“Come on buddy. I’ll get you some water,” I told the dog as I hurried inside along with his supplies. He panted heavily in my arms. I set him down on the gray spotted marble floor in the kitchen while I looked through the supplies for the food and water bowls. “Ahh. Here they are. Let me go get your food from the closet,” I said to the dog. My last pet, a golden retriever named Sandy, had recently died and I kept the dog food, hoping to buy another pet.

Once I had gotten the dog food and water in their corresponding bowls, I started to look at my new pet and examine him for any obvious injuries or symptoms. I should mention that I was a full time veterinarian. I worked hard to help patients keep their pets alive and healthy.
My new dog had a thick, brown stripe over one of his golden eyes. His thin body made it easy for me to put my hands around his middle without stretching my fingers. The fur on the bottom of his stomach was a blondish-white, while the fur on his back and the rest of his stomach was a dark caramel color. I ran my hands through his thick fur coat as he drank his water and ate his food. He seemed to be only a little older than 8 months old and I guessed that he was a german shepard mix. As I examined his mouth for any sign of gum disease, I noticed something that utterly amazed me.
“You have the same exact tooth setup and structure as a human!”, I said with excitement coursing through my veins. “I can’t believe this!”
I called my friend Andy to let him know of my unbelievable discovery. Within three rings, he picked up the phone.
“ANDY! You are never going to believe this! I just bought a dog and found out that it has the same teeth as a human, almost exactly like mine actually,” I said excitedly.
“Hold on for one second there Brian. Two things. First, congrats on getting a new pet. I know you were really upset after you lost Sandy. She was such a well behaved and loving dog. Secondly...you have to get that dog out of your house right now! Where is it right now? Go to Wilmer’s Pet Shop and sell it right now. Those things are bad news! And did I mention-,” he screamed at me hurriedly through the phone. Oh, and did I mention that my dear friend Andy could be a little dramatic and over-the-top sometimes...oh, who am I kidding? He always acted like that!
“Andy! ANDY! Can you please slow down and explain to me WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT?”, I replied in the same fashion that he did.
“Okay...okay. I’m calmed down now. What I am trying to say is that those dogs have a bad reputation,” he replied.
“What do you mean by ‘those dogs’?”, I asked.
“Dogs that seem to have human-like qualities. For example, my cousin’s husband, Ryker, had bought a dog for his wife. The dog they had gotten was able to stand on it’s hind legs at the age of 10 months old with not a single lick of training. About 3 months after they got it, my cousin told her husband that the dog had run into the road while she let it outside. She acts like a completely different person ever since that accident, was how her husband put it, as I recall.”
“So what?! That’s one person! How many people could have something like that happe-”, I asked as Andy cut off my sentence early, as I did to his.
“I have multiple friends who know people whom have had almost the same exact issue with their animals, and it is not just dogs. Cats, rabbits, and even fish started to act like humans. All I’m telling you is to watch out, Brian. I don’t want to see you get hurt again like what happened when Sandy died,” he said nervously.
“Thanks so much, Andy. I’ll watch out for anything weird and make sure he stays in the yard when I let him outside!” I said jokingly. “Are you still on for dinner tomorrow? I want to see Nancy and Ryan.”
“Yeah, we’re still on. Nancy’s making sesame chicken and rice. You wouldn’t believe how big Ryan has gotten since you last saw him! He just learned how to ride a bike! With the training wheels of course,” he replied.
In the background, I heard Nancy’s high pitched voice yell up from the bathroom, “ANDY! WHERE ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?”
“I’m on the phone with Brian. He just wanted to talk to me about the dinner tomorrow,” he calls up to her. I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“There you are! Can I talk to him?” she said, her voice muffled by my phone’s bad reception.
“I’m sorry, but I actually have to do something. Tell Nancy that I’ll talk to her tomorrow when we have dinner,” I told Andy.
“Okay. Nancy, Brian’s sorry but he can’t talk to you right now. He has some work to finish,” Andy told Nancy.
I hear Nancy mutter something along the lines of, “He never has time to do anything.”
“Always the charmer, isn’t she?” I said as I had made sure I heard her stomping up the stairs.
“You have that right. So I’ll talk to you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Most definitely. Oh, and thank you for getting me out of talking to Nancy. You know how she can just talk for hours on end,” I said dramatically.
“Yeah. Ok, I will see you tomorrow. Goodbye, Brian.”
“Goodbye, Andy.” He hang up the phone before I could have said anything else.
I looked down at my seemingly innocent pet laying on my tan leather couch and realized that I had made a serious mistake.
“I never gave you a name! Every pet has to have a name!” I exclaimed as I thought up possible titles. I thought back to when I had looked at his teeth and came up with the perfect name for him. All of the signs were there.
“I’ll name you...Jaws! Yeah, Jaws! I like that!”
Little did I know that when I was walking away, that cute, little innocent dog was preparing something even more sinister than his name…

I normally woke up at 5:30 to 6:30 in the morning, but I ended up at what seemed to be about 3:00 o’clock in the morning due to a scratching noise on my dresser. As I fumbled around for my alarm clock, I saw a figure hovering near my shirt drawer. I stayed hidden under my pile of blankets and sheets so that they would not see me. My heart rate, normal 5 seconds ago, now grew immensely. My hands started to get clammy and sweaty. I heard whoever it was say, “Where are his dress shirts? I saw them in here when Master Allen was showing me my new home…”
I heard more drawers being open and shut frantically, searching for, of all things, clothing. Not jewelry or valuables or even money, but clothing. What person would look through someone else’s dresser for clothing at almost 3:00 o’clock in the morning!? You may be thinking this, and you are right...this wasn’t a human.
I didn’t connect all the dots until much later. At the time I thought it was just a psychopath who had escaped from a mental hospital. As it turned out, it was much, much worse. I stayed laying still until I heard the balcony doors open, then close seconds later.
5 minutes after my heart beat started to calm down, I called the police explaining the entire situation. They must’ve thought that I was the psychopath due to all of the snickering and comments in the background. The first thing the police officer I was talking to said was, “Sir, I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but have you been...umm….drinking at all tonight?”
“NO! I do not drink alcohol this early in the morning!” I yelled.
“Umm...sir? I think you have a slight misunderstanding of the time. You do know that it’s March 5th at 10:00 o’clock pm., right?” I could here the embarrassing remarks coming from the police officers behind him. Most of them were comments such as, “Come on, Nick!”, “You can take him down!”, and “Watch the rookie use his magic to calm the madman!”
I was angry and confused at the same time. The anger was from the policemen calling me a madman, and the confusion was from how I had slept through a week without knowing.
“Thank you so much for your help, Officer Nick. I am so glad that there are people who assume the worst. Thank you again for your help, Mr.Pessimist. Goodbye,” I said in a false cheery accent.
I walked down the stairs from my room to see Jaws laying asleep on his tan colored dog bed. When I saw him, I started over towards him. He awoke at the sound of my large footsteps. When he rose off the ground, I started to question my sanity.
“YOU...YOU’RE STANDING!” I yelled as I backed up into my couch. That’s when I noticed the dress shirt sticking out of the corner of his dog bed.
“Yes, Human. You are not the only one who has the capability to stand in an upright position,” he said as he laughed in his deep voice. I had not been able to see his whole body when he was laying since there was a blanket covering him. He seemed to be an exact replica of me, not including the fact that hair was covering him head-to-toe, literally. His eyes had turned to a light sky blue (just like mine), the hair on his head had started to change into a light brown color, buzz-cut (just like mine), and his body started to resemble me more and more every second I stared at him in amazement and also terror.
“Who are you?” I asked in a frightened voice.
He waited a moment to tell me the answer that I did not want to hear.
“Your. Worst. Nightmare.”
He pulled a large hairy fist back and swung a punch that made me fly across the room like a sack of potatoes. The last words I heard him say were, “Night, night little human…”

When I woke up, I was strapped to this chair, with “My Worst Nightmare” sitting next to me, notepad in hand. He wrote something down on one of his papers, then erased whatever he put down, and grumbled in frustration. I also noticed that he was no longer covered in hair.
Upon seeing that I was awake, he took a vial of clear liquid and read the dosage directions.
“Dang it! I got the stupid dosage directions wrong!” That was when I started to gain some feeling in my arms and legs, so I stretched to loosen my tightened muscles. When I stretched, I saw the chairs you see all around me right now, except that they were filled with people being examined by clones of themselves. I tried to turn on my side to face the ‘animal’ that I once called ‘Jaws’.
“What are you doing to me?” I asked, curiosity taking over my fear.
“What am I doing to you? Here, let me show you,” he replied as he showed me the papers he was writing on.
There were elaborate sketches detailing my vital organs, muscles, and bone structure. When I turned the page, all I could see were notes describing everything I have done for the past 8 months. Pages, upon pages, upon pages were filled with my daily chores, where I bought my groceries, when I went to work, and how I reacted to different things.
“How long have you been following me? Wait...wait...before you even answer that question, why don’t you tell me WHY you are following me?” I said as a smile crept onto his face that made my skin crawl.
“Well, my dear friend, you have been chosen to participate in an experiment! I can see the confusion in your eyes, so let me show you,” he responded while fumbling around to find a remote. He finally found it sitting under piles of paper on his very messy oak wood desk, and as he grabbed it, he pulled an old television over in front of me.
“If you watch this, all will become clear to you...if you pay attention of course.” The television turned on with static being the first image I saw. It changed from the static as quickly as it turned on. The screen showed images of people strapped to chairs, exactly like mine. I noticed that the people standing over them had the same face as their...let’s call the people strapped to chairs ‘patients’. The next row of photos showed scientists, dressed in suspiciously similar clothing to the salesman’s, injecting animals with a purple liquid. The photo shifted to a time lapse video of those animals, showing how they changed over a six week time span. Most of the photos after that included the animals and ‘patients’ next to each other. Every single photo, after the previous, showed the animals cutting up the patients to examine their bodies and the animals taking over their life by doing everything that the ‘patients’ would normally do.
“That’s going to happen to me, isn’t it?” I asked with hesitation in my voice.
“Yes. You aren’t the first one I have done this to, just so you know,” he grumbled to me through gritted teeth.
“When will you start to…” I tried to think of the words to describe what the animals did to the ‘patients’ after they didn’t need them to talk anymore.
“I think what you are trying to ask is when I will be using you as a cadaver,” he said with patience in his voice. It certainly seemed like he had used bodies as cadavers before. His voice had a calmness to it that made me think that he had dealt with questions like those before.
“Thank you. Yes, that is what I am asking.”
He sighed and said, “I’m sorry to say this, but in less than 5 minutes, I have to...put you down.”
I sunk down in my seat and closed my eyes as soon as I heard his answer. I thought of my mother, how she had killed herself many years ago due to her supposed ‘lack of love’. Little did she know that even though I may have not showed her my love all the time, I loved her with all of my heart and soul. I prayed for her, asking her to forgive me of all the horrible things I had done, including not showing her my love for her as my mother.
I also prayed for her to forgive me for, you’re never going to believe this but, killing my father. Even though he whipped me, hit me, and came home drunk every night of every week, each month, I shouldn’t have killed him. I should have let the police know what was happening and they would’ve arrested him. That night kept being replayed in my head over, and over, and over again.

It was one of the few nights that my father came home before 3:00 o’clock in the morning. I was sitting on the couch with my back to the door. I had the notes for my biology test out in front of me. I remember how much I hated biology after that night. My golden retriever named Riley was laying next to my feet, keeping them nice and warm. When the front door opened and closed behind me, I knew my father was home, due to the smell of his poker buddies’ beer.
“What are you still doing up, boy?! I told you to be in bed before 12:00!” was the first thing he said to me.
I mumbled under my breath, “Mom told me that I could stay up as long as I needed to..”
My father started over towards me and stopped to catch his balance on the chair. He must’ve had more to drink than I thought he did, I thought to myself. He finished walking towards me and knelt down on the ground.
“Give me your hand. Now,” he growled. He held his hand out for me to put mine on. I set my right hand on his large, bone-crushing hand. I knew that if I didn’t obey, he would put me back in the basement. I waited 3 minutes for the pain of him doing something to my hand to come, but it never came.
“I want you to tell me what you said under your breath,” he said, huffing out the words like they hurt him in some way.
I knew what he would do if I lied, which was much worse. I chose to tell the truth.
“I...I said that M-Mom told me I could stay up as long as I need to.”
I could practically see the smoke coming out of his nose in anger.
“Your mother does not tell you what you can and can’t do! I’m in charge of you!” He took my hand and twisted it as far around as it could go, and then pushed it farther. I screamed and yowled in agony as he held it in that position for what felt like a lifetime, even though it was 30 seconds. When Riley heard my screams of agony, he jumped up, bit my father on the arm, and refused to let go.
It was then my father’s turn to scream. He yanked Riley off of his arm, along with a chunk of his skin, and carried him to the bathroom. I could hear Riley yelping as my father carried him down the hallway. I screamed and yelled for my father to stop.
My mother showed me where the house guns were kept when I was little, in case anything should have happened to me. I used that knowledge to grab the closest shotgun, pump it, than run to the bathroom.
My father was standing over the tub filled with water, holding Riley underneath. I pumped the gun once again and aimed. He turned around to face me and said, “Please...please don’t shoot me. I love you, I really d...”
“I’m not going to listen to any more of your lies, Dad.”
I waited one moment, and looked for one reason why I shouldn’t shoot him, but I couldn’t find one, so I put my finger on the trigger and squeezed. BAM! That was the last sound I ever heard that had something to do with my father.
As I started to feel the shock sink in of what I had done, I thought of my puppy drowning in the tub. I stepped over my newly dead father and found Riley laying face down in the water, slowly floating to the top.
I yelled out, “NO! Riley...Riley, you’re gonna be okay! Just hold on…”
I pulled him out of the tub, making my lime green polo shirt soaked with water. The bath had a bath mat next to it, so I set him down upon it. Even though I didn’t want it to be true, I knew he was already dead. I kept trying to make his heart beat once again, but I couldn’t. I choose to become a veterinarian so that I could save other people’s pets since I wasn’t able to save Riley. It is also why I chose to become an anti-animal abusive person.

I was snapped back to reality when my ‘clone’ said, “You’re times up, human,” I knew that it was the end for me.
“How are you going to...end me?” I stuttered as I asked questioningly.
“We give you a gas that is used to kill animals in pet shelters. To be truthful, I hate this job. I just wanted to tell you because you won’t be able to...well, tell anyone,” he said.
“Why don’t you do something to stop this instead of enforcing it? You can make a difference.”
“Maybe… maybe I will. Thank you any way, Brian. Yes, I know your real name. I wanted you to hear me say it so that you knew I payed attention.”
He looked me in the eye as he put a small sign attached to a string around my neck. Then he flipped it up so that I could see what it said. I expected it to have my name, phone number, ID, or even home address on it, but instead, the tag just had one line of numbers on it; 18837.
“Is this the number that identifies me?”
“Yes, it is. you can like it, or you can hate it, but it’s yours,” was his response.
“I hope you do try to stop them from doing this to people, even if it is after I die,” I said.
“I’ll try my best to stop them, but to do that, I need to do this to other people.”
“If you need to kill more people to save an even larger number, you should do it. Kill more people to save even more,” I told him.
“Let me think about it. I am now going to put the mask over your mouth and nose. Are there any last things you want to say before you leave?”
I said, “Do you happen to know what the fine print on your tag said? I never got to look at it.”
He nodded his head ‘yes’ and said, “‘One should not judge by appearances, but by actions.’” I understood what he meant when he said it.
“You can put the mask on me now,” I told ‘Jaws’. He put the plastic mask over my face, went back to the tank behind me, and turned some valves labeled “More” and “Less” to the right combination. I started to feel woozy as the gas took effect. The last thing I saw was my ‘German Shepherd puppy’ waving goodbye to me, with actual tears in his eyes.

You are probably wondering why he treated me at least partially sanely, and this is why. I never screamed or yelled at him to get his filthy paws away from me, and I think that may have had something to do with it. Next, you may ask yourself, “If Brian died, then how am I talking to him right now?” And you are right, it is confusing. So let me explain. I am apparently from a long line of ancestors who have been able to transform into ghosts when they die, so here I am. You should probably also know this; I’m not a...good apparition, I am a spirit who does not respect people like you. Your people killed me to run an experiment, not even one necessary to life, but one to ruin mankind. Your people killed millions so that animals could take their place. Just for that, I’m going to help you end your life for the millions of people that died due to your experiment that ended up failing. No, you can’t run. Look at your hands and the chair you are in. I tied you up while you weren’t paying attention. Apparently you didn’t listen to my advice when I first spoke to you; pay attention. Now don’t worry. This gas is only going to make you hurt for a little while... or longer. Now night, night little human…..


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“I wonder where Brian is?” Andy told Nancy. He had been wondering why Brian hadn’t called to let them know he wouldn’t be coming and why he wouldn’t come. Brian had been waiting weeks to see his nephew and Nancy.
“I don’t know where he is, but he’d better get her soon, or the chicken will be cold,” Nancy replied, clearly frustrated that her brother hadn’t shown up yet.
Andy heard a knock on the door and went to answer it. Brian stood on the front porch, waiting to be let inside, almost like an animal.
“Hey, Brian! Where were you? Nancy was about to call the cops and file a missing person’s report! Come on in!” Andy asked Brian.
“I was trying to find my dress shirt drawer, since you wanted me to wear a dress shirt and pants,” Brian responded.
“How could it take you 2 hours to find your dress shirt drawer? You aren’t even wearing a dress shirt! Nancy is going to be so angry!”
“Yeah, yeah. Just let me in,” Brian whined. He was even starting to sound like an animal.
“Ok, come on. Oh! By the way, how is Jaws?” Andy asked Brian.
“He is just fine...perfectly fine with his new life…”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



“Jeez, Nook! How many pounds have you gained in the last week? This suitcase is really heavy,” the salesman exclaimed as he trudged along the sidewalk in the pouring rain.

A voice muffled by an assortment of objects came from his third suitcase. The voice said, “Well, I may have snuck into your secret snack stash. I’m sorry! I was just so hungry and those Tasty Kake Cupcakes looked sooooo yummy, and they were!”

The salesman then said in response to the voice, “Shhh...we’re here. Remember what I told you yesterday. Also, try to remember where everything is located. My cousin just had one forget where the dress shirts were. Make your noise, Nook!”

The voice called Nook made a noise similar to one in a car crash. The door opened hurriedly, with the owner of the house peeking out to see what happened to cause such a loud noise.

The salesman started to explain his products before the woman could close the door. When she agreed to look at his items, she was immediately repulsed by the sight of the salesman as soon as she saw the tangerine orange and white calico kitten in the bottom of the third suitcase. She pulled the cat out, handed the salesman a $50 bill, and went inside. The salesman then pulled out a notepad and wrote something on it. He went up to her front door and left the note in one of the corners of the window so that she would see it immediately. As the salesman walked away, he took one last look at that seemingly normal house. In the yard, there stood a large red sign with a message written out on top of it in black sharpie; Stop Animal Abuse!

The salesman knew he had picked the perfect house. All of the signs were there….