Monthly Archives: April 2023

Dogs of War

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In the British press, there are often ‘accidental’ photographs of dogs included in the images of the horrors of Putin’s war crimes and invasion of the Ukraine. Many dogs have been abandoned by their owners who have fled or been killed, ending up as starving strays, with some seen gnawing at human corpses. Bohdan wonders if they’re Putin’s Dogs of War. For fear of being thought a superstitious lunatic, he doesn’t share the horrifying notion that some dogs are the Devil’s incubi.

 Ever since the invasion, Anichka and her husband Bohdan have had one priority – protecting their seven-year old son, Danilo. A recently adopted, large stray all-white Borzoi they call Anton, has become part of the family; dog and boy adore one another. 

In the late afternoon Bohdan sits just inside his front door, his rifle resting across his thighs, in case Russians come. Anton, gently snores lying on Bohdan’s feet, who sleeps and dreams of standing in the family’s vegetable garden. The sun shines. Beyond the garden wall a gentle breeze caresses the fields of ripe wheat, rolling and swaying like a glimmering sea from an imaginary golden age. The high-pitched screams of swifts fill the air. A sudden murmuration of starlings obscures the sun, then morphs, with a puff of black smoke, into a tank grinding forward, crushing the wheat, demolishing the garden wall and destroying a greenhouse full of tomatoes. A large brown mongrel sits next to the gun turret. 

Bohdan wakens to the sound of dogs barking and hears Danilo shouting, Dad! Dad! Anton’s gone. Danilo dashes outside as Bohdan, half-awake, struggles to his feet, switches off his rifle’s safety catch and shouts, For god’s sake, wait for me! Anichka runs past him.

Outside, Bohdan is aghast; it’s as he dreamt, but now five soldiers sit on the tank, laughing and cheering, as the mongrel and Anton fight. Danilo grabs a spade from the porch and runs to the two fighting dogs. His parents scream, Stop! Bohdan takes aim. Anichka hits Bohdan’s arm, You’ll kill our boy. Danilo struggles to swing the spade at the mongrel but misses. Anton growls, bares his teeth, and jumps at Danilo who screams as the dog buries its teeth in his arm. Again, Bohdan takes aim. Stop! Anichka shouts, that dog’s helping Danilo. The mongrel attacks Anton forcing him to release Danilo. Anton, snarling, goes for Danilo. The mongrel buries its teeth in Anton’s shoulder. Somehow, Anton breaks free and once again attacks Danilo as the mongrel protects him. Dad! Kill him, Anton hates me. Bohdan fires his rifle. Anton drops dead. 

The soldiers cheer. You got the right dog. The mongrel licks the boy. 
It’s only then that Bohdan realises it’s a Ukrainian tank. 
Another soldiers says, We were looking for that white dog; it made friends with kids before killing them. That’s one fewer of Putin’s dogs. 
Anichka takes Danilo inside to dress his wounds, followed by the mongrel.
Another soldier adds, White doesn’t always mean good.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Please feel free to pass it on to others who may be interested. You can read my previous 500 word stories on my website www.philcoskerwriter.com under ‘Writing’.>>>More

© Phil Cosker 2023
Phil Cosker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any mean, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.

Wishes

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An enormous bright orange carp languishes on an ornate leather chaise longue, its scales luminous under the glowing light, oddly pinkish green, of fluorescent Grolux tubes on the ceiling above the aquarium. Smoke gently seeps from the carp’s gills as it smokes a Black Russian Sobranie cigarette held in an ivory cigarette holder. There is no natural light. The tank is twenty feet long, ten feet high and two feet deep; its rear wall a painted diorama of Atlantis. A shoal of forty midnight-black mollys cruise between the elegant columns of a Greek temple. Sparkling bluish-green and carmine dotted lyretails flick through a clump of altermanthena. A small shoal of penguin fish hang tail down in the shade of a giant red plastic ludwigia, while another group scurry away. 

The carp’s face is bathed in a look of longing. Oh shit, it thinks, I shouldn’t have wished for this. I’m a fish out of water. I wish I was at home in water. 

Vivid red swordtails dance arabesques around the pinnacle of an Eifel Tower. A submerged water wheel slowly turns in the slipstreams of minute x-ray fish. A group of giant danios rest and scrutinise, pop-eyed, the charms of a large white, pink and green plasterwork mermaid. Harlequins rush across open space as lemon tetras dive past combomba. The only other sound in the room, other than the bubbling aeration of water pumps, is the sound of the carp puffing the last of its cigarette. 

The carp slaps its caudal fin up and down on the chaise longue, and calls, in a popping hollow sound as if it were still under water, Cigarette! Cigarette! Now!

Moments later, a skeleton dressed in blue silk pantaloons and a cerise spotted puffer jacket struggles through the ankle length sea green carpet toward the carp. You do know that smoking will kill you? the skeleton asks, And chain smoking will hasten your death.
Be a good minion and light me another ciggie, will you? the carp asks proffering its mouth to have the cigarette holder removed, emptied, refilled and lighted. Argh, my lady nicotine, the carp sadly sighs, oozing smoke. I wish I was dead.
I’ll be back in a minute, the skeleton says. I have a surprise for you. 

Standing in front of the aquarium, the skeleton clicks out the head of the humerus from the scapula and, gripping the shaft of the humerus, with his bony right hand, pounds the glass wall of the aquarium. For the first few milliseconds everything is in slow motion until the wall of glass explodes under the weight of the water. The torrent hits the carp on its chaise longue, and hurls them both across the room. Fish, in their, hundreds die. The carp lies dead, embedded with shards of glass amidst some thrashing brightly coloured fish. 

Beware of what you wish for, the skeleton says, pleased that two wishes have come true at once.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Please feel free to pass it on to others who may be interested. You can read my previous 500 word stories on my website www.philcoskerwriter.com under ‘Writing’.>>>More

© Phil Cosker 2023
Phil Cosker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any mean, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.