I. The Pet

                There once was a man named Raul, who was kind of a mean sucker. He was married to the nicest lady named Mary, who loved animals. In fact, Mary loved life so much that she would not harm any animal or even an insect, and Raul hated her for that love of life that she had. If Mary found a spider in her home, she would carefully capture it in an envelope, without harming it, and take it outside to a nice plant where she would let it go, so that it could live its life out in peace.

                          Raul was the kind of man who despised all life. How he ended up married to Mary, a lover of life, is anyone’s guess. Raul was a rather normal looking man. Mary on the other hand, was rather attractive. When they met, Raul fell in love with the idea of being married to a woman that most men would consider to be pretty arm candy at parties.

                       Since Mary loved life so much, and she talked often about how God had given life as a gift to the Universe, before they married, Raul researched everything he could about this thing called life. He sweet talked Mary around the subject. Mary fell in love with Raul because she thought he was of like mind.

                       Shortly after they married, and with Raul still happy that he had a pretty wife that he could show off to his friends, Mary asked if they could get a dog. She had owned a few dogs in her 40 years of life. They were her favorite animal in the world, and she took very good care of them, giving them the best food; many of them had lived long, healthy lives. When her dogs eventually passed away, Mary mourned, like anyone would, but she believed in her heart that her dogs ended up in what she called “doggie Heaven.” Mary could not imagine that our LORD, in His infinite justice and love, would allow dogs, cats, horses, and any other innocent animal or insect to disappear into nothingness after they passed away.

                  One of Mary’s favorite things to point out to Raul was that when Christ returned to Earth from Heaven, the Bible said that He would be riding a White Horse. Mary reasoned with Raul that if Christ was returning on a horse, then there must be stables in Heaven. And, Mary would say, where there are stables, there are always dogs!

                  Raul scoffed at what he thought was the idiotic notion of stables in Heaven, and the even more ridiculous notion that all dogs went to Heaven.
                  And so Raul allowed Mary to get a dog, a small chihuahua she proudly named Pops.

 II. Cruel Twist of Fate

                And so, Pops took over Mary and Raul’s house. Mary loved Pops, and sometimes Raul
wondered if Mary loved Pops more than she loved him. So, Raul started doing cruel things to
Pops. When Mary wasn’t looking, or when she was gone, Raul would kick Pops, not hard
enough to hurt him permanently, but just to hurt him, so that Pops would know that this was
Raul’s castle, not Pops ‘s.

                 Mary never saw Raul hurt Pops, but she sensed something was wrong. At first, when he arrived at Raul and Mary’s home, Pops, a one year old pup rescued from the pound, which was the cheapest way that Mary could get a dog, seemed happy go lucky. The more abuse Pops endured from Raul, the more depressed he got, and the sadder Mary became, as well.
Eventually, Mary got sick, and so did Pops. They lay in bed together while Raul figured out
what to do, now that they only had one income as a family, as Mary had become severely
disabled and could not do her job as a librarian.

               Mary got sicker and sicker as she realized the kind of man she had married. She
witnessed Raul kill insect after insect in her home and in their yard. Raul became more and
more cruel with the abundant life forms in Mary’s home and yard. Mary realized that she was
married to a monster, and Raul was only too happy to prove her right.

                Mary continued her journey toward her inevitable death, and Pops lay right beside her,
comforting her as much as he could. Pops knew Mary was not going to make it, and it broke
his little heart.

                One day, about ten years after Mary married a monster, and about one year after she
got her favorite dog ever in her life, little Pops, Mary died of sadness, a sadness borne out of a
grief over all the life that her monster husband had taken in his anger toward her and Pops.

               Mary was gone and Pops was left alone with a monster.

III. Another Monster

            Raul buried Mary, and he was glad that she was dead. He would’ve gotten rid of Pops,
but no one wanted him. So, Raul kept Pops, and he ramped up his cruelty toward Pops. Raul
did everything but kill Pops. And Pops was so sad that even at around two years old, he slept
all day.

             One day, Raul was particularly angry because women seemed to be afraid of him. He,
of course, blamed everyone but himself. He was an angry man, and the angrier he got, the
crueler he got with Pops.

              As he left one day for work, thinking about the latest pretty girl who wanted nothing to
do with him, he gave Pops a good swift kick as he left for work. Miserable dog, Raul thought,
maybe when I get home, I’ll go ahead and end his miserable life. As Raul walked away from the
house, he could hear Pops whimpering, and he smiled, as the thought of killing Pops took hold
of his evil mind.

               Later that day, Raul returned home after having lost his job. His now former boss, a
beautiful woman, had fired him unjustly, he thought, because he had dared to make a pass at
her. She should feel lucky that a guy as attractive as him would deign to ask her out. So what if
she was married? As Raul got home that day, all he could think of was killing Pops.

               Raul stepped into his darkened home. That’s strange, he thought, I thought I left the
lamp on in the living room. Not only that, who closed the curtains? Raul had the horrible
thought that someone was in the house. He called out, “Who’s there?” Suddenly, he sensed
movement coming from his favorite chair in the living room.

               “Who is there. I ask again, who’s there,” he said, trying not to sound scared.

                A voice came from the darkness. “It’s not nice to be scared, is it, Raul?” The voice did
not sound evil; it sounded angry.

               “Who are you?” Raul asked, starting to get angry himself.

               “I’m your worst nightmare, Raul,” the creature said calmly. Raul knew he was facing a monster, a demon, probably sent from Hell by his sick wife.

                  Raul walked around to the front of the chair and slowly made his way toward the lamp.

                 “Go ahead, Raul, turn on the light, if you dare.” The voice still sounded angry, and he sounded confident, too.

                   I’m not afraid of whatever this demon is, Raul thought. So, he turned on the lamp and immediately wished he hadn’t. Sitting in his favorite chair was indeed a demon, a six foot monster, who stood up as Raul took several steps backward, fear dripping his soul.

                    “Who are you???” Saul’s voice trembled.

                     The monster stepped toward Raul. “I told you, I’m your worst nightmare. I’m here to avenge Mary and Pops.”

                      Mary and Pops? Seriously, Raul thought, starting to get angry. “And under whose authority, are you here?”
                      The monster stood and seemed to think for a minute. “I’m here to kill you because you don’t appreciate life, so I will take your life from you, as well.”

                 At that point, Raul knew he had to get out of the house and away from this demon that had been sent from Hell to kill him. Raul turned and ran through the kitchen, toward the front door. He could hear the monster behind him, walking rapidly. As Raul went through the kitchen, he grabbed the cleaver out of the knife block that his Aunt Betty had given him and Mary as a wedding gift. As he neared the door, he remembered that he had locked it behind him. And he did not have enough time to dig the key out of his pocket. So he turned to face his attacker.

                The creature came up to him and grabbed him by his shirt, lifting him up off the ground. The monster brought Raul up close to its face, and Raul could see the anger in that horrible face. The creature smiled, “I see the fear in you. You have always been fearful, haven’t you. Your fear controlled you and led to your anger, which led you to destroy life whenever you saw it.”

           Raul was supremely frightened, but he knew he was still clutching the cleaver to his side, as the monster held him. “I dare you to throw me aside and step on me!” Raul exclaimed. If I can just get him to throw me aside, so I can get him with the cleaver.

            “Ok, have it your way,” the monster calmly said, as he slammed Raul against the door.
Momentarily stunned, Raul knew this was his one chance. He swung the cleaver with all
his strength. The creature saw the cleaver coming, and he leaned back, causing Raul to miss,
but its left hand was still in the way, and Raul caught it right at the wrist against the wall. The
cleaver went right through the monster’s wrist, its hand falling to the ground, as the cleaver dug
into the wall.

                The creature bellowed in horrible pain, and with is right hand came down hard on Raul’s head, ending his life abruptly.

                The creature stumbled his way back to the master bedroom, grasping its arm in severe
pain. He closed the door of the bedroom and howled in pain as he realized that he no longer
had one of his hands. He lay down on the bed holding his arm and fell asleep, satisfied that he
had accomplished his mission.

IV. Freedom

                Two days later, Raul’s Aunt Betty asked the police to do a wellness check on her
nephew because she had not heard from him. After the police arrived at Raul’s home and
found the doors locked, they got the Fire Department to come and break down Raul’s front
door. Once in, they immediately found Raul, dead in the entryway, with severe blunt force
trauma to the head.

             Two detectives were summoned to investigate the homicide of one, Raul Rendiz,
Detective John Waite and Detective Phill Johns.

            Detective Waite looked over the body. “It doesn’t look like the cleaver in the wall here
was the murder weapon.

           “Yeah, looks more like a sledge hammer could have killed this guy,” Detective Johns
replied

             After the detectives took pictures of the body, and they secured the crime scene, the
coroner workers came in to take the body away. As soon as they moved it, they discovered the
monster’s hand laying in between the body and the wall. The coroner’s worker gasped when he
saw the hand, and he called the two detectives back to the crime scene. They rushed back
and leaned down to examine the hand, which was clearly in rigor mortis.

            “Wow, have you ever seen anything like that?” Detective Johns asked, incredulously.
              Suddenly, Pops came running from the hallway and ran out the front door. The
detectives jumped back, not sure if Pops was a rat or something worse.

                As Pops ran down the front yard of Raul’s home, Detective Waite saw that Pops was a
small chihuahua. The dog seemed to be smiling as he ran away to his freedom. The detectives
turned their attention back to the strange severed hand.

              But had they kept their eyes on Pops, they would have been very interested to see that
he was limping as he ran, for he was missing his left front paw. Pops disappeared into the
evening, secure in the knowledge that he and Mary were free from a very real monster, who
some reason had a horrible hatred of life.

The End