Small Brown Dog

Another three-word-game story for /x/. April 2010

This is something a friend told me a while back. He lived in Los Angeles at the time this happened to him, but he says that it could happen to anyone, anywhere, if they are not careful.

One day he and some friends of his were at his place drinking and smoking, like typical college students do. One of them thought it would be a good idea to do some graffiti on the administration building's steps, and of course everyone else agreed, because nobody disagrees when they are high and drunk, I guess. Anyway, so they got a bunch of spraypaint and hopped into my friend's car.

The campus was only like five minutes away, but they took the back way around so they would not get caught by the campus police. Here's where it gets weird.

On the backroad, they were driving along, when suddenly the truck lurched like it had run over something. He slammed on the brakes, and got out to see what he had hit. It felt too big to be a squirrel, but that was pretty much everything that was out there at that time of night, right? Well, it turns out he ran over this little brown dog, splattered it all over the street. I'm talking, guts and blood and everything, man. It was probably hella gross.

So my friend starts freaking out, and he gets back in the truck, starts it up, and starts going again. The other guys are like "What did we hit?" and he just says they hit a squirrel, a big one.

Sure enough, though, like two minutes down the road the truck jumps again, like they hit something else. Again, he hits the brakes, but this time he just leans out the window and looks back.

It looks like the same fucking dog they just hit like half a mile back, but it's different this time. Bigger, somehow? Or like, maybe it's closer or something. He said he couldn't really tell, because he was drunk, but it was DEFINITELY the same dog. He's like "Fuck this," and floors it, pulls a U-turn and rockets back toward his place. He won't say anything to the other guys except that he thinks it's not a good idea to be driving while he's as drunk as he is.

When they pass the spot that they hit the dog the first time, though, there's just a big wet spot on the street. No dog, no nothing. But then he looks back up at the road in front of him just in time to see a huge brown dog on his hood, staring at him for a second. He veered off the road and rolled his truck twice, broke his collarbone and messed up some of the other guys in the car too.

He told the police what happened, but they went to look for the dog that he hit, and all they found was a big wet spot, the same way as before. On the way back to the crash site, though, one of the police cars spun off to the side of the road too, and the radio crackled when that officer radio'ed in that he had hit a dog or something.

That was plenty enough to scare my friend sober, and he could not get to the police station fast enough, DUI and all. He transferred colleges up to Washington as soon as he could, and never drove that back road again. He says sometimes, though, he can still see some little brown dog in his mirrors when he's driving, or sees a big wet splatter on the road.

Now, I'd have called bullshit on this story until the other day when we were heading to the liquor store and he hit something in the road. Sure as god-damn, it was a little brown dog. Think this fucking thing is following him? I don't even know what to make of it, but now I'm starting to see it here and there too, all splattered all over the floor in the chemistry building at night or whatever. This place is fucked up, man. That dog followed him.