No Dog by Maria Romaniuk

When Margaret and Bertram Childes were reported missing on

an otherwise insipid mid-March morning, the town of Townsville hollered with hardly tempered excitement. It had been decades since the place had enjoyed any public attention. They welcomed the news without bargaining, like barren land welcomes polluted rain. 

 "This town is so boring that it makes we wanna throw up", testified eight-year-old Markus Lang, glaring unblinkingly into a fidgety reporter's microphone. "Are we going to be on the news?"

"Sir, my term paper defence is in forty-five minutes".

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, boy. You know I'm not holding you here for nothing. Can you answer one more thing for me?" 

"I mean, depends, maybe. But I won't help a ton. I mean, "

"Anything we can hear from you matters, Charlie. Has Bertram – you came by his place quite a bit, didn't you – did he ever seem like he could hit you? Or anybody else?" 

"Um, I don't know. He never hit me, that's for sure".

"Had he seemed out of sorts to you over the past few weeks? You know, moodier than usual?"

"Ah, sir, honestly, I'm not a mind reader or anything, you know. I don't even see the man that often". 

"What about the dogsitting?"

"What dogsitting?"

"Don't you walk his dog five times a week?"

"What? He doesn't even have one".

"The dog, you mean."

"No dogs in that house. Unless they got one that I've no clue about. In any case, I've never had anything to do with that. You see, when you have a term paper to write, you never really have any time for nonsense like this, sir. And oh, do you mind, sir? I have to go, remember? Thirty-three minutes now."

"To what?"

"My term paper."

"Friend, that can wait."

"No, sir, I really. I really am sorry I haven't been much help. But I have to go, it's...my life is at stake and stuff".

"Hold up for a second".

"But I have to commute. Look, I really, really must go."

"Well then. Can't really do anything about that. A longer talk would help us a ton, though, but take care."

"Likewise, sir."

A shriek and a lingering thud of the metal door. Detective Milk released a mournful sigh. He would not have been surprised if the term paper defence, preposterous as it was, turned out to be a hastily conjured lie. A good liar Charlie was not, but neither was he an accomplice, Milk was certain. At least the dog thing had potential. What strange people they were. Perhaps I should not interfere in the mysterious workings of fate, he thought.

***

Mortimer Boat arrived the following morning. Bored or irritated – Milk could hardly tell – he pulled on his ironed chemise.

"Colleagues we were, yes, but friends hardly so."

"Why would that be?"

"I am hardly an eccentric type, yes. And she is overwhelmingly so, with her bees and everything."

"Would you tell me more about that?"

"What more is there to tell? Strange lady."

"Would you mind telling me more about the bees?"

"What more is there to tell?".

"I am afraid you have barely told us a thing".

"The bees colonised our office decor. Bee wallpaper. Bee lamp. Bee everything. Hell, perhaps she herself has morphed into a bee now. Flewn away. Flowed, sorry. Ah! – flown it is."

"Hard week, eh? Happens to all of us."

"Ah, not to me, surely. This one's an exception. Head's a mess from all the yardwork. Lots to tend to."

"Huh. I'd've though yardwork demanded steadier weather. It's been pouring these past few weeks."

"Have my experience and metreogolical events'll be secondary."

"Meteorological, you mean?"

"What?"

"Meteorological."

"Was that not what I said?"

"Don't mind me. And old habit." 

Following a lingering, painful pause, Mortimer Boat was released. Milk's effort proved fruitless. Save for a tired man's odd gardening habits, he had learned nothing. What a rotten job, he thought. No luck, no fun. That's it, he'd give his two weeks' notice and vanish from this slog of a place forever. The antics of a couple of oddballs should never have been his concern

The dog! The dog! How exhausting. Surely there was something about that dog. A sinister secret. So was that dog or was it not? In a paroxysm of determination, he drummed fiercely on his keyboard "bertram margaret childes dog". A barren webpage. Blood rushed to his face, then ebbed. How could that be? No results. He could've sworn! A dogless household! What did that make him, then? A lunatic, a liar? He had pressured that poor lad for nothing, he had made a fool out of himself, a clown? No dog! No dog! No dog! 

He called the lad for questioning again, scoured the neighborhood, the whole town. The ink-black nights and blazing white days pooled into one. No dog? 

His search ceased. He lamented the futility of his effort. His sanity, he had concluded, had slipped for good. He pondered the jagged, bizarre fabric of his life. He felt at once a frightening clarity: he was trapped, a bee in a jar, monitored by some twisted entity he couldn't strain his eyes enough to see. It was as if he, Peter Milk, were a character in someone's torturously incoherent story, cruelly stripped of direction and meaning, forever trapped in the bleak sludge of an uneven, unfinished universe. Here it was, the truth. Here it was, the truth.

Eight-year-old Markus Lang, in the end, was not on the news. There had been nothing of substance to report.

Seven days after the investigation was abruptly cut short following the chief detective's unannounced departure, Bertram and Margaret Childes were seen safe and sound, albeit a little sunburned, back in the crammed shoebox of their plain little home. Charlie greeted them at the doorstep, dutifully recounting the whirlwind of events that had transpired in their absence. The couple smiled a tight-lipped, sympathetic smile, inquiring no further. 

"They need an outlet these days, the kids," Bertram said to Marge, nodding his heavy head solemnly. "I heard he failed his term paper".