Zomby In the Window – Roady Series Episode #41

I didn’t expect anyone to be home. The first floor of the old farmhouse was nearly hidden by overgrown bushes and weed trees. Roady shot through the natural barrier. I wasn’t planning on trespassing but he paced on the weather beaten porch like we had an appointment or something to sell.
“Roady, come here boy.”
But he would have none of it. I bent under overhanging bushes and moved a fallen branch from the front path to get to him. “Roady,” I said with my strongest authoritative voice. He jumped up on the glass of the front door, his claws clicking on the pane. I walked across the sagging porch, reached for his collar and pulled him back. When I looked up, there was a face in the glass. I cried out startled. It was like a ‘day of the dead’ movie with a zombie ready to eat my brains.
She was old, with white wispy hair pulled back with bobby pins. She wore a faded flowered house dress with a loose grey sweater. Her face was blank. Her eyes foggy. I really had to wonder, was she alive?
“Very sorry,” I said to the image in the dusty glass.
It was an old door, the wood darkened with age and the glass thick and beveled at the edges. They don’t make them like that anymore, able to endure a century of weather and use. At least not for the average house. I know. The doors we installed on the new houses were fiberglass, ‘insulated’ with double panes that were “guaranteed for life”. Whose life? A question no one asked.
When Mrs. Miller reached out and turned the deadbolt lock, I knew I was in trouble.
The smile that spread across her face when she opened the door sealed the deal.

Entylerywords is all fiction based on a character in a novel by Clare Graith. To read from the beginning of Roady Series, choose it in categories. Let me know you’re a fan and “like” this post. Join the club and Follow by email or WordPress. To read more of my writing check out : CGExpress.

A Dog’s Life – Roady Series Episode #40

Keep moving. That’s what the doctor said. I’m not eligible for extended rehab so it’s up to me to get up and get going. Roady likes the idea. I walk him up the road a ways down the long drive that stretches to the Miller’s old farmhouse. It looks abandoned but Mom says Mrs.Miller still lives there.

We walk past dry fields of soybeans. The plants are dead and yet this means they’re ready for harvest. Dead means life to something else.
“That’s the way the world goes round isn’t it?” I say to Roady.
He looks up at me then gives a soft gruff. I’m not sure he agrees but he takes a bite of one of the plants and chomps on the beans.
“I mean life is all about dying.”
Roady pulls away yanking the leash right out of my hand. He jumps in front of me throwing the straggling bits of soy plant in the air. I laugh and try to take a step forward but he challenges me again. I pick up the plant and toss it. Roady follows it through the air and pounces on it like it is a prized beef bone.
When I reach for it, he picks it up so fast then races in a circle around my legs.
“You nutty dog,” I say. He comes around again and jumps up against my chest pressing on the spot where stitches used to be. The pain takes my breath away but I can’t be mad.
“I get it,” I say. “Life isn’t about dying, it’s about playing and maybe good food.”
Roady barks loud and strong, a sure vote of “yes”.

Read the full Roady Series from the beginning by choosing it in categories. Entylerywords is all fiction based on a character in a novel by Clare Graith. Read more of Clare’s writing at CGExpress.

In the Mind of the Dog – Roady Series Episode #39

I had a dream. I was my dog Roady. I woke up with dirt in my nose because I had dug a hole at the base of the tree where I was tethered. It was a good hole and I chomped on one of the roots, the buried treasure I had found. But, I realized, it was another day, tied to the tree. I wanted to chase the leaves that drifted down with the cool autumn breeze but when I leapt up to snag them from the air, the rope yanked me back. I tried chewing the few at my feet but it wasn’t the same as catching them in the air like toasted biscuits falling from the sky.
Don’t want to be going round this tree so I sit and watch that gravel path, the one that my master comes down when he’s back from an adventure without me. Don’t know why he goes without me. I see the car, that wonderful place where the blankets smell like him or maybe they smell like me or potato chips, the kind with that red, powdery stuff that tastes like meat cooked outside. Haven’t had that meat in a long time. Not since my first master left in a van with red lights flashing. I want some meat right now. I’m hungry, yes, definitely someone forgot to bring me breakfast. I call to the boys but all I get is a rock thrown by that man, not my master, the man who yells and keeps me tied here.
My master left in a van with red flashing lights. Will he never return like the last one? Will I always be tied to the tree? I hear my own soft whistling cry.
I get a fresh bowl of water sloshing. I steal sips as a boy lowers it down. He laughs at me for spilling it. Then he puts down my bowl of food. Love my food. Can’t get enough. I pull it up with my tongue and throw it to the back of my mouth, salty, tasty. I crack it to bits between my teeth. It’s good. It’s good. It’s gone. Wait there must be more. Wait. More please! My barking doesn’t seem to bring more.


Day runs into day. The leaves no longer tease me. They just fall. I just watch. Then one day, I’m on the leash and off the tree. The biggest boy walks me up the street. Am I going to find my master?
We come to a place with grass and more grass and kids and more kids. There’s balls, and balloons that look like big round leaves, bobbing on strings. I can catch one. I leap up and bite. It bites me back and I whimper. But there’s another one. I’ll get this one too, but as soon as I leap, the leash pulls me away.

I spend the day at this place of wild noises and kids petting and poking me. I have a short rope on and can’t leap and catch any more balloons because there’s a cart behind me and kids inside it. It’s almost like the tree. I go round in circles. The kids laugh. There’s one, two, three at a time. I feel a pain when I try to pull forward. Oh yeah, that’s the place that was torn once. The cart tips over and someone says the cart rides are done. Yes, I’m done and the boy walks me back home. I wish he would carry me. I wish…then I see him, my master. He’s there. It’s him. He did not leave me. He came back. I don’t know how I do it but I pull from the boy’s grip and run to my master.
“You’re back. You’re back. You’re back. I’m so happy, happy, happy.”
I lick his face and taste that it is really him. It smells like him. It is him. Life is good.

I woke up from that dream to the feel of Roady’s breath on my face. He is sleeping so close to me, paws over my chest like he’s pinning me down.
“Don’t worry boy,” I whisper. “I’m not leaving you.”
But in the next moment a thought comes to me, I have no place to live. How will I bring him back to Cincinnati? Where will he stay all day? I close my eyes to this dilemma and drift back to sleep.

Choose “Roady Series” in categories to read from Episode 1. “Like” this post to let me know you enjoyed it. EnTylerywords is fiction based on a character by Clare Graith. Check out CG Express for more writing by Clare.