Dogs

A young man, his mouth wide-open in a silent scream, holds out a hand shorn of two fingers, trying to fend off a maddened mob of dogs. But fangs are rending his legs and back and shoulders. Jaws crunch bone, bolt chunks of flesh. One hound hangs from a pale cheek, ripping off a rag of skin; another, snout-deep, is savaging the groin; another drags out a lump of lung. Foam-flecks whirl, slivers of drool trail, blood spurts and spatters and mists.

Alastair stared at all this with roving eyes, relishing the carnage before him in his sour mood. Then he muttered: ‘I suppose that’s what’s known as going to the dogs.’ As he grinned at his own joke, he spotted something like horns sprouting from the young man’s head. He frowned and turned to the plaque beside the painting for an explanation. It informed him that this was the hunter Actaeon being turned into a stag and attacked by his own dogs as punishment for catching sight of the goddess Diana’s body while she was bathing. Alastair immediately turned back to the canvas to see if the naked female was depicted. She was. A distant figure in the top left corner, overseeing her revenge.

He eyed the slim divinity’s small breasts and snorted. Hardly tits to die for! About as pathetic as Flat White’s; and she was as po-faced as her and all. You need a bit of silicon, my girl. Actually, you need a lot of silicon. What were you – the patron goddess of pancakes?

Alastair looked at the clock and grimaced. He had followed a couple of schoolgirls, but they had been met by a couple of schoolboys, and now his lunch break was nearly over and it was time to get back to the office.

Outside the art gallery he turned into a side street, which was empty apart from several dogs lounging around at the far end. As he approached them, they lifted their heads, eyed him and bared their fangs in a grin. He faltered. Several more dogs sauntered into the street behind him.