The Man Who Kills Dogs

He’s here now. Right on time.

The Man Who Kills Dogs

Nobody on the street knows his name because nobody gets too close. Not if they can avoid it. I had a run in with him once, for killing a dog, and he pulled a bat from his trolley and started hitting me hard around the shoulders. I hadn’t eaten for three days and I was too weak to fight back. In the end he knocked me down and I stayed down. He left me alone. He’s not one of us, and never has been. He keeps himself to himself, appearing every two or three days, pushing his trolley with his head down and cursing quietly to himself. We all know that he is homeless too, it’s obvious both from his ragged appearance and his dark fetor, but how or why remains as big a mystery as why we should all find ourselves pushed to such extremes.

He is at the entrance to the alleyway, his torn raincoat glistening in the blue lighting. It rained all last night and my guess is that, unlike me, he did not choose to take shelter.

My guess is that he was out killing dogs.

I despise him for that.

Why he should hate them as passionately as he does I really don’t know. I cannot begin to think, but he does. He really does. I’ve never seen him kill one yet, not in person (though I know those who have and they claim it is the most violent act they have ever seen), but even I’ve seen the way he looks at them when they are unfortunate enough to cross his path. His eyes go a deep red, as though caught in a camera flash, and his lip curls as though hidden under that ragged and grime streaked beard is none other than the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll himself; all but ready to sing ‘you ain’t nevah killed a rabbit and you ain’t no friend o’ mine’.

Not one of us who reside on the rain and filth soaked streets have ever heard this man speak; not properly. He only ever mumbles incoherently to himself to himself, but when he sees a dog he does not manage anything even so eloquent as that. He growls at them. Not a real growl, of course, like he had somehow learned to communicate in dog language, but a cheap human imitation. Sometimes it contains so much venom that his spit starts to spark from between his teeth like a welding torch. Then he hunches his shoulders and clenches his hands like claws. A few seconds later he grabs the bat from his trolley and chases them away.

Still growling.

It what happens when he catches them that cools my skin to the touch.

I have no details of this man’s history, and I don’t really care to seek them out even if they exist, but personally I have been on the street for a little over three years now. People might refer to me as ‘homeless’, I guess, but what they cannot understand is that this is my home. It might not have a roof, a fireplace or a TV set (unless you count the rack of them which show the news twenty-four hours a day from the electrical store on Third). The first year I spent out here was the hardest, but only because I missed things. Silly things like warm fires when the rain fell like glistening stones outside (instead of the rain pouring but inches from my own shivering body) and regular meals. I last ate yesterday morning.