’ abuse was that Corey felt degraded every time he had to scoop up the cat’s waste, as if he was some kind of servant. One day he thought, I’ll show the little bastards and stopped cleaning it. Soon the box was nothing but a huge mass of lumps of congealed urine-soaked litter and cat turds. When the cats began relieving themselves in the vicinity of the box, Corey cursed them to hell and was forced once again to keep it clean. “Fucking cats,” he would mumble every time he had to clean up after them. With his wife gone, Corey stayed drunk most of the time. During this ‘relaxed state,’ in the far reaches of his muddled brain was the realization that he needed to find a job soon. Alone with the pets, that’s how Corey lived, but then his twisted reasoning would replace logic, and he would mumble, “Find a job for what? To feed the damned animals.” Due to the stress of their lives, the behavior of the animals changed from the normal response to a lone master, following that person from room to room to occupy the same space. This was not how life for the pets in the Corey household went. Here they avoided their master and stayed hidden, and Corey liked it that way. And when Corey finally passed out from a day of drinking, they would form a tight group glaring in his di rection and attend to their needs. One day, after one particularly violent attack on the animals, from the corner of his eye he detected movement. In his drunken stupor, he could not tell if he was seeing things or not, the movement was accompanied by a soft rustling sound, as if the softest of materials was being dragged across the floor. Was he now hearing things? Sure, he would find an animal lurking, but all that he saw were piles of pet hair constantly increasing in size and quantity, another by-product of the animals Corey loathed. That was a major problem, the hair. Shortly after June left, Corey noticed small balls of hair accumulating at the edges of the rooms and eventually they appeared over most of the floor. The rest of the house fared just as bad with the sink filled with dishes, a heavy coating of dust on every surface and the refrigerator full of rotting food, but the hair was the filth that maddened Corey the most. June had kept the floors swept and, of course, Corey never appreciated the effort. Now the hair accumulated, it seemed, with a vengeance. If he only knew. Corey swept up the hair every few weeks, filling plastic bags full of the fluff. He would be in an especially bad ‘pet mood’ after completing this chore. One day, after a particularly long time between sweeping up the hair, he had two bags full of waste. He was about to take them out to the trash when his usual anger turned to shock. Piercing the depths of both bags, he saw two glowing points of red resembling glowing cigarettes seen in the night or the last embers of a dying fire. He shook his head, looked away, and when he looked back the glowing points of light were gone. “What the fuck?” he muttered and soon forgot the incident. Corey stretched the hair cleaning, and at the same time, the hair seemed to accumulate at a faster rate, appearing as small tumbleweeds, ready to move with the slightest breeze. After the next cleaning, he had three bags of hair. Corey stooped to pick them up when he stopped. He shook his head to clear his brain because he could not believe his eyes. In each bag, in addition to the two small glowing spheres, there appeared a crimson crescent shaped like a smiling mouth. Corey stepped back and then stumbled forward for another look. The specter in the bags was gone. Weeks later, cleaning yielded four bags of hair. Once the job was completed, Corey cautiously approached the bags and vaguely remembered the previous specter. It was then he beheld a sight filling him with terror. Along with the now glowing eyes, the smiling crescent reappeared slightly parted and filled with a vicious set of pointed teeth. The balls of hair began to move within the bags, which was impossible. Soon the bags tipped, spilling their contents on the floor. Ever so slowly, to Corey’s horror, the spheres of hair began to move toward him. Within the fluffy balls there appeared to be a solid presence, a substance where none should exist, as if something unworldly had taken on a physical aspect. Corey backed into the corner of the living room, stumbling over accumulated trash. While their master faced this unknown terror, the pets appeared, Molly, limping from her protective crate, Sally and Sam from beneath beds. Corey’s eyes flicked from the animals, sit ting in a group gazing at him to the slowly creeping maleficent spheres. The closer these hateful entities moved toward Corey, the more at ease the animals seemed to become, as if a great weight were being lifted from their lives. It was then that neighbors heard ungodly screams coming from Corey’s home and called 911. The responding police had to break down the door to gain entrance and were met by a grisly sight that they would never forget, haunting them for the rest of their days. Corey lay – they assumed it was Corey – in the middle of the living room. Where his face had once been was nothing more than a blood-soaked mound of flesh. The rest of his body was horribly mutilated. Once they overcame their initial shock, the cops noticed Molly and the two cats sitting close to the body intently observing it. One officer said to the other, “I wonder if they tried to stop what ever happened.” His partner responded, “Do you think the animals could possibly have do this?” “No way. Look how they are keeping watch over their dead master. They must have loved the guy,” said the other officer.
v 13 Copyright 2025 Walt Trizna Corner Bar Magazine
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