dotlit: 'Hounded: An extract from a novel set in the future, The Last
Clone'
by Maurilia Meehan

The fridge had always been blessedly meat-free. (Hildegard was one of
those who applauded the recent revenge of the cows on a meat-eating
society - there was simply no need to eat meat). Now, however, her fridge
displayed plates of raw meat. A mixture of water and blood dripped down
onto her tofu, her soy-milk.

The shank-bones did not drip, but were worse. Hildegard's mother had
cooked for her, as a child, delicious shank broth, with barley, diced
carrot and onion. It was therefore a double disgrace that this delicacy
was now thrown to the dog, like offal. Andre fed the dog shank bones,
because they were cheap, he said.

Hildegard had always zoomed past the meat department at the supermarket,
eyes averted, as from an abattoir. The pale flesh of pigs on hooks
reminded her of the haunches of humans after some foreign atrocity. But
now, Andre insisted on coming with her, and she discovered that there was
an even lower circle of hell than the regular meat department.

Here they sold reduced for quick sale half-rotten or damaged trays of
meat. For dogs. In third world countries, she supposed, even this reject
meat shop would be an outstandingly abundant meat department, with its
grey tongues caught in their paroxysm of death, the glistening white bones
of shank and rib, one step from a decent burial.

These treats Andre placed in their trolley, to Hildegard's shame, and
then transferred them to the back of the car, where ever-hungry Dog
awaited his master's offerings.

How had this happened?

Why had Hildegard said nothing about the arrival of this new member of
the household?

                                    ***

A message on the machine. Andre, her husband, announcing that he was on
his way home from work with a puppy a work-mate was giving away.

A puppy that he couldn't resist.

Andre with a puppy?

Hildegard was not a dog person, and if he brought home a puppy, it was
going to live outside. She would have to make that clear to Andre from the
beginning.

                                    ***

The first night, however, Andre brought the puppy into the bed with him.
He played tug with it, using a face-washer which was not past its prime.
It was a sinful waste.

But Hildegard tried to be tolerant. It was the first day, after all. The
puppy had to settle in.

One can't have a fight with one's partner, can one, because he wants a
little puppy?

Looking back on it, however, Hildegard would regret her lack of firmness.
For the dog slept in their room that night, insinuated itself onto the bed
itself, though Andre was careful to keep it away from her.

                                    ***

Hildegard did not understand how this domestic irregularity, this
aberration of hygiene rules of the house (Andre was usually so clean) had
started.

She had been, perhaps, too wrapped up in her research, her books...she
was not in fact there enough for Andre.

And then last month, there had been that conversation about having a
baby. Andre, being a clone, was infertile, as all of them were. He had
initiated the startling topic at the breakfast table.

'I just want to be sure, Hildegard, that there is no chance ...'

'Of what?"

'You know, the insemination thing.'

'Not that again.'

'Or the parthenogenesis thing.'

And that had been it.

Or so she had thought. She was not going to have a baby. Perhaps, if he
had been fertile, she may have considered having a 'natural' baby, as she
thought of it. But having a baby with a clone partner meant registering,
monitoring, state intervention, massive insurance premiums. And anyway, a
permit was hardly likely to be granted because as a clone, Andre could
'cease functioning' at any time. (They tended to). Not to mention the fact
that he was born with gills (unintended) and webbed toes (intended - the
result of trying to enhance his genetic make-up with fish genes, so that
he could be a champion swimmer. But he couldn't manage to swim well at
all, because the gills were imperfect and allowed water to enter his ears
if he put his head under water).

No, baby-making was no longer in the hands of the couple concerned, but
in the hands of state apparatus.

Anyway, the two of them had a perfect life together, delicately balanced,
admittedly, after seven years, but who of their friends could boast such
stability? A third person would ruin it. Natural babies grew up these days
to be murderers, drug-addicts, internet hackers---the world did not need
another one. Hildegard's research, her whole mind, was directed towards
the past, towards lost worlds---for in fact, the current world horrified
her, and the thought of being forced to focus on it because of a child was
abhorrent to her. She did not explain this to Andre, she just waited until
eventually he had dropped the subject.

But now it dawned on her that this dog thing was a consolation prize he
had awarded himself, after his final acceptance that they were never going
to have a baby.

She in fact, was responsible for the dog in the house.

How could she deny it to him?

And it wasn't as if it was a big dog.

                                    ***

Andre arrived home from the op-shop with a box of soft toys.

'Hand-knitted,' he said, offering them for her to admire.

She saw the work involved, the careful rib, the neat moss-stitch in ill-
matched colours. A white bunny knitted in angora, soft to the touch, with
a cross-stitched face. Toys that a real baby could have had.

'They last longer than the factory ones,' he said.

Had the ladies who knitted these toys from Woman's Day patterns ever
imagined they would be used, brand-new, in a game of tug with Andre and
Dog?

'I suppose they think you have a new baby,' she said.

'No, I told them. They though he would like this one best.'

And he held up a smaller bunny knitted in an intricate mix of a dozen
stripes.

So it was Hildegard, it seemed, who was abnormal here.

All the rest of the world loves a bloke and his dog.

                                    ***

Hildegard bought a special dog bed made of hessian and metal.

She tried to make it sound like a treat when she placed it on the back
porch. The puppy looked at her spitefully, then lowered his head in that
manipulative way he had. He feigned submissiveness as he looked up at
Andre. He knew this always won Andre over.

'Can't we put it inside darling?'

The puppy wagged his tail, shooting a nasty glance at Hildegard while
Andre wasn't looking.

She shook her head, folded her arms.

'No, it'll set a precedent.'

She pointed at the bed.

'Bed, Dog, lie down, sit, sit...'

The puppy ignored her, imploring Andre to intercede.

Andre, torn between his two loves, patted the dog, whispered sweet
nothings to him, kissed his nose, and, Hildegard saw, actually allowed the
dog's tongue to touch his own.

'Andre darling,' she said, as she stared at the two together, 'could you
please wash your hands and clean your teeth before you come to bed?'

He looked away.

But you can't have a fight with your partner because of a dog, can you?

                                    ***

Hildegard and Andre lay in their double bed, listening to the sounds of
the dog whimpering from the porch. Hildegard lay on her side, facing away
from Andre, with a pillow over her exposed ear. Andre lay on his back, and
Hildegard was just drifting off to sleep when she was jolted awake by a
sudden noise in the room. A sound she had never heard before. It was an
extremely loud sound, as if a Harley Davidson was revving inside a
reverberating wooden barrel, and she leant over the sleeping Andre,
peering down at his face in the half-light. The noise originated, it
seemed, from somewhere at the back of his not over-large nose. In fact,
his nose was quite neat, and she had always considered it one of his best
features, a Hollywood plastic surgeon's nose. Too good, in a way, for the
rest of his face.

Yet this sweet nose was the amplifying instrument for this fascinatingly
high decibel production. How could it not wake him? He must be so tired
not to wake. She felt sorry for such a tired person, and decided to
tiptoe, very considerately, into the spare room and sleep there.

Without disturbing him.

                                    ***

From the bed in the other room, the noise was distant, comforting even,
the far away sound of an engine turning over. She fell asleep, and awoke
about 5.00AM.

She was half-disappointed that her husband had not come looking for her,
having noticed that she was gone. Craving the husbandly warmth of her
spouse, the comfort of his back against hers, she went quietly back along
the length of the hall, into the bedroom and lowered herself bottom first
onto the sheets, into her spot beside him.

But she felt a hot and hairy body in her own spot, the warm doggy breath
on her face, then, horror, a tentative lick on her cheek.

She screamed at Andre to wake up.

She pushed the dog off the bed.

But a relationship can't end, can it, because of a dog?

                                    ***

Dog made its presence felt in the house, in the bedroom, by its odour of
dirty socks.

It sighed whenever it saw Hildegard in that depressive way it had, but
always looked at Andre submissively, appealingly. When Andre showed no
signs of wanting the dog off the bed at night, Hildegard felt a surge of
sadness, as if she had discovered that he had taken a lover.

But to think of a dog as a rival for his affections was not an emotion
she was proud of. Nevertheless she felt it. She tried to make her
breathing as shallow as possible in the bedroom in order to stop breathing
in the dog's hot odour, but it didn't work.

Andre promised to wash the dog every day.

Outside of course, in the porch perhaps if it was raining.

To seal that agreement, Hildegard agreed to have a spa with Andre, the
spa being their code word for love-making, in this, the seventh year of
their relationship. A rare event. Andre lined up the blue, pink, yellow
and white creamy lotions and bubble baths, blew off the fine layer of dust
on their glass shoulders, while Hildegard bent over to turn on the taps.

But her hand stopped in mid-air.

There were three short black dog hairs lying in the pink bathtub. She sat
on the side of the bath.

It was incredible to think that, in spite of all her efforts to establish
a little dog-free hygiene in the house, Andree had clearly bathed the dog
in their consecrated love-making area.

But a relationship can't end, can it, because of a dog?

                                    ***

The puppy grew, in a matter of days it seemed, into a large black
creature of indeterminate breed, which Andre failed miserable to train
(this was not her role--she was too busy trying to ignore it.) She would
come home to find it sitting on the furniture, where it left black doggy
hairs, which Andre assured her she was imagining. There was also that
unique doggy smell, perhaps arising from their diet of supermarket
bargains, and not congenital to the species (though she doubted this).

It continued to sneak in to the bedroom and to surreptitiously position
itself on the bed, careful to go only on Andre's side. Only the smell
would give it away. (Andre still swore she was imagining the smell).

Andre fed the dog morsels from the breakfast table, assumed it would come
out with them on walks which she had previously enjoyed with him
exclusively.

In the dark of the night, while Andre back was turned, as usual, to her,
the smell of the dog made her toss in her sleep and dream of it sleeping
in Andre's arms.

                                    ***

Dog kept growing, and was soon a loping black beast with a penis,
Hildegard noticed, which was always at least half-erect.

It was obscene, this unsheathed testosterone...so...well...animal.

'It just means he's happy,' laughed Andre.

Hildegard thought of their own sex-life, the sliding-slippery-sudsy way
she liked to do it in the spa. About once a month was what she liked, and
only in the spa. Now that this pink penis was wandering about the house,
Andre wanted more. That would ruin everything. She liked sex
(occasionally) but she hated being hounded for it, before the urge was
upon her. She wanted to feel the longing, the desire for a man, but now
Andre never left her alone for long enough for that desire to arise in her.

Yes, she hated being hounded.

                                    ***

Hildegard heard yelps of joy from the porch and went to investigate.

She saw Andre down on all fours, tugging with his mouth for possession of
a gnawed shank-bone with the dog. One end was between the dog's teeth, the
other end between Andre's. The dog's penis was more that usually erect,
and with fear, Hildegard found her eyes inspecting the corresponding
anatomical area on her husband...relieved that no information could be
gained from the state of the baggy cords he wore.

The two males were unaware of her presence - both enjoying the tussle in
the faint scent of urine and the stronger odour of bargain dog-food that
permeated the porch. Her husband growled convincingly in response to the
dog's playful provocations. It seemed they were communicating with each
other.

With a sudden toss of his head, Andre manouevred the shank deeper into
his own mouth, snatching it free from the dog, but failing to avoid a long
trail of dog saliva which alighted on the end of Andre's nose, hovering
over his mouth.

At this moment, he became aware of Hildegard watching him, and he turned
to her, the end of the bone still in his mouth.

'I got it darling, I won,' he said, beaming.

Just at that moment, the dog-spittle dropped slowly into his smiling,
unresisting mouth.

And Hildegard saw that his arms and neck were sprouting coarse black
hair, and that the top of one ear was folding forward in a most hound-like
way.