THE DOG HUNTERS (completed)

13 - CURSE

As we shot past factories and warehouses and into the greater void, with the sun setting and the world turning dark and cold, and even more uncaring and ugly, Dr. Nurse told me a story. This was different for him, as he usually talked about baseball, making up the names of different teams and players and becoming passionate about trades and deals, which I'm sure had never occurred. This evening he focused histalk on himself. People were after him. He was in a secret government agency associated with the Army, who now wanted to lock up him forever. He had to get home so that he could fuck his mother, who was trying to steal the family fortune. Not fuck her over, actually fuckher, because she loved the way his cock curved, like a banana, but not the kind we eat for breakfast, more like a plantain, but not exactly. It was the curse of his family, that the mother and son always ended up fucking, because she loved his cock so much.

Then, Dr. Nurse spoke of a bunker. He wanted me to tell him where to go,how to get there, as though I knew more about it than him. He shoved into my face a small grainy photo of what looked like a concrete door framed with scraggly trees and bracken. On the back of the photo were a series of numbers he claimed constituted a code to the door. He claimed he needed me to help him get the door open because his brain and hands didn't work together so well anymore.

Under the code an address: One hundred and four Bluntith.

"You know where that is? I remember that road from my youth, but I don't remember being young, and I don't know where that is." Dr. Nurse kept saying this, appearing to become more and more worried and agitated.

No surprise, but I did not know the address. Bluntith sounded about as real as all the other nonsense Dr. Nurse was force feeding me.Apparently it was in Rode's Hollow. I did actually know Rode's Hollow, this white trash community above where I grew up in Edendale,going up into the hills. When I was a teenager I used to drive all around Rode's Hollow at night on the weekends. Local legends stated there were exciting and loose women to be found in trailers in Rode's Hollow. I never found any, but that never stopped me from looking.

Back to the bunker. Dr. Nurse explained this particular bunker was the stuff of paradise. Stuffed with goodies. Designed and then maligned by his step-father, who became more interested in power yachts and space travel. The bunker could survive whatever thermonuclear destruction might incur, in style and extreme comfort. It had been promised to him before his stepfather had set sale around the world and never returned. Dr. Nurse was only getting interested in accessing it now because, as he whispered in low tones with arched eyebrows, "You only want to get into shit like that if you really have to."

Only, as already mentioned, he wasn't sure how to get there, and of course,there were people after him. And he couldn't call his mother because she wanted to fuck him, and even though he was sort of into there were principles to be adhered to, etc.

Tears began gumming up the deep pores pitting his cheeks.

"Shit is bad," I said. I felt sorry for him, and myself.

Dr.Nurse nodded sadly. "They're not gonna let me get out there. I'm gonna die tonight. She's got them coming after me. They're all on her payroll. If she can't have my cock she's gonna fucking kill me." He nodded and inched his mouth closer to my ear. "You were trying to kill yourself."

"Me?"

"I know it's you Bogart." He was talking now like we weren't talking to each other. He was slumped in his seat staring out the opposite window into the black. "That's how I knew you were safe to talk to.I know you're a good guy, and no one trying to kill themselves would be on her payroll. You like talking about baseball. I was running after the bus and I saw you run out. You weren't catching it. You were trying to go into – straight on."

"No. No." I was still worried someone was going to call the police.

"Do you believe what I've been telling you? You think it's the truth?"

I just looked at him. Dr. Nurse nodded and scratched his belly. "You're on the fence. That's you man, you're always on the fence... I'm getting off the fence," he said. "Here." Handed me his wallet, stood up, yanked on the stop cord. "I'm getting off the fence right now."

The driver applied the brakes, even though we were still in industrial hell with no actual stops.

Dr. Nurse bounced off the bus and bounded into the other lane's traffic, where he was promptly run over by a truck. One of those big guys.

Breaks screamed. The truck's rear load jackknifed, and almost slapped into the bus. People gasped and shrieked, and I saw the bus driver curse and shake his head.

Bad night for him too.