The Wish

The Wish

Blitzkrieg’s Wish

By Luke J. Morris

Blitzkrieg was hungry.  Master hadn’t been home in a week; some men in blue suits had dragged him away, and all the barking in the world couldn’t stop them.  The old woman next door hadn’t come by in two days, either.  Blitzkrieg wasn’t sure how he felt about her – she smelled funny, and wore a suspicious-looking patterned thing around her head – but she brought food, so he figured she was okay.

Now they’d left him alone, in an empty little house, with a rumbling belly.  His doggie-door worked, so he could do his business in the back yard and drive off intruders (damned squirrels!), but he couldn’t find anything to eat out there.  And the fridge remained closed, no matter how he scratched and whined.  So he lay on the back porch, his head on his paws, his ears drooping with dejection, and he wished for food, a bigger field, and someone to play with. 

Then the wind turned, and he caught a scent.  He lifted his nose in the air, turned it this way and that, gauged the direction of the weird new phenomenon.  He’d never smelled anything like it.  It wasn’t exactly pleasant.  Still, it was new, and that made it worth investigating. 

Blitzkrieg stood, tiptoed to the yard, and sniffed by the fence.  The odor came from next door.  He put his nose to the ground and worked along the property line ‘til he found the loose patch of soil that Master had filled in.  His old digs!  His tail wagged as he plunged his paws in to re-open his forgotten escape route. 

A few minutes later he arose in the old woman’s back yard and trotted up the steps to her porch.  The screen door was closed, but a few whacks with his paw loosened the screen itself.   He slipped inside.

He could smell old food in the kitchen cabinets, but he couldn’t get to it, so he continued into the living room.  There, in the middle of the floor, lay the old woman.  Her legs inside her peasant skirt tilted to one side, her arms splayed out in a cruciform, and her eyes, wide open, stared at nothing.  Blitzkrieg sniffed her, whined, nudged her, pawed her, whined some more. She didn’t react. 

She smelled funny – even funnier than usual – but that was only a small part of the odd scent that had caught his attention, and soon the rest of the scent’s components distracted him from the corpse.  He searched the perimeter of the room, sniffing the floor and the furniture, until his snout came to rest on an object by the woman’s outstretched hand. 

It looked like a toy.  It had a body like a boat, a funnel opening at one end, a scooped handle at the other, and a hinged lid at the top.  Blitzkrieg circled the object, sniffed it, barked at it.  It didn’t move.  Finally he clenched the handle in his jaw, stood up, shook his head with a snarl, and bounded out of the house. 

He thought about burying the new toy in one of his special spots in the yard, but he decided to play with it first.  Tail vibrating, he entered the house, found his bed, and lay down for a chew.   He began by giving the thing another sniff and a bark for good measure.  Then he rolled it over in his paws, growled, nipped the handle, and gave the whole apparatus a good lick.  As he finished this taste test, something smoky popped out of the spout.

It was a man.  But not exactly.  At least it was man-like, with a broad chest enfolded by massive arms, and a face so ugly it could scare a pit bull.  Plus it was blue. 

Blitzkrieg leapt to his feet and lowered his head, snarling.  The intruder wafted patchouli and sand and brimstone and nothingness – the odd odor that had attracted Blitzkrieg to the toy in the first place. 

The man-like thing looked around the room for a moment before its eye found the dog.  “Right,” it said, in a voice not at all like Robin Williams’.  “So, what d’you want?”

Blitzkrieg barked and gnashed his teeth.

“Ah.  One of those.”  The blue creature barked and growled back.

The dog grinned.  Finally, someone who spoke his language!  He answered with a bark, two yips, a bark, a snarl, and a short howl.

The blue guy got the message.  “Right this way,” it said.  It led Blitzkrieg to the kitchen, where it tipped the refrigerator over, dumping a smorgasbord of the finest fatty and greasy people-food all over the room.  Blitzkrieg dove into the feast, his tail whipping up a small hurricane above the house.

When he had eaten his fill, he staggered to the back porch and collapsed on his belly with a sigh.  The smelly man-thing drifted out after him and sat on the stoop.  “Well?” it grunted. Then remembering itself, it added a short bark, a yip, and a whine.  Blitzkrieg growled happily in answer.  He threw in a few barks as another thought struck him, then he rolled over and fell asleep.

He awoke to find the yard transformed.  It had grown to four times its former size, and now contained trees and bushes and a garden bed with plenty of digging spots.  He had lots of room to run, and birds and bunnies and squirrels filled the yard, just waiting to be chased.  With a joyous yelp he bounded to it.  He charged around ‘til he had treed or grounded all the animals, peed on all the trees, dug up the whole flower bed, and buried every stray object he could find.  Then he sat and panted ecstatically for a while.

Before long, though, his happiness ebbed.  The food was delicious, the yard was perfect, but something was missing.  What was it?  He whined and whimpered ‘til the big blue ugly floated over.  It looked sour and surly, though that didn’t mean much; it had looked like that from the beginning. 

“Anything else?” the man-thing asked.  It repeated the question in dog-speak for the canine’s benefit. 

Blitzkrieg bobbed his head, moaned, pawed the ground, and howled.  His new friend responded in kind, and it almost looked like its hideous face smiled.  Then it began to transform. Its skin solidified, it grew legs, its chest and arms shrank and its belly bulged, the blue faded to a soft brown, clothes appeared, and the face – though still hideously ugly – became human.

Master had come home at last!  With Frisbee in hand.  Blitzkrieg bounced around the yard, yipping and woofing and peeing everywhere.  He leapt on Master’s chest, and the man laughed.  “Hey Blitz,” he said, and threw the disc.  Blitzkrieg raced after it.

He never did find his new special toy, but he didn’t miss it much.  He had everything a dog could want.