Henry's first memory was of fur. This turned out to be a significant memory in his life, as it was the one returned to time and again when he needed comfort and solace. He would simply close his eyes and let himself be enveloped by the furry warmth. He could curl up on the floor of his memories and once again be that little boy, holding his old hound dog, Blue, close as his parents ranted and raged through the walls of his bedroom.
He needed that solace more than ever on the days in which his mother and sister went off to church, leaving him alone in the house with his father. Those were the days in which his father was tired from long work days in the mechanic shop, not long after which he was usually out of beer and the only thing he had left to do was sit in his recliner, cursing at the TV and lamenting his sorry lot in life.
Henry made sure to be extra quiet in those days. He knew his father had a sharp tongue and a belt that bit deep into tender flesh. He would make sure the back door didn't creak when he slipped out, running off to find adventure in the fields around the town or try his luck at the local fishing spot. He was always followed by his mutt dog, Jess, a raggedy lump of fur and bones, ugly to anyone one else but a perfect beauty in his young eyes.
His luck was bound to run out however, and one day upon coming in from a summer afternoon of wading in the creek out back, his father spotted him from his place in the living room. There was an empty beer bottle on the cluttered table beside him. Not a good sign.
"WHERE YOU BEEN YOU FILTHY PIECE OF SHIT!"
On most days, Henry would have just curled into a ball and taken the beating. He would have closed his eyes and thought of Jess's soft fur as his father's fists and boots assaulted his writhing body. And, after his rage had subsided, his father would have gone back to lounge on his recliner again, content. But today, something dangerous burned inside of the boy. An alien thing, all hot and bright and bursting, like a firecracker on the fourth of July. He was done taking it. He was done taking anything. No matter what it cost him in the end.
"FUCK YOU- YOU FUCKING OLD DRUNK," the boy shouted, turning to run out the back kitchen door. Jess, thinking this was all just a game, ran along behind him, playfully nipping at his heels.
The sound of the back door slamming shut came a second later. And now, looking around, Henry was forced to confront the fact that he most likely could not outrun his father. Even though his old man was well past his high school track running days, sporting a beer gut and a limp he'd acquired in a late night bar room brawl, Henry's father was not a slow man. So, looking around at the field and barn adjacent to the house, he pondered finding somewhere to hide until Mother and sister came home.
And then he heard the scream.
Henry stopped in his tracks, not unlike a deer in the headlights. He looked back over his shoulder to see his father, feet planted wide apart, holding Jess up by the scruff of the neck. The dog kicked and wiggled, whimpering in a most pitiful way, trying to get away from the drunk man's cruel fingers.
"DAD STOPPPPPPPP PLEASE"
His father grinned at him. A wide, toothy grin that showed off his rotten buck teeth. "You gonna learn something today, boy," he told him, turning to make his way over to the open barn door. The dog continued to howl as her body writhed around in midair. Henry found himself following, unable to let his dog out of his sight for fear of what his father might do to her.
His father came back out with a long string of rope in his free hand. With a stoic look on his face, he marched the boy behind the house to the tall, dead tree out back. It was a hideous, gnarled old thing, and its long branches reached out to touch Henry's bedroom window. Many a night he had laid awake in bed, scared shitless that there was a ghost or ghoul trying to get in through his window. And he often heard the shrill sound of branch scraping glass even in his dreams.
His father flung the dog up between his arm and hip, freeing both of his hands to make a hasty hangman's noose, which he flung over the tree's lower hanging branches. As Henry watched, his heart racing a mile a minute in his chest and his lungs feeling like they were fit to burst from holding his breath, his father tied the noose around Jess's scrawny throat.
Then he hung her.
The next several minutes were not so much a blur in the boy's memory as they were a miraculous slowing down in time. It was indeed as if time itself no longer existed. There was only Jess and himself and the cursed, horrible tree. The dog made sounds that were the stuff of nightmares. Howls, yelp, snuffling pleas that would elicit help from either child or man. Somewhere in the agonizing scene of impending death, Henry's father let out one long, low chuckle and went back inside the house. If the truth of men's hearts could be read in their entirety, one would see that it was that chuckle which would haunt Henry the most for the rest of his life. It told him that the world would always win.
Even if it cost him everything.
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30 YEARS LATER
Life, one would say, had not been kind to Henry 30 years after the death of his beloved pet. He had amassed no great wealth. Had never married or even had any deep relationship of any kind with anyone. His job at a small accounting firm consisted of sitting behind a desk all day, staring at numbers and feeling not much of anything at all. There was a horrible sense of not being inside of him, as if he were a machine that had never really been turned on. Just a lump of wires and sockets and keys, no use to anyone. A forgotten relic of some forgotten time.
On the day in question, Henry had chosen to frequent the park across from his workplace. It consisted of rows upon rows of trees in a wide circle, the middle of which was a huge, ornate fountain. If Henry remembered correctly, the fountain had been a gift from some other mayor from some other town. He pondered which township had gifted them with the grey abomination, all crude lines and ugly carved birds, as he sat down upon the edge of it to eat his ham and cheese sandwich.
The sound of giggling took him by surprise, making him drop the half eaten sandwich on the grass.
A little girl, around twelve years of age, was playing with a golden retriever puppy only a few feet away from him. The girl was dressed in a school uniform, white shirt and plaid skirt. Her hair was long and blond and seemed to sparkle where the sun shone upon her through the trees. She looked like an angel. A heaven sent, gorgeous angel sent to deliver Henry from the various horrors and banalities that made up his miserable life.
"Hello," Henry said, getting down on his knees to run his hands through the puppy's soft fur. The pup licked his fingers, eliciting a high pitched laugh from the child, who chided the dog for being gross to their new guest.
"Hi, I'm Mandy," the girl told him, then, nodding down at the puppy between them "And this is Cher. She's not all that polite."
They smiled at each other for a moment, the little girl and the man from nowhere with nothing, and something passed between them. The smile left the girl's face. Maybe she shuddered just a little, then she seemed to doubt herself, once more smiling at him again. But, unlike the girl, the moment had not been lost or misunderstood. For once in his lonely, miserable like, Henry knew that life had finally given him something good.
"I have a doggy, too," Henry tells her, pointing over his shoulder to a place far back among the trees. "She's back over that way doing her business. Huge mutt. Gets a tad bit mean around little dogs, though," he looked down at her pup. "Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you tie your pupper up to that tree over there and I'll take you to her."
It only took a couple of minutes for the little girl to tie the leash to the tree Henry had pointed out. Then she was bouncing along beside him, eager to make friends with a dog that existed only in Henry's childhood memories. There was a silence between the two, but neither found it uncomfortable. Finally, Henry stopped their little walk once they were well out of sight of both the fountain and the multiple paths that snaked around it.
"Where is your dog---"
The girl never got to finish her sentence, the weight of Henry's large body throwing her upon the ground. She opened her mouth to scream, but one hard punch across the jaw split her lip and knocked her senseless, just long enough for Henry to tear off her school uniform, along with her unicorn print underwear. The only thing left was her black laced up shoes.
"SHUT UP YOU BITCH," Henry hollered, grabbing her by the head and slamming her into the ground once, twice, three times. When she was silent, he bent his head down to feast upon her budding breasts, moaning as he sucked on one rosy bud and then the other. He ground his hips against her exposed hairless cunt, a thrill going through him as her tiny body writhed against his.
Fuck he was so damn hard.
FUCK FUCK FUCK
His fingers went down to her tiny twat, and he roughly shoved three fingers in, working them in and out in deep, brutal thrusts that made the girl squeal so loud he had to punch her in the face several times again. She was spitting blood out of her mouth as he undid his britches, his bloody hand rubbing his cock until he was fully wet with the slick of red goo.
"You ready for it, bitch," he asks, leaning up on his elbows to rub his bloody cock against her mound. Her eyes go wide, her mouth opening in a silent plea. Her eyes, so wide and innocent and stupid looking, make Henry throb with passion and heat. "I bet you are."
In one deep, savage thrist, he went balls deep into her virginal cunt. He grunted, threw his head back and made deep animal-like sounds as he rode her hard into the ground. Her fists flailed, her small legs waving around on either side of his hips. She knew better than to scream, so she just sobbed quietly as he shoved his cock in and out of her. Over and over again.
The girl's pussy made Henry feel alive inside. Like he was drinking some forbidden elixir of life. The sound of his balls beating slapping against her and her muted sniffling, his grunts of pleasure, became like a symphony. He could have listened to it forever. Could have ridden the waves of ecstasy into that place that was death or heaven or hell. He longer cared. As long as he could feel this way forever.
As he was reaching his climax, Henry placed a large hand around the girl's neck. Squeezed. Hard. The girl looked into his eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks. But he continued, his thrusts got more frantic, more out of his control. He bashed her head against the ground as he squeezed and squeezed, growing even more excited when her body began to erupt in tiny body jerks along with his orgasm.
Then they were both there together. Henry throws his head back and lets the orgasm take him. And the girl's body giving itself up to death. The last thing the dying girl was aware of in life was the sensation that her body was filled with something warm.
When he was done, Henry left the girl where she was. Naked on the grass, tiny body with arms and legs in all directions like some kind of marionette who's strings had been cut. Her face was covered in blood, her once golden locks red with gore and blood. Her pussy dripped thick white cum onto the grass.
Henry went back to untie the dog from the tree next to the fountain.
"I wonder what I should call you," he says, kissing the dog gently on the forehead. "You look like a Jess to me