Today is Day #2 of of Blogdramedy’s Summer Writing Challenge: Blogshorts. The theme this year is the Dog Days of Summer. 10 days, 10 dogs (nine of which were famous dog-characters chosen by Blogdramedy as inspiration), each story 110 words.
Today’s dog is Toto.
Dog Days of Summers
2
The front yard grass was damp next to her plastic pool, the one with the turtle on it.
Momma sat in the chair, holding one of her books with the teeny print. The man from the radio sang “Surf City” and Toto sniffed the flowerbeds.
Toto barked and bounded past her in pursuit of some small animal. The dog had knocked her over but a loud screech truncated her imminent wail. There was just a wet, squelching thud.
Momma ran towards the street. Carolyn tottered upright, but Momma pointed her finger and shouted, “No, baby! Don’t! Stay there!”
She hated when Momma yelled at her. Carolyn sat down and wailed.
Saved and lost. Someone hand me a tissue.
Sometimes the circle of life is cruel.
Nooooo!
Sorry. I go where the story takes me.
I thought it was gonna be all sweetness and light after your Cujo story, but apparently not. Way to keep us on our toes!
Life’s messy, Amy. Sometimes messier than usual.
:(
Oh no, Toto.
:(
It was a stunt dog, right? Right Steve? I mean, Toto doesn’t really die. No. You wouldn’t do that.
Um… well… you see….sometimes things happen, but don’t worry, LD, I’m pretty sure Toto’s just sleeping.
(that’s what my dad told me when I was a kid and saw an animal in the road…)
Poor Toto. First the flying monkeys, now this.
H. E. — some of the Dog Days don’t end so well, sadly.
After reading the first story I was under the illusion that it is going to be mostly happy and the sad stories will take a while to come along. Well, you surprised us in the second story itself, Steve. Looking forward to reading the third story in the series.
Hah — sorry for the curveball so soon, Vishy. I think most of them will edge towards happier.
Unless of course, I just threw you a curveball with this comment. :)
I don’t know too many people who haven’t lost a dog that way. The scary part for me was leaving the kid next to the pool untended. Lucky for us, you only had 110 words to work with, or this could’ve gone from tragic to catastrophic.
1-pt-P — I really worry sometimes that Penny’s gonna chase a bunny at *just* the wrong moment. I guess that’s where this story came from.
And I DID almost think about the pool and the girl, but fortunately for all of us, misunderstanding her mom’s distress was really the worst that she got.
Well, that and losing her dog.
T:-(T:-(!!!
Very T:-(
PS what’s the Capital T? :)
(Well, that didn’t quite work, but you can see where I was going) ;-)
I know where I went.
Toto will be looking for the Red Slippers. “There’s no place like OZ! There’s no place like OZ!”
Oz was sort of like the Great Beyond, right? Right?