BUT HE DID BITE

A Short Story By Dan Jire

Greg Kirsch didn’t have man boobs, technically, not yet, but his chest was no longer flat. Two triangles pushed his nipples out a bit further than he liked. He glared at his reflection. From straight on, he looked fine, but a swivel of his hips and those pyramids erected out over his just a changed belly. He wondered how long it had gone on like this, when was the last time he’d looked at his side profile? All he did was brush his teeth, comb his un-graying, non-balding hair, and move along.

Until this moment, Greg had subsisted on a healthy diet of only being moderately vain.

Greg grimaced. His wife Katie exercised almost every day if not every other day. She was in better shape than she was before having three kids. She was going to run her first full marathon in the fall.

Greg finished brushing his teeth and exited the bathroom.

Katie sat in bed reading on her tablet and drinking a hot coffee very carefully—like someone going for the longest streak of having never spilled a drop.

“What are you plans for the day?” Greg asked.

“I’m going to finish my coffee and then I’m going to get started tackling the nursery. Benny doesn’t play with any of that stuff. He just wants to play with his brothers’ toys.”

“Finally,” Greg said. “I can help you take it to the dump.”

“I was going to donate it.”

“Or that. Anything to get it out of the house. So that’s it? Just spending a Saturday organizing?”

“Well, I would like to work out. What about you?” Katie asked, eyes still firmly on whatever she was reading, and another measured sip.

“I think I’m going to go for a bike ride. Some light exercising if you don’t mind. The boys seem to be playing fine. I won’t be gone long.”

“Exercising. Is someone feeling self-conscious this morning?”

“I probably need to start doing stuff. Running around at work all day has kept me lean-ish, but I can’t eat like we did last night.”

“You ate half the lasagna.”

“It was delicious,” Greg said.

Katie smiled, though Greg was a good cook in his own right, Katie had felt the need to learn how to cook and had been trying (with a few outright failures) to make nice family meals that the boys would remember and crave when they were older and had left the house. She wanted nothing more than to pass down the tradition of having one’s spouse feel ill prepared to match the menu’s of one’s mother-in-law.

“You keep cooking like that and I’ll have to start doing your workout videos.”

“Just play your cards right,” Katie said. “Are you going now?”

Greg hadn’t actually decided, but it made sense to go right away, before the intention softened into nothing more than that. He should know himself at least as well as Katie did, and that mean avoiding any opportunity for an excuse to hijack his plans to exercise. He had a long history of good intentions.

“Yeah. I’m just going to do the neighborhood loop. Down to the pool and back. That’s two miles, right?”

“About.”

“It’s been a while. Start small right?”

“Uh-huh.” She sipped her coffee.

Greg slipped out into the garage and rotated through the boys’ bikes and scooters to the back of the pile where his old mountain bike had been claimed by a few thick pollen and insect covered cobwebs.

His skin crawled as he imagined a spider biting him on his thigh or crawling up his pant leg for his nether regions while he biked. He took an old tennis racket and wiped away the webs.

The humid air outside surprised him. It felt too early in the summer for it to be so hot so early. The garage had still felt cool and clean, but outside was thick and muggy.

“Sweat is good,” he told himself, slinging his leg over the bike and onto the pedals. The gears shifted as he spun the pedals. The chain jumped and snagged. Greg teetered, but put his foot down in time.

He got off the bike and fixed the chain. He didn’t realize he’d cut himself in the process until his hand was back on the handlebars greasy and bleeding.

He wiped his hand on his shirt. A moment later, it bled again as he gripped the handles and started to bike down the road.

Greg had forgotten what it was like to be on a bike, how the air, even on a humid day whipped past his face. If freedom had a physical sensation, well Greg thought it would be similar. He knew he wasn’t truly free from all his responsibilities, or from the physical exertion biking required, but he felt like he could go places. He sped down a hill to a stop sign, able to see approaching traffic long before the turn, so he took it without stopping. As he leaned into the turn he recalled how reckless he’d been in his youth—even in college when he biked to and from classes, work, and the dorm.

As he turned, a group of crows were surprised and flapped up in a frenzy. They squawked as if he’d knocked over their chessboard.

“Well, s’cuse me,” Greg muttered before adding, “I’m going to do this more. This is fun.”

He sped up and suddenly a small dark-haired dog came charging off a front porch, barking to holy hell. Greg groaned and sped up.

“Denny! Denny!” the female owner cried from her porch.

The dog hit the street, just a couple feet behind Greg. All the while, Greg wondered why’d they give a dog a name like Denny. Just as he eyed back and realized it was a small black poodle that had absolutely lost its mind.

“Get out of here, buddy,” Greg said calmly and playfully.

“Ah, he won’t bite you! Denny! Get back here!”

But the poodle didn’t stop. It was keeping up with Greg. He couldn’t go any faster. How far is this dog going to chase me, Greg wondered, now annoyed.

“Denny!”

“Back off, Denny. Get. Get!” Greg said.

A mini-van turned down the street, this confused the small dog. It stopped and started and stopped and started, unsure of which to chase. Greg cycled on, his heart pounding in his chest, and his breath hard to catch as he turned onto the main road through the neighborhood. Unfortunately, it was uphill from there until the entrance. Greg stood up to apply more pressure to the pedals.

He felt silly having to try to outrun a small dog. He hadn’t been chased on a bike since he was a kid and it irritated him. He knew there was some kind of leash law, he just didn’t know how it applied in this scenario—the dog was off its owner’s property—and the lady never came off her porch to try and stop that stupid thing.

Greg tried to put his mind past it, and biked to the entrance of the neighborhood and turned back. The downhill ride was welcome. The sensation of freedom cut through his hair, cleared his sinuses.

Greg turned back onto the road with the dog, he’d hoped by now the owner had collected the dog and brought it inside before it got run over by one of the many newly licensed teenage drivers the neighborhood had produced.

He tried to practice chewing the owner out, but also wanted to come off cool and casual, and save face since he imagined the fear showed as he biked away as fast as he could pedal.

Greg’s calves burned, his right one in particular.

This is what had happened the last few times Greg had tried to exercise. He’d done too much and injured himself. History would repeat itself once again. He’d limp around once he got home. His wife would tell him to take it easy and he’d fall right back into the old habit of not working out.

Greg winced, letting out a higher pitched moan than he thought he was capable of. That didn’t relieve him of any pain, it made it worse, as if his mind was finally connecting to whatever damage he’d done.

Greg couldn’t press down with his right foot anymore. It felt like his bone was shooting into the back of his thigh. He looked down at the foot—blood covered his ankle and laces.

“The hell—”

He moaned again, his eyes tightened, teeth clenched.

Greg looked through hazy double vision. The back of his calf was covered in blood and tattered flesh. There was a clear hole, made clearer the more Greg blinked away the pain. He’d never seen a wound so big. His life had been scrapes and paper cuts. This was a hole.

A hole in the back of his leg.

“Denny?” He tried to recall. Had the dog gotten him? How else would he have been cut like this? He needed to get to a hospital, that was his last thought as he lost his balance and careened into the sidewalk, shoulder first. Just before he saw all black, he saw a row of crows perched in a tree.

Greg writhed, tears invading his reddened face.

He opened his eyes.

Denny was charging down the street. He knew the dog was barking madly, but all he could hear was a sharp ringing in his head.

He thought he heard someone else yelling Denny’s name. But it was too late, a fierce growl buried itself in Greg’s neck, and a strange warmth, soothing only because he couldn’t fathom it was his blood let loose.

Then a car sped past, bass booming, and Denny took off after it.

The air, humid and putrid, it all felt infected as Greg gagged and choked. He couldn’t make sense of it. He was going die via a small poodle.

Greg woke to the beeps of a hospital room. Large bandages scratched his neck, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. He was on something, he could tell by the way the room felt above him, like he was under a glass floor looking up. Later, it’d feel more like reality, but that was hard to trust at the moment.

Katie and the boys visited about the time the nurse brought him food. He’d already been told the dog didn’t have rabies, but that there’s a ‘first bite’ rule that means it likely wouldn’t be put down.

Greg plotted horrible ways to get back at the animal and owner, but he didn’t want to be that kind of person—no matter how much his present condition justified it. Again, he still hadn’t quite believed what had happened, and the owner’s voice just kept sneaking into his mind, saying over and over again, he won’t bite.

“I must be cursed,” he told Katie as she watched him eat apple sauce in his hospital bed. “Remember the last time I tried to work out. I went swimming and got sun burned so bad I couldn’t sleep for two days?”

“Or the time you got back into hiking and got into a car accident on the way back.”

“I was dehydrated,” Greg said.

“I know.”

“That time I broke your elliptical.”

“Put a hole in the wall too. I see it every time I work out.”

“I patched it.”

Katie rolled her eyes. It was his first time using spackle.

“Will you love me if I get really fat?” Greg asked Katie.

She kissed his forehead. “You’re never going to try and work out again, are you?”

Greg stopped short of an answer, as if whatever gods of good health that he had offended were patiently listening and plotting how to attack him next.

THE END.