The Two-Wheeled Dog of the Apocalypse (Dogs)

By Shawn McCormack

Just above Washington Square Park, Sometime in March, 2001

It was one of those days when the weather demanded I venture outside and explore my surroundings even though I had to count out my train fare in nickels.

I met Simon at the West 4 Street stop off the F train and we walked through Washington Square Park and rolled our eyes at the drug dealers.

I had been living in New York for about a month and I was still out of work. So was Simon, and collectively we had enough money for two cups of coffee at this place he knows where they give free refills.

We were walking through the West Village, looking at the pretty girls, and slowly making our way to the coffeeshop when it happened: stopped at a crosswalk, we saw it across the street: the two-wheeled dog of the apocalypse.

Let me try to describe it to you:

Picture a wiener dog, very small. Now picture a haggard old woman on the other end of the leash. The thing about this wiener dog was that it only had front legs, and where it's back legs should have been was this little, rickety, wiener dog wheel chair. The little beast pulled itself along by its front legs only, and right now, the dog was about to take a shit. Horrified -- and refusing to get any closer -- we stood slack-jawed at the crosswalk while the signal changed and everyone else went headlong toward the beast.

The decrepit creature was painfully trying to maneuver off the sidewalk and the equally decrepit woman was pushing its ass down with a wrinkled hand. The dog's haunches were trembling and then the clouds started to roll in.

Remember that up until this point, it had been a beautiful, spring day. We had planned on walking around, getting some coffee and not spending too much money. We had not planned on witnessing a sin against nature, and nature's brutal retaliation.

With the clouds came the wind, squeezed through the narrow streets and tossing debris around. I turned the collar up on my jacket and there was a thunderclap that set off the car alarms. And then came the rain, thick, dark sheets of rain blowing down on the street, huge droplets that soaked and chilled us, and we stood there on the curb. The creature had finished its business and the woman was half-dragging it away, its stumpy front legs beating useless against the sidewalk as the rusty wheels attached to its haunches creaked in the storm. People with newspapers over their head ran for cover under awnings, car alarms screamed and thunder burst over the steady pelting of the streets with the thick, thick rain.

Simon and I remained still at the corner, for only we had seen the creature which had brought on this storm, we were the only witnesses to this desecration which nature felt it needed to cleanse itself of.

After the sidewalks of the city and skins of the people had been soaked and cleaned, the rain stopped, the clouds broke, and the day carried on an usual.

The coffeeshop was crowded and we couldn't find a seat.