Original -- The Homestretch
Title: The Homestretch
Rating: G
Word Count: 487
Warnings: none?
Prompt: puppy! for pulped_fictions
Summary: Oscar leads a somewhat anticlimactic existence.
Author's Note: After staring at the picture for days, receiving dozens of great ideas from eltea (♥), and generally beating my head against the prompt, this idea jumped at me, presumably due to the subliminal machinations of a Yahoo! homepage article. Apparently my life is anticlimactic, too. XD
THE HOMESTRETCH
Oscar always chokes on the homestretch.
This seems to be a condition that has existed since his birth: he has it on good confidence that he literally choked on dessert a great deal in his infancy. In kindergarten, he had a tendency to forget the letter Y. Cross-country was a disaster. His dress shoes snagged the edge of his gown at his high school graduation, and he fell into the podium and knocked himself unconscious. His first date went swimmingly until, while walking her to her front door, he missed a step and landed squarely in her mother’s begonias. No one told him that his senior year French final had been moved to another classroom, and it took the dean a full minute to stop laughing long enough to negotiate a makeup.
Today, Sheila left a message on his answering machine that started out with “Hi, Oscy!” and ended with unintelligible sobs about biological time-bombs, gypsy palm-readers, and generally needing space. ‘Oscy’ spends a few hours of the evening curled up on the couch with the chocolates he had bought her for Valentine’s Day, trying to carbon-date episodes of CSI by Grissom’s facial hair.
When he gives up on self-pity-it figures he can’t even follow through with that-he undertakes a brisk walk in the park, because everyone says exercise facilitates endorphins, and because he made extremely short work of the chocolate and has since had enough time to regret it.
The puppy in the bushes jingles as it limps away from him, a low growl rumbling in its throat. Oscar thinks it likely that the source of the jingling is a collar with tags, rather than a cyborg-canine steel skeleton, so he creeps closer, whistling and crooking his fingers in a way he hopes seems harmless.
“Harmless” does not seem to be in this young German Shepherd’s vocabulary, if dogs can be said to have vocabularies in the conventional sense. In any case, it bites him once as he first catches it, then again as he manhandles it into his arms and hastily starts for the animal shelter, hoping they’ll keep it safe until someone comes looking for it.
Oscar also hopes that the currency of karma-or Oscarma, as his mother terms it when she calls-is still legal tender. It ought to be stronger than the dollar, at least, since just about everything is. He returns to television shows where light-switches are outlawed, and he assumes that’s the end of it.
Uncharacteristically, Oscar has forgotten to wait for the other shoe to fall. On the night of the next full moon, he transforms into… a dog.
Oscar is a weredog.
It turns out dogs can sigh feelingly. Oscar curls up on the couch and gives his tail an experimental wag, duly noting that he has already begun to shed on the cushions.
At least he’s consistent.
Rating: G
Word Count: 487
Warnings: none?
Prompt: puppy! for pulped_fictions
Summary: Oscar leads a somewhat anticlimactic existence.
Author's Note: After staring at the picture for days, receiving dozens of great ideas from eltea (♥), and generally beating my head against the prompt, this idea jumped at me, presumably due to the subliminal machinations of a Yahoo! homepage article. Apparently my life is anticlimactic, too. XD
THE HOMESTRETCH
Oscar always chokes on the homestretch.
This seems to be a condition that has existed since his birth: he has it on good confidence that he literally choked on dessert a great deal in his infancy. In kindergarten, he had a tendency to forget the letter Y. Cross-country was a disaster. His dress shoes snagged the edge of his gown at his high school graduation, and he fell into the podium and knocked himself unconscious. His first date went swimmingly until, while walking her to her front door, he missed a step and landed squarely in her mother’s begonias. No one told him that his senior year French final had been moved to another classroom, and it took the dean a full minute to stop laughing long enough to negotiate a makeup.
Today, Sheila left a message on his answering machine that started out with “Hi, Oscy!” and ended with unintelligible sobs about biological time-bombs, gypsy palm-readers, and generally needing space. ‘Oscy’ spends a few hours of the evening curled up on the couch with the chocolates he had bought her for Valentine’s Day, trying to carbon-date episodes of CSI by Grissom’s facial hair.
When he gives up on self-pity-it figures he can’t even follow through with that-he undertakes a brisk walk in the park, because everyone says exercise facilitates endorphins, and because he made extremely short work of the chocolate and has since had enough time to regret it.
The puppy in the bushes jingles as it limps away from him, a low growl rumbling in its throat. Oscar thinks it likely that the source of the jingling is a collar with tags, rather than a cyborg-canine steel skeleton, so he creeps closer, whistling and crooking his fingers in a way he hopes seems harmless.
“Harmless” does not seem to be in this young German Shepherd’s vocabulary, if dogs can be said to have vocabularies in the conventional sense. In any case, it bites him once as he first catches it, then again as he manhandles it into his arms and hastily starts for the animal shelter, hoping they’ll keep it safe until someone comes looking for it.
Oscar also hopes that the currency of karma-or Oscarma, as his mother terms it when she calls-is still legal tender. It ought to be stronger than the dollar, at least, since just about everything is. He returns to television shows where light-switches are outlawed, and he assumes that’s the end of it.
Uncharacteristically, Oscar has forgotten to wait for the other shoe to fall. On the night of the next full moon, he transforms into… a dog.
Oscar is a weredog.
It turns out dogs can sigh feelingly. Oscar curls up on the couch and gives his tail an experimental wag, duly noting that he has already begun to shed on the cushions.
At least he’s consistent.