Shownotes
[18+] The year’s 1994. As a punk hyena brings his raccoon schoolmate out to celebrate Devil’s Night, the latter plans to make a bold confession.
Tonight’s story is the first of two parts of “Dancing on Devil’s Night” by Domus Vocis, who spends his time reading bad fanfiction when he’s not braving the Arctic winters of Wisconsin, and published his debut novel, “The Adventures of Peter Gray” in 2018. You can also find more of his stories on Patreon.
Read by Dirt Coyote, from Twitter dot com.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/18-dancing-on-devils-night-by-domus-vocis-part-1-of-2
Transcripts
Today's story concerns adult subject matter for mature listeners.
Speaker:If that's not your cup of tea,
Speaker:or there are youngsters listening,
Speaker:please skip this one
Speaker:and come back for another story another time.
Speaker:You’re listening to Ghost of Dog
Speaker:on the The Voice of Dog,
Speaker:and Tonight’s story is the first of two parts of
Speaker:“Dancing on Devil’s Night”
Speaker:by Domus Vocis, who spends his time reading bad fanfiction when he’s not braving the Arctic winters of Wisconsin,
Speaker:and published his debut novel,
Speaker:“The Adventures of Peter Gray”
Speaker:in 2018.
Speaker:You can also find more of his stories on Patreon. Read by Dirt Coyote,
Speaker:from Twitter dot com.
Speaker:Of course, the haunted days as the October fades aren’t just about the things in the darkness that do the haunting.
Speaker:They are about the place, and the time,
Speaker:that is haunted. They are about the people who brave the haunting.
Speaker:What would be the point of sneaking out at night if it weren’t
Speaker:at least a little fearful
Speaker:to do so? By way of example,
Speaker:Please enjoy “Dancing on Devil’s Night”
Speaker:by Domus Vocis, Part 1
Speaker:of 2 His rumbling moan hidden by outside ambience.
Speaker:Distant shouts and screeching sirens from miles away,
Speaker:muffled by the layers of wall plaster and rusting steel.
Speaker:Howling winds. A warm paw on my abdomen.
Speaker:Manly fingers caressing around my bare cock,
Speaker:freezing in the cool air underneath a rusting roof.
Speaker:His grin as he panted down at me,
Speaker:making my chest warm
Speaker:and my bushy tail twitch.
Speaker:Of all the days of the year throughout my young life in Riviere,
Speaker:I never expected to lose my virginity
Speaker:on Devil’s Night. The date was October 30th, 1994.
Speaker:Just another lazy Sunday.
Speaker:My parents called me down for dinner
Speaker:—tuna casserole, again
Speaker:—as my little sister Mara paused the family room’s VCR midway through her tenth viewing of that Beauty & the Beast tape,
Speaker:Billy paused his half-completed puzzle on the carpet,
Speaker:and I finished my trigonometry homework upstairs.
Speaker:“How was work, hun?” Mom asked as she scooped slices onto our plates.
Speaker:She gave a dirty look to me when I put my elbows on the kitchen table.
Speaker:“I hear there were some early fires on Wyoming and Orangelawn before lunch.
Speaker:Did you pick up the call on that?”
Speaker:“Not me.” Dad swallowed a fork full of his slice in one bite,
Speaker:licking his lips.
Speaker:“Joey. Joey Radovich got the call.
Speaker:So did Shelley and Kevin.
Speaker:Meanwhile, there I am telling a prank caller not to call 911 unless there’s an actual emergency.
Speaker:Like a shooting or a stabbing or God forbid,
Speaker:something’s stuck right up some fur’s a—”
Speaker:Mom cleared her throat just in time, or else Mara and Billy would have likely learned another swearword.
Speaker:Billy already knew how to say, ‘fucking
Speaker:bitch’, thanks to the seven-year-old raccoon listening to Dad watch the Riviere Kings get walloped by the Packagers earlier in the football season.
Speaker:Mara learned how to say, ‘goddammit’
Speaker:and ‘pussy shit’
Speaker:one morning, when Billy didn’t put a Lego piece away.
Speaker:“Anyway,” Dad chuckled nervously as he dug back into his meal, setting his beer can aside,
Speaker:“You finish your homework, Alex?”
Speaker:“Yeah, it wasn’t that hard.”
Speaker:I shrugged as I scooped some ketchup onto a warm bit of casserole.
Speaker:“Mr. Fitzsimmons wasn’t in today,
Speaker:so the substitute teacher made a mistake and gave us last week’s homework.
Speaker:Same questions and answers too.”
Speaker:“Our tax dollars at work...”
Speaker:Dad muttered between sips of his beer.
Speaker:“So, Sue, I put up the bars in the backyard windows like you asked.
Speaker:The shed’s locked too.
Speaker:Don’t want to wake up on Halloween tomorrow and find out we’ll need a new lawnmower.”
Speaker:“Can we watch Beauty & the Beast again?”
Speaker:Mara pleaded, “Please, please, please?”
Speaker:Everybody at the table suppressed a groan, while Billy pretended his plastic knife was a scalpel and his slice of tuna casserole was a cadaver.
Speaker:I could have waited a bit longer.
Speaker:Then I imagined not finding another opportunity,
Speaker:and immediately asked,
Speaker:“Mom? Dad? Can I spend the night at Sid Serafin’s house,
Speaker:please?” “Nope. You can’t.” Mom answered me blunt and on-point.
Speaker:“It’s a school night and Devil’s Night.”
Speaker:“Sid’s literally closer to the school than we are!”
Speaker:I counterargued before she could say
Speaker:‘period’. The word she told whenever her mind was made up and couldn’t be changed.
Speaker:“Don’t forget, he still struggles with trigonometry,
Speaker:and he didn’t even do last week’s homework.”
Speaker:“Valid point,” Dad mused aloud.
Speaker:We both shrank slightly from the dirty look she glared at us, particularly at him.
Speaker:“Sorry, hun.” “You had all of Friday and Saturday to meet up with Sid, mister.”
Speaker:Mom countered my assumingly strong counterargument.
Speaker:“Tonight’s too dangerous to be out.
Speaker:If you don’t want to watch TV or a VHS movie with the family,
Speaker:you can go to bed
Speaker:early.” Damn. Why did mothers always have to be so good at never being wrong?
Speaker:“Fine…” I groaned with folded ears.
Speaker:My fork scraped at the bottom of the casserole as I sliced it in another slice.
Speaker:“Can I be excused afterward?
Speaker:I might as well finish those comic books Grandpa got me.”
Speaker:Mom smiled softly.
Speaker:“Help me dry the dishes and you got yourself a deal.” ***
Speaker:Thank God being a heavy sleeper rang in the family.
Speaker:As soon as dusk began to descend on the horizon and they went off to bed,
Speaker:bringing Mara with them and sending Billy to his room,
Speaker:I pretended to go to the bathroom and sneaked out the back door without anybody being the wiser.
Speaker:The lights upstairs didn’t turn on from where I stood on the vacant street.
Speaker:Good. Beneath the pajamas I’d discarded and placed in my backpack
Speaker:(emptied of all things save for several rolls of toilet paper and permanent markers),
Speaker:the clothes I had on me were my custom black sneakers,
Speaker:dark blue jeans, and a hoodie jacket
Speaker:I’d kept hidden from my parents since I’d first started the night’s tradition
Speaker:a few years back with Sid.
Speaker:Every cub, preteen and teenager in Riviere
Speaker:knew about Devil’s Night.
Speaker:No, not just Riviere,
Speaker:the rest of Michigan and even the world, understood almost everything about Devil’s Night.
Speaker:The night before Halloween when vacant houses across the city would
Speaker:burn while anarchy and vandalism reigned supreme.
Speaker:Nobody knew why or how it all began,
Speaker:but it gave angsty teens like me and Sid a chance to go out.
Speaker:It gave us a chance to release
Speaker:teenaged aggression.
Speaker:Well, provided we didn’t do serious damage or killed anyone, let alone get arrested on the spot.
Speaker:Otherwise, my parents would do more than ground me for life.
Speaker:At least Mom’s backyard garden would have better flowers in springtime.
Speaker:Sid’s place rested a good eight blocks or so from my house, past the old car factories and adjacent to the avenue leading to the school.
Speaker:I could already hear distant sirens over the rows and rows of dilapidated houses, prompting me to be quick on my toes and wary of any approaching car along the cracked sidewalk leading deeper to Riviere’s west side.
Speaker:Broken bottles, cigarette butts,
Speaker:a muddied pamphlet preaching salvation, and emptied spray paint cans could not be missed along the way to his house.
Speaker:Not to mention the shuttered windows, some of the small shops outfitted with bars too.
Speaker:“Oi! Axel!” (For years, I’d tried to get him to call me
Speaker:Alex, ever since he misread my name back in third grade,
Speaker:but he never relented.
Speaker:Plus, it made me sound cooler.)
Speaker:There I spotted him, standing against one of the graffitied wooden columns holding his porch roof aloft.
Speaker:The well-built hyena’s black-dyed headfur,
Speaker:unchanged since Friday,
Speaker:was covered in an ear-fitting baseball cap
Speaker:surprisingly worn the correct way.
Speaker:Dozens of political and inappropriate buttons were pinned on the semi-tattered dark jacket he’d wear every Devil’s Night, highlighting the muscular frame beneath it and an oversized wife beater shirt beneath.
Speaker:Belt chains dangled along his left hip as red boxers peeked from his torn jeans.
Speaker:His smile could not have been any bright than a spotlight through the dusk,
Speaker:and he ran up to me from the house’s unkempt front yard. “Axel, you’re here!”
Speaker:He pulled me up in a
Speaker:big bro hug, then let me go and quickly added, “No homo, hehe.”
Speaker:“No homo, bro.”
Speaker:I almost hesitated in my reply but shook it away to smirk at the tall canine,
Speaker:standing only an inch taller than me.
Speaker:“So, let’s leave this pukehole before your Dad chases me away like last year.”
Speaker:Sid cackled his trademark hyena laugh, patting my back.
Speaker:He’d honestly called his home and the surrounding city much worse terms.
Speaker:“You still gonna riff me on that, Axel?”
Speaker:he asked, to which I rolled my eyes
Speaker:and stuck my tongue out at him.
Speaker:He responded by nicking me in the shoulder.
Speaker:“My Dad wasn’t drunk that night.
Speaker:Told you not to knock on the door that night, didn’t I?
Speaker:Told you not to knock,
Speaker:didn’t I?” “You sure did, bud.”
Speaker:I scratched the back of a nervous ear, chuckling lightly.
Speaker:“Learned my lesson this time.”
Speaker:“Be lucky my mom’s visiting family in the U.P. too.”
Speaker:I raised an eyebrow.
Speaker:“Like she does every year?”
Speaker:“It’s a tradition,”
Speaker:he argued, “and besides,
Speaker:her job lets her leave before Halloween.
Speaker:Dad’s job doesn’t.”
Speaker:Sid subsequently pulled up a black bandana over his snout,
Speaker:tying it up behind his head.
Speaker:He tossed me a bundle of a bandana too,
Speaker:only it was light grey.
Speaker:“C’mon then!” He motioned his multi-colored muzzle down an adjacent road leading towards the source of the sirens and a distant billow of smoke. “Let’s get outta this fucking pukehole and tear some shit up!” Sid and I went out on Devil’s Night for
Speaker:different reasons.
Speaker:He went out to release the pent-up aggression and testosterone always boiling inside his canid body.
Speaker:Me? I just got bored one evening years ago and asked
Speaker:Sid what he planned to do the night before Halloween.
Speaker:The cackling hyena bluntly told me on the bus ride,
Speaker:“Devil’s Night, babe!”
Speaker:Me and Sid Serafin weren’t in the same cliques or clubs at school,
Speaker:not that he ever attended any,
Speaker:but we were close.
Speaker:For one, we shared the same birthday:
Speaker:August 31st, 1976.
Speaker:He and I never had a party where most of the other kids rather wanted to spend the last day of summer biking or swimming at the beach.
Speaker:His presence at my
Speaker:eighth birthday party made it one of the best ones
Speaker:despite poor attendance.
Speaker:It also sparked our decade-long friendship.
Speaker:My parents somehow liked his company when he didn’t swing curse words like conjunctions.
Speaker:They saw enough under his punk exterior to know why I loved being best friends with him.
Speaker:His gruff in-your-face exterior never scared me.
Speaker:He could be hilarious to speak with and incredibly insightful,
Speaker:if a little paranoid about ‘the
Speaker:Establishment’, while managing to be empathetic.
Speaker:When he often visited my house for dinner,
Speaker:Sid didn’t even need to be asked to help wash the dishes.
Speaker:He just did it. If only my folks knew what we were doing.
Speaker:Then, they’d never let me see him again.
Speaker:Curiosity got the better of me.
Speaker:“Where we going this time, Sid?”
Speaker:I asked him. “Our normal route’s the other direction.”
Speaker:“Don’t worry about it, dude!”
Speaker:We turned another corner.
Speaker:“Word on the street says our route will be filled with cops, so remember that auto factory on 10th Street?”
Speaker:“Yeah, what about it? It closed down in and spring and…”
Speaker:I asked, only for his rhetorical question to hit me like a brand-new Corvette on the road.
Speaker:“Ohoho, don’t tell me we’re going to that Fjord plant?”
Speaker:“Of course, Axel! It’s free real estate!”
Speaker:He cackled before jabbing his thumb in another direction,
Speaker:and we made a sharp left.
Speaker:“I’ve been feeling like we ought to give it a little makeover anyway,
Speaker:plus I got a surprise for you—”
Speaker:A police car’s siren blared out somewhere several houses away.
Speaker:It grew distant as our heartbeats caught right up to us,
Speaker:and I followed directly behind Sid.
Speaker:Minutes passed by like hours.
Speaker:Sirens could be heard no differently than crickets in summer or fireworks near July.
Speaker:The entire time, I did not drift a single foot away from Sid,
Speaker:knowing I could easily wander off and get lost.
Speaker:Our conversations from his house to the night’s venue varied between short interludes.
Speaker:I tried playing 20 Questions with him,
Speaker:trying to figure out why he wanted to go to the car plant of all places,
Speaker:but he wouldn’t budge an inch.
Speaker:He claimed it was a surprise.
Speaker:Though the Hyena did promise I wouldn’t be disappointed in the mayhem to be seen
Speaker:when we made it there.
Speaker:Fast-paced walking and hushed jogs eventually led us to our destination:
Speaker:the old Fjord plant,
Speaker:an expansive chain-link fenced industrial park that camouflaged with the rest of Riviere’s residential housing.
Speaker:After guiding me through a hidden hole in the fence,
Speaker:pausing to help unstuck my backpack from a sharp edge of metal,
Speaker:Sid smirked in the darkness
Speaker:and piloted us to the main building.
Speaker:Thank God raccoons and hyenas had excellent
Speaker:night vision.
Speaker:An empty, dark expanse of wide-open flooring.
Speaker:Several filing cabinets bent or torn apart in unnatural ways.
Speaker:Assembly tracks stripped clean.
Speaker:An actual couch likely dragged out from either the manager’s office or the worker’s breakroom.
Speaker:Wiring and pipes plucked from the shredded walls,
Speaker:likely by desperate scrappers.
Speaker:Conveyer belt rubbers left behind in a large pile near the loading bay.
Speaker:Broken beer bottles,
Speaker:shards of glasses under our shoes,
Speaker:plenty of leftover nuts, bolts, and empty cigarette packs.
Speaker:“So, whatcha think of this, Axel?”
Speaker:Sid asked as we marveled
Speaker:at the interior. Closed only five years and plenty of people already trashed the interior to kingdom come.
Speaker:The exterior rusted away each winter,
Speaker:yet trash and otherworldly graffiti kept continuing to accumulate within its dead walls.
Speaker:“This is amazing!” I laughed, then shouted an echoing,
Speaker:“Amazing!” “Fuckin’ A it is!” Sid slapped the back my shoulder, pulling me into a side hug.
Speaker:When I almost pulled my bandana down, he mentioned,
Speaker:“Don’t. I don’t need ya breathing in any of that asbestos shit around here.” “Gotcha. Wait,” I perked an ear at him and turned to him carrying a hidden grin.
Speaker:“Pause. You do care about me.”
Speaker:“Whatever, dude.” The hyena scoffed and pushed himself away from our side hug.
Speaker:“Let’s keep looking around.
Speaker:We don’t have all night.”
Speaker:“Alrighty then,” I chuckled.
Speaker:“You lead the way to this ‘surprise’ of yours.”
Speaker:“First,” Sid interjected with a sly, curious smile,
Speaker:“I wanna go see the roof.
Speaker:See how much it’s burning out there and all.
Speaker:You coming with me?”
Speaker:“Sure!” The factory seemed more like a tomb than anything else, without all the loud machinery or workers inspecting the parts.
Speaker:I’d never stepped foot inside before,
Speaker:but I knew enough about the Fjord plant.
Speaker:For years, the place helped employ hundreds of working-class family men
Speaker:around our neighborhoods.
Speaker:My grandparents on Dad’s side of the family relied on it most for income.
Speaker:After they retired to a condo in Florida just before the recession hit,
Speaker:the plant closed its doors
Speaker:and like Sid said,
Speaker:it became free real estate for everybody else.
Speaker:We found the emergency stairs, decked in attempts at gang colors,
Speaker:leading all the way to the top.
Speaker:Some foul smells managed to surprise us,
Speaker:but rather than find their sources, we continued the climb.
Speaker:Thankfully, the bandanas over our muzzles blocked out most of the scents.
Speaker:On our way up the pitch-black stairwell, Sid spooked me by humming a familiar song.
Speaker:“Seasons don’t fear,
Speaker:nor do the wind,” he began to lowly sing,
Speaker:“the sun or the rain…”
Speaker:“We can be like they are,”
Speaker:I joined in with him as our words echoed up and down the concrete stairwell, “C’mon baby…”
Speaker:“Don’t fear the reaper.”
Speaker:He interjected mid-rhythm,
Speaker:smirking ahead of me as we wound up each step.
Speaker:“C’mon baby…Don’t fear the reaper…”
Speaker:“Baby, take my hand.”
Speaker:“Don’t fear the reaper.”
Speaker:“We’ll be able to fly…”
Speaker:“Don’t fuck the reaper.”
Speaker:Sid’s addition to the song suddenly had me holding my stomach,
Speaker:laughing and laughing.
Speaker:“Don’t fuck the reaper, we’ll be able to fly,
Speaker:don’t fuck the reaper,”
Speaker:he sang/snickered until finally joining in my laughter.
Speaker:“I think you just hit the funny bone.”
Speaker:That pun earned me a light swipe in the shoulder
Speaker:when Sid turned to dish it.
Speaker:“Ow! Not gonna lie, you got a singing voice.”
Speaker:He clicked his tongue amusedly,
Speaker:“Think it’d rival Bon Jovi?” “Eh,
Speaker:not to me.” I shrugged as we continued our next flight,
Speaker:“I was gonna go more like
Speaker:Brian Johnson. Y’know, because you got that pitch in the back of your throat down to a T.”
Speaker:“Ha! That’s what she said, dude!”
Speaker:The hyena snickered childishly,
Speaker:then paused before I could so much as join in
Speaker:or offhandedly say
Speaker:‘no homo’ to ease any tension.
Speaker:“There we are! Hey Axel,
Speaker:here’s the door!” It opened to reveal a dark roof underneath a cloudless nighttime sky,
Speaker:not only overlooking the condemned car part factory,
Speaker:but the rest of our pukehole town.
Speaker:“Holy…” The words fell from my lips as I stared agape at the unusual number of fires in the distance.
Speaker:The view looked like it’d been pulled straight out of an apocalypse.
Speaker:“Goddamn, they’re really going at it out there, huh? There’s gotta
Speaker:be hundreds going on…”
Speaker:Sid whistled at the sight,
Speaker:particularly to the fires erupting west of the plant.
Speaker:“They don’t call it Devil’s Night for nothing
Speaker:unless it looks like Hell on Earth.”
Speaker:He mused aloud in awe,
Speaker:“Remember Artie Burgs?
Speaker:From Chemistry class last year?
Speaker:I think that trailer park he lives in has a fire going on…”
Speaker:I could just make out the area he was referring to.
Speaker:Beyond the infernos dancing and raging along the horizon,
Speaker:I could imagine how spectacular Riviere must have been,
Speaker:once upon a time post-World War II.
Speaker:Living factories, populated houses,
Speaker:well-groomed sidewalks, and a sense of growing community,
Speaker:but then the freeways and arsons made our city into what it is:
Speaker:a comatose town. Not a ghost town,
Speaker:but not a fully living one.
Speaker:“Do you think any of them will spread?”
Speaker:I stepped several feet apart from the edge of the gravel rooftop,
Speaker:having almost tripped on a bottle.
Speaker:“I heard it happened with those riots in Las Estrellas
Speaker:a couple years back.
Speaker:Too many fires and nobody could have a roof over their heads.
Speaker:heads.” Sid and I never went as far as torching a house, vacant or not. The closest it ever approached arson was Devil’s Night in 1991, when the hyena tested Fourth of July rockets and accidentally set a dumpster on fire.
Speaker:Never again, he promised me.
Speaker:He and I had our fill of the sight
Speaker:and got to work having fun.
Speaker:Before Sid went guiding me to the manager’s office overlooking a section of the open space,
Speaker:I joined him in expressing
Speaker:our…artistic sides.
Speaker:One example included defacing letters on any warnings signs still drilled onto the concrete walls.
Speaker:The cigarette symbol on a no smoking sign became a pie thanks to a diagonal line,
Speaker:stick figures were given
Speaker:massive dicks, ‘Employees Only’ turned into
Speaker:‘Employees Bone’. One achievement I felt proud of was using permanent markers to draw
Speaker:detailed genitalia
Speaker:all over a blank wall space.
Speaker:“You would make Michelangelo proud, Axel!”
Speaker:Sid gave his praise, halfway through
Speaker:spray painting green-and-yellow pot leaves wherever he could.
Speaker:My throwing arm also needed practice.
Speaker:Sid eagerly helped me out by assisting me in tossing toilet paper rolls over the exposed beams in the ceiling.
Speaker:By the time I exhausted them from my backpack,
Speaker:a wide range of tall white specters swayed with the wind coming from an open window,
Speaker:dangling from the ceiling like shredded curtains.
Speaker:“If only our art teachers saw this now…”
Speaker:he sighed in contentment at our overall work,
Speaker:then checked his watched.
Speaker:The hyena sharply inhaled. “C’mon, we’re not even supposed to be here tonight.”
Speaker:A small chuckle made his expression light up.
Speaker:Just a couple weeks earlier in mid-October,
Speaker:Sid convinced me to join him in a midnight screening for a black-and-white comedy film at one
Speaker:of the more off-brand theaters in downtown.
Speaker:He couldn’t stop guffawing at the hilarious movie throughout
Speaker:and neither could I,
Speaker:to the point he’d reference my favorite line just to get a giggle out of me.
Speaker:Worked like a charm.
Speaker:“It’s ‘I’m not even supposed to be here today’,
Speaker:ain’t it?” I giggled between hiccups of deep breaths.
Speaker:“Either way, we’re definitely not supposed to be here,”
Speaker:he started pulling me in the direction of the concrete staircase.
Speaker:It was the one leading up to a large, enclosed booth looking down on the desolate ground floor,
Speaker:“but I brought you here so I can show you something.
Speaker:It’s in the manager’s office.”
Speaker:“What’s the surprise anyway?”
Speaker:I mock gasped. “Is it drugs?
Speaker:Tell me it’s drugs!” “Nah,
Speaker:I ran out of bush yesterday.”
Speaker:He joked while opening the door to an empty rectangular office.
Speaker:Dust and skid marks littered the tiled floor,
Speaker:while a dirty glass window glared down at the abandoned factory floor.
Speaker:“Besides, it’s bad luck getting high while trespassing.”
Speaker:My head turned to the windows.
Speaker:“And drunk?” “Especially drunk.
Speaker:Now look to your left, Axel.”
Speaker:I did so, and immediately gasped in astonishment.
Speaker:Mesmerizing. No other word can describe it like that.
Speaker:Mesmerizing, even in the dark
Speaker:where I could perfectly see.
Speaker:Making up the entirety of the back wall,
Speaker:two canine silhouettes stood back-to-back.
Speaker:One faced left towards the door,
Speaker:a colorful fur looking at pitch darkness made of lead
Speaker:literally pencilled into the beige plaster.
Speaker:Meanwhile, the other canine,
Speaker:shaped by what appeared to be dozens of spent permanent markers, stared rightward,
Speaker:away from the door,
Speaker:towards a technicolor rainbow that smelled of spray paint.
Speaker:All of it made up the back wall of what used to be a stuffy, boring manager’s office.
Speaker:“Wha…Wow, this…” The words sooner or later came to me.
Speaker:“Sid, how long have you been working on this?”
Speaker:“Since that hole in the fence appeared.”
Speaker:He quipped and had a deep sigh.
Speaker:“To be honest, I half-expected some other punk or two to fuck it up by the time I brought you up here.
Speaker:Thank Christ it’s still in one piece.
Speaker:Or else it’d have all been a waste.”
Speaker:He stepped next to me and joined in marveling at his presumable masterpiece.
Speaker:Moments like this made me wish I’d brought a camera.
Speaker:“You plan on going to art college?”
Speaker:I asked. “Sid?” He paused in his response.
Speaker:“…maybe.” I raised an eyebrow
Speaker:and quizzical ear at him.
Speaker:“Maybe? Not college material?
Speaker:Sid, if I know anything,
Speaker:it’s that you’re a fantastic artist, and you know you’d have fun there.
Speaker:You’d have so much fun there.”
Speaker:“Won’t exactly help put food on my table though, would it?”
Speaker:He shook his head,
Speaker:disdain clear as the daytime in his voice.
Speaker:“Tagging artists aren’t rolling in cash in Riviere, are they?
Speaker:I won’t be rolling in cash.”
Speaker:“Fair point.” I conceded,
Speaker:though took a page from my mother’s book by counterarguing,
Speaker:“However, you don’t wanna end up in a deadbeat job, do you?
Speaker:I can’t imagine someone like you in a place like this.
Speaker:Working in factories, and slaving away for twelve hours a day,
Speaker:or a stuffy office job with a 401k on the line…”
Speaker:He scoffed back a laugh,
Speaker:“Sounds like a window into Hell to me.”
Speaker:Already knowing the hyena was not just a good student, but a great student when he put effort into it,
Speaker:I decided to twist the knife a little harder.
Speaker:“You ought to consider it after the SATs next year, Sid.
Speaker:I can talk to my parents and convince my mom to help you get a tutor—”
Speaker:He groaned, “Fine, fine, fine. I’ll sign up for the best fuckin’ art college I can think of,
Speaker:just stop it. I’ll do it.
Speaker:Shit, you’re sounding like your damn mother, y’know?”
Speaker:I knew. I also knew she’d be proud of me channeling her
Speaker:paralegal abilities.
Speaker:After another quiet moment, I decided to ask, “So what
Speaker:got you to make this?”
Speaker:“Besides showing off my own talent?”
Speaker:Sid grinned ear to ear, squinting between me
Speaker:and the wall plaster he made into his canvas.
Speaker:“Not to sound like a fairy art critic from Manhattan Isle,
Speaker:but it came to me after Mr. Hodgkiss got us reading
Speaker:‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’.
Speaker:Struck with inspiration by the final page, in fact.”
Speaker:“Now that’s surprising.”
Speaker:“That I read it like a nerd?”
Speaker:He playfully snarled at me in a posh British accent,
Speaker:more akin to the Beatles than an aristocratic nobleman,
Speaker:“I take offense to that, good sir!”
Speaker:He likely didn’t see it, but I flipped him off.
Speaker:That, or he didn’t mention it.
Speaker:“I meant that you said the full title, you ass.”
Speaker:I corrected him, trying my best to sound mad but failing.
Speaker:My attempted frown became a smirk.
Speaker:“If I remember correctly,
Speaker:Hodgkiss took off points for everyone who only had ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ on their book essays. All the valedictorians got miffed at him too.”
Speaker:“You included?” I shrugged inanely,
Speaker:“Nobody’s perfect.”
Speaker:“It got me thinking about duality though,
Speaker:and how much we like to hide ourselves from the world,”
Speaker:he explained. “Who we are, what we are,
Speaker:what we try to be when we aren’t.”
Speaker:“Are you saying then that you’re a short, murderous wolf by night then?”
Speaker:I earned myself a harsh smack on the shoulder, but I couldn’t stop giggling.
Speaker:“I deserved that, didn’t I?”
Speaker:“That’s for comparing me to a wolf, fag!” A jolt
Speaker:of electric fear
Speaker:briefly made me freeze, until I relaxed somewhat.
Speaker:My consciousness reminded my body not to think he was referring to my closeted homosexuality.
Speaker:He didn’t know yet for one,
Speaker:but to Sid, he didn’t casually throw around ‘fag’,
Speaker:‘faggot’, ‘pussy’ or ‘sissy’
Speaker:because he hated gay people like some of the jocks at our school.
Speaker:His lack of an inner filter caused him to use blunt, offensive words in casual conversation,
Speaker:and seeing them as simply that:
Speaker:words. He only respected members of authority if it didn’t mean an instant ticket to detention
Speaker:or worse, expulsion or jailtime.
Speaker:My (not as solid as I wanted it to be)
Speaker:evidence for this came down to what occurred
Speaker:the previous week.
Speaker:“Speaking of which, do you…do
Speaker:you remember last Wednesday?”
Speaker:Sid paused again.
Speaker:“Last Wednesday?” “I saw you walloping Joey Cullerton during lunch.
Speaker:Right to the face.”
Speaker:“Yep,” he confessed.
Speaker:“In-school suspension for two months.
Speaker:Spend my study hall, lunch,
Speaker:and one hour in the principal’s office.
Speaker:Another offense, then it’ll be either four months or the guillotine for me,
Speaker:Axel.” “What was that about?”
Speaker:I asked him. One of my ears folded slightly.
Speaker:“What did he do?” Granted, I’d arrived at the cafeteria when Sid was hauled by the
Speaker:I already knew the answer.
Speaker:My suspicions about Sid’s stance on homosexuals in general were already confirmed true,
Speaker:but I needed to hear the words from his unfiltered maw.
Speaker:“Joey was being a self-righteous dumbass.”
Speaker:His answered arrived in colorful fashion,
Speaker:“He was picking on this emo freshman, calling him a faggot,
Speaker:telling everyone Randy’s been sucking his dick,
Speaker:getting the mouse to cry.
Speaker:Anyway, little Randy spews an insult right back,
Speaker:the bull pulls him by his hem,
Speaker:and I decided somebody
Speaker:ought to teach that faggot manners.”
Speaker:He shook his muzzle and corrected with,
Speaker:“Joey, not Randy, I mean.”
Speaker:An anxious laugh bubbled from my lips.
Speaker:“Ah, o-okay…” Ever since the incident, me and Sid had been awkwardly tiptoeing around it.
Speaker:He might have had a mouth and certainly counted as a punk by our teachers,
Speaker:but he never got into physical fights.
Speaker:It caught some of the cliques by surprise.
Speaker:Me? I considered it the perfect opportunity
Speaker:to tell him…tell him…
Speaker:My tail almost curled into a nervous ball,
Speaker:yet the words refused to stop.
Speaker:“Sid? I’m…I’m gay.” One heartbeat.
Speaker:Two heartbeats. A sharp intake of breath.
Speaker:A chill crept right down my spine and up my bushy raccoon tail.
Speaker:Sid slowly glanced to me.
Speaker:I think, here comes the beating—
Speaker:“Thank Christ.” I swear,
Speaker:a pin dropped. Then,
Speaker:I stared with wide eyes between him and the masterpiece adorning the office wall.
Speaker:How couldn’t I have noticed it before?
Speaker:The more I stared at it, the more it dawned on me.
Speaker:The rainbows. The technicolor shadows.
Speaker:The silhouettes weren’t shaped like a canine.
Speaker:They more resembled
Speaker:a hyena. “Me too.”
Speaker:This was the first of two parts of
Speaker:“Dancing on Devil’s Night”
Speaker:by Domus Vocis,
Speaker:read for you by Dirt Coyote, from Twitter dot Com.
Speaker:Tune in next time to find out how the rest of Devil’s Night will play out for Alex and Sid.
Speaker:As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Ghost of Dog.