Chapter 3: Labradoodle

I woke up with a start. It was dark. I was stretched out on one of the benches at the back of my old primary school. The wood of the bench felt solid underneath me, but it wasn’t wide. If I wriggled, I would fall off. I looked up and the sky was alive with stars. All twinkling happily. A few of them danced slowly in intricate spirals, defying the general trend of stars to more or less stay put. Directly above me, a nearly full moon hung in the sky, looking bloated. It pulled a weird face. Then it stuck its tongue out at me. I groaned and it laughed at me. The good thing was that the moon was back to a more normal colour so maybe whatever I’d taken was beginning to wear off. Or maybe not.

I stunk of beer and vomit.

I sat up and instantly regretted it. The world around me tilted and swayed from side to side in a most alarming way. An empty beer bottle dropped out of my lap and bounced on the ground. I kicked it away and it rolled across the beaten dirt until it stopped at the foot of one of the other benches.

I heard a panting sound. As my eyes adjusted, I made out the dim shape of a dog, sitting, watching me and panting. Its eyes seemed to glow faintly green out of the dark. When I’d kicked the bottle, the dog stopped panting and turned its head to watch the bottle roll. Once the bottle stopped, the dog turned back to look at me and started panting again.

“Hello Frodo,” I said.

Frodo didn’t say anything.

I pointed a finger at him. “You need to decide what type of animal you are and stick with it. This thing you have of changing shapes all the time is messing with my head.”

Frodo looked at me and panted.

“You’re a dog now, so you’re going to stay like a dog. I insist. Is that understood?”

Frodo looked at me and grinned.

The night air was chilly. I needed to get moving so that I could warm up. Walking would do it. That’s right. I needed to be walking.

Looming up out of the darkness, a tree stood itself up straight and waved its arms at the sky, the moon waved back.

“Come on then,” I said.

I levered myself to my feet and started walking along the line of the fence. Frodo the dog walked beside me. It was hard to walk in a straight line. I’d take a few steps forward then stagger sideways for a step. Frodo walked beside me, patiently waiting every time I staggered to a halt. The tree with its waving arms trailed along behind us, silently begging for food, or attention, or a scratch over its eyes. It tended to loom suddenly out of the dark and then fade away again at random intervals. That was disconcerting.

After a short walk, we came across a gate in the fence. The gate was held closed by a thick, heavy chain secured with a padlock that had long since rusted solid. Nobody was getting through that gate. The wire in the fence next to the gate had come away from the posts and curled back, leaving a person-sized gap beside the gate. The gap in the fence made the idea of locking the gate completely ridiculous. I tried to step through the gap and tripped on the bottom bar of the fence. That sent me sprawling onto the ground.

“Shit!” The fall didn’t hurt but it probably should have.

I scrabbled about for a moment before getting up on all fours and then staggering back to my feet. Frodo had stepped through the gap daintily and was now waiting patiently for me to be ready to continue.

The tree waved goodbye and turned to sadly make its way back to where it belonged.

We were now in a thin strip of land, about 20 metres wide, that ran in a straight line for a long way. I don’t know how far. It was mostly covered in long grass and weeds but an unmade path trailed its way along one side. The reserve was there because of a buried gas main that ran along underneath the ground. On both sides were the back fences of people’s houses. We walked along the reserve for a while. There were no lights in the reserve, but the moonlight was enough for me to pick out the gravel and dirt of the path.

The moon kept humming tunelessly to itself, but I ignored it and kept walking.

Occasionally, the reserve crossed a side street. There would be a simple metal rail fence to stop cars driving into the reserve and a gap in the rail for pedestrians to get through. The side streets were lit by occasional streetlights. They gave me enough light to see that my companion was one of those labradoodle dogs with the tight curly hair, a cross between a labrador and a poodle.