Sam's Tale:

Sam’s Tale:

Stan Winters was a young vet - just out of Petstone University. He was earning good money, and living it up. He’d gotten this job, in a back-water town somewhere near to York, just after graduating. The pay was good for a first vet’s job and he only worked for about six hours a day. Consulting for four of those hours was tough, but he had the charm and the flair. Flatter the women, speak ‘baby’ to the animals, be nice to the children, treat the men like lords and above all dominate all of the clients with the blinding light of scientific knowledge. His boss was a woman and that made it easier still, because Stan was quite sure she’d given him the job because she fancied him.
It was a late afternoon in May and Stan was looking forward to what he saw as a hot date with his boss. Judy called him in his flat above the surgery, just as he stepped out of the shower.
‘Sick puppy coming in Stan’ she said. ‘Sounds like it could be Parvo’.
‘Just what I need, are you staying on for the call?’ he asked.
‘Nah - I was just about to lock up, Paddy and the boys are waiting in the car outside, as we speak. You will have to handle this one by yourself Stan’ she said.
They'll be here by 7:30pm, Katie is on call, so ring her, not me, if you need help, OK?’
‘Right!’ he said. Then he thought to himself - damn, I don’t need this right now, fresh out of the shower, on a testosterone high.
7:30pm arrived and Stan, smelling lovely, invited an elderly women, a young girl and a sick looking puppy into the surgery. He took their details and retrieved the pup’s file. His name was Sam and Stan checked his history before getting on with the job: six months old, lab cross, vaccinated, not insured.
‘OK would you like to bring Sam into consulting room 2 so that I can take a good look at him?’
The pup was miserable, no doubt about it, dehydrated, lethargic, temperature 106 - but not fitting yet. Its silky brown and white fur was also covered with the stains of bloody diarrhoea and vomit.
Stan cringed at the thought of touching it, and then professionalism took over.
‘I have to examine Sam properly, out the back, and I need to run some tests. What did you say happened?’
‘He just got sick’ sobbed the little girl.
‘It’s as she said’ said the elderly lady. ’Maybe he ate something bad. He started being sick yesterday and we thought it would pass. When the blood started in the vomit and stuff, we called you’.
‘Mmm right’ said Stan.
‘Will you leave him with me overnight? You will have to sign a consent form for the treatment’ he said. He was speaking directly to the old lady and the whole time the little girl was clinging on to her puppy and sobbing.
‘Is he going to die?’ cried the girl.
‘Now Beth’ said the elderly lady who must have been her grandmother, ‘let the nice man do his job’.
‘That’s right. He’ll be fine with me. I’ll just go and get a pet carrier for you to put Sam into, and, yes, sign that form - that’s right’. Secretly Stan was congratulating himself at his simple extraction of the pet from the owners, the very trusting way that they had agreed to any treatment at any cost, and the fact that he hadn’t really got his hands dirty, nor any stains on his freshly ironed pink shirt.
‘Yes that’s good, you put Sam in the basket now Beth, of course he can keep his blanket, I’ll do what I can, now don’t worry’.
‘Oh, you poor puppy’ cooed Stan reassuringly for the owners.
Beth was dragged heart broken from the surgery.
At that moment Sam threw up.
‘Filthy animal’ shouted Stan. Then he picked up the basket and shook it until the sick looking puppy fell out of it into its next destination - the clean kennel.
Sam was scared now, and so sick, and well that kennel didn’t stay clean for very long. Ignoring this Stan reached into the cage and quickly gave the pup a couple of shots, an anti-biotic, an anti-emetic and a sedative.
‘Oi, that’ll do’ said Stan as he gave Sam a thump in the ribs for trying to bite him.
Stan turned out the lights and left the surgery, not thinking of anything except his hot date, and how chuffed his boss would be that this late case that he’d admitted would be an easy couple of hundred quid. He did ring Katie and ask her to come in to check on the pup at 10pm.
At 10pm Katie rang to say that the pup looked real sick and that she couldn’t clean it out because it was snarling and she was worried that it might bite her. Stan asked her to describe how it was looking and then told her that he thought it would do until he morning. He then climbed back into bed with his boss.
Tina arrived first at the surgery the next morning. She was welcomed by a horrific stench and the sight of the pup lying stiff in his cage, caked in faeces and vomit.
‘He can deal with that himself’ she said to herself, as she sprayed some air freshener around the surgery and got on with arranging the records for the morning’s surgery.
Stan had a stinking headache, but he was quite sure of his performance in bed last night, so he was confident the day would go well.
‘Pup’s dead’ said Tina, as he walked in to the surgery.
‘Is it?’ he muttered back nonchalantly. Then curiosity took over and he made his way out to the kennel area to take a look.
Strange - it had looked a bit like Parvo - if it was, well he’d given it the wrong treatment, he knew he should have took the time to put the pup on a drip, but hey he was in a rush, the dog hadn’t been exactly friendly, and he had thought it would have waited until the morning. He hadn’t written anything down yet, so that was Ok.
As he opened the cage door on the dry anonymous eyes, he noticed that the pup’s mouth was open. Something shot out of its mouth and up into Stan’s nose. He retched and reached for some tissue. He blew his nose, sneezed - nothing, then he drank some water. Perhaps he had imagined it.
Morning consultations were over by 10:45am, Stan had a couple of cats to spay, but that was all. Time for a quick pint - 11am lager, a habit he’d picked up at University.
The landlady of the Nag’s Head frowned at him as he ordered his pint. Her first client of the day, every day since he’d arrived here, three weeks earlier. It wasn’t that she found him impolite, she knew he was the vet, she had animals herself and she didn’t like the thought of a drunk treating her pets or anyone else's.
Picking up on her negative vibes, Stan sat down out of her sight. His head was whizzing a bit from last night - the beer would cure that for sure. He was half way through his pint when his stomach clenched upon itself with the full force of a projectile vomit. The noise that he made was enough.
‘You are out!’ shouted the landlady.
Stan tried to stand, but he just wobbled and sat back down.
‘Out!’ shouted the landlady. ‘I could do without you stinkin’ alcoholics!’
‘S..s...si..sic’. Stan tried to say that he was sick, the words just refused to come out. He was mute and the pain in his abdomen was so intense that he was reeling in agony.
‘Bert, Derek - we got a sick-head in here. Get down here and get him out, NOW, will you!’ ordered the landlady.
Stan’s eyes were glazed, he couldn’t move, he was hot, thirsty, in agony. Faeces were running down his trouser legs. Bert and Derek dragged him out by his arms, and Bert kicked Stan in the ribs when he tried to pull himself up on Derek’s trouser leg.
‘Better call an ambulance’ said Bert, compassionately.
Stan lay on the pavement, fluid running away from him, he could see the blood streaks in his vomit.
His mind went horribly clear. He stopped feeling the pain, but he was still mute and he couldn’t get up. His body had somehow lapsed into spasm.
The ambulance arrived and the paramedics strapped Stan to a bed. Once inside the van, Stan vomited again.
‘Anti-emetic, antibiotics, and a sedative, you reckon?’ suggested one paramedic to the other.
‘God no!’ shouted Stan, but no noise came out. He could feel the filth in his trousers and his shoes and then his body started to jerk convulsively, out of control.
‘Cardiac arrest - Stand back’.
‘Noooo!’ tried Stan ‘no more pain’. Then they hit him with the shock and electricity fired through every nerve of his body.
As Stan felt this: his final pain, Sam jumped into the moving ambulance literally through the glass window. Then as the paramedics fought to save the life of Stan, Sam sat on his chest - staring at him, accusing him. Making Stan share in his death.

Written by Joanne Mitchinson VN BA(Hons)
- All rights reserved -

Jane's Tale

Her’s was never going to be a great life, mediocre at best.
Plain Jane from the start – too right!
She’d had ambitions, jaded now, like the dreams of childhood.
She sat alone, well he was there, he had started her end, and she loathed him like only a woman may loath a man. She’d been alright before he came along and before what fate had labelled as love had chained them together.
Daily she chatted, she dreamed and did her chores, then there was her job, there were prospects there, a future a different life from that of her mother. The life her mother would have liked if her father had allowed it.
At first she was pleased by his attention towards her, sometimes he was funny and he bought her that toffee. That toffee she cursed now as the ruination of her teeth.
Then he’d wanted to put it in there, just the once he’d said, to see how it felt and she’d let him. Then it had to be every day, twice sometimes, and then she grew heavy and the folk’s forced their hands to marriage just four weeks before her first child arrived. She was Seventeen years old.
For thirty exhausting years she did nothing but serve him, lay down for his desire, whatever his desire, and then raise the results. He told her she was worthless and beat her black and blue, all for his pleasure, for his desire.
Seven children and only three were fortunate enough to die. The others fed from her alongside him, so that now exhausted and thin, hollow and forgotten to herself, she stared blankly and awaited the next blow.
Little Tommy was seventeen now and he’d gotten’ that girl down the road pregnant. Just like his father. Only little Tommy wasn’t hanging around, he had been paid by the girls family to go away, and that was it, her closest, eldest son gone. Maybe he would have given something back to her if he’d had the chance.
That man, him, her husband, he was old now – he stunk, he drank, he smoked and she’d fed him enough fat for the purpose, but his damn heart beat on.
It was hers that was failing, she was going to die soon and that soon just wasn’t soon enough. She hoped death would be the absolute end, she had only one wish from death and that was to never feel him touch her again.
-The End-

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