Not a Pebble
by
K.
J. Watson
Brewar
couldn’t
understand why a pebble lay on her bedroom carpet. She bent down to pick it up
but withdrew her hand in disgust.
She
glared at the
dog. He’d stretched himself out at the side of the bed.
“It’s
a tick, you
filthy cur,” Brewar said. “It must have attached itself to you then dropped off.
This is the last time I let my brother convince me to look after you.”
The
dog ignored
her. Brewar pulled a tissue from a pocket and threw it over the tick. She
didn’t intend to pick it up with her bare fingers. Before she scooped up the
insect, though, the doorbell rang.
She
turned her
head and shouted down the hallway: “Wait a moment. I’m busy.”
When
she looked
back at the tissue, it had a tear across the middle. She flicked the tissue to
one side. The tick had gone.
A sudden scratch on her stomach made her
stand. She lifted up her T-shirt.
“For
heaven’s
sake.”
The
tick had
jumped onto her and burrowed its head into the flesh near her navel.
The
doorbell rang
again.
“Hold
on,” Brewar
said and hurried to the bathroom. She rummaged through a cabinet and found a
pair of tweezers.
“Careful,”
she
told herself. “Grab the tick with the tweezers close to your skin.”
She pulled up her T-shirt with her free hand
and dropped the tweezers. The tick had grown to the size of a tennis ball.
Panic gripped her.
“It’s
sucking my
blood. What exactly has that damn dog brought into my house?”
The
doorbell rang
a third time.
Brewar
told
herself to calm down. “I need to ask whoever that is to run me to the hospital.”
She
went into the
hallway. Half-way to the front door, she caught her reflection in a full-length
mirror. The tick had swollen to the size of a balloon.
The
doorbell rang
twice in quick succession. Brewar tried to speak, but the loss of blood had
weakened her. She stumbled and fell forward. The impact with the floor burst
the inflated tick and released a pool of blood.
Outside,
the
would-be visitor saw the blood seep from under the front door. She called the
authorities.
Police
officers
arrived and broke down the door. A dog stared at them from the far side of
Brewar’s body.
“If
only this poor
animal could tell us what happened,” one of the officers said.
For
a moment, the
dog’s eyes glinted red. The creature then padded back into the bedroom and
resumed its doze.
***
