Ch 2 Poisoning
Dominic jolts awake from a sudden, very loud clanging noise. The clamor causing his head to feel like he is being hit continually with a sledge hammer to the brain. He lifts his throbbing head with raw difficultly and looks about the apartment, trying to remember where he is. Last night’s events come back to him sluggishly and painfully as Dominic forces his brain to think. He had come to Jason’s apartment in search of a place to sleep. He almost got himself beat up again because of his loose tongue. He was nearly attacked by a huge, protective, dark dog, which belonged to his brother, Jason, and which was named Cookie or Buddy or something like that. His bottle of sweet liquor was confiscated by his little brother and dumped down a drain. What a waste, Dominic thinks to himself. He turns heavily onto his back and sits up. He rubs his aching temples in attempt to ease his panging hang over. When that doesn’t work, he groans and runs his hands through his curly, dark brown hair. He looks up and finds the huge dog watching him very closely. Speaking of the devil, Dominic thinks, staring back at the dog, wishing for it to vanish. Dominic starts to slide off the bed but is greeted by the dog’s low, threatening growl. He scoots back onto the bed, waits for a few seconds, then tries to get off the bed again very slowly, but as soon as he touches the floor with his toes, the dog bares its teeth at him again, watching Dominic’s foot, looking at it as if it’s a pest that must be eliminated immediately.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dominic mumbles, rubbing the side of his face with the palm of his hand. “Go, get!” he gestures at the dog with a wave of his hand. The brown dog just bares his teeth at him even more and snarls loudly.
“Brownie, be nice,” Jason says from the kitchen. The dog puts his ears back and slowly starts walking back to Jason, tail hanging lifelessly. Brownie glances back at Dominic a few times as Dominic slides off the bed.
“Hey, Jase! Do you have clothes that I can borrow?” Dominic tries to yell but his hangover prevents that.
“Your clothes are on the couch, washed and dried,” Jason says, pointing in the direction of a small sofa across from the small room as he messes with something in the kitchen, clanging pans and pots.
“Thanks,” Dominic pauses and tries to peek over the counter at what Jason is doing.
“So that’s what you named your dog! Brownie,” Dominic speaks loudly, attempting to ease the heavy silence hanging between him and Jason like a black, deafening curtain.
“Grace named him, not me. It suits him. He is, after all, brown all over. And he likes it, I think,” Jason replied, his voice muffled by the sound of clattering metal.
Dominic assumed that the dog, Brownie, was munching again and causing him a head-ache on purpose. After all, the dog obviously does not like him. When Jason mentioned Grace, it surprised him, for Jason has not spoken her name in a long time. Jason would not even mention her when Dominic would come around, trying to offer comfort, though those attempts had proven fruitless. His little brother was still grieving and the only shoulder he ever turned to was that of God. Dominic could never understand why his brother believed that stuff. They grew up in a messed up family, where the father was abusive and their mom always took the brunt of his drunken wrath.
How could someone believe in a ‘loving’ God after what happened to him? Dominic wondered, puzzled by his brother’s strong faith in a God, which Dominic believes, does not exist.
Jason strolls into the bedroom with a plate of wonderfully smelling scrambled eggs and bologna, but Dominic’s stomach turns over and he dashes for the bathroom. After a few wrenchingly awful sounds, he emerges, his face as pale as the wall behind him.
