Detective\u00a0Speurder didn’t want to be going to the pound.\u00a0 Yeah, he had always seen it and promised Millie he would take her to see the “wittle\u00a0doggos” at least a hundred times, but he never meant it.\u00a0 But now here he was, on a Saturday night, his one day off, walking into the pound for some mysterious call his boss wouldn’t outright explain.<\/p>\n
No one was at the front desk, which he found odd, but he rang their little bell anyways.\u00a0 Ten minutes went by, and still, no one showed up.\u00a0 He rang the bell again.\u00a0 After no one came to help him, he decided to help himself and go into the back, where they kept all the dogs.<\/p>\n
The first thing he noticed when he opened the door was the smell. Don’t pounds have to follow some sort of health code?\u00a0 It smelled of wet dog, piss, and something far fouler, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.<\/p>\n
As Speurder took a step into the hallway, he felt a crunch under his feet.\u00a0 Fearing the worst, he made himself look down, but it was simply dog food.\u00a0 It formed a thin layer over the floor, spilling from a nearby bag that was looked like it was bitten into by a dog.<\/p>\n
And that ‘s when he noticed the noise…or rather, the lack thereof.<\/p>\n
The hallway\u00a0stretched for 20 meters or so, with cages lining the entire length,\u00a0but every single one was empty.\u00a0 Stains showed where dogs had left their marks, with more than one looking like dried blood.\u00a0\u00a0Beside each cage was a temporary plaque that described the dog that once inhabited it.\u00a0 Among them, there was Max, a seven-year-old golden retriever who was blind in one eye and Bo Peep who was an eleven-month-old\u00a0dachshund with only three legs…that died two months ago?\u00a0 Why would they keep her plague up if she had passed on?<\/p>\n
That’s when Detective Speurder noticed the scratches on the floor leading to one particular cage that belonged to…Storhund?\u00a0 This cage was clearly the reason he was here, given the gaping hole in the fence and the large scratches both inside and out.\u00a0 He concluded the hound must have broken out, but how?\u00a0 All of the fences were very thick, even for humans.\u00a0 So how did this dog manage to bust one nearly in half?<\/p>\n
Speurder looked inside the cage and saw the same as every other cell: the piss stains, matted down hair, and a dried blood.\u00a0 What really caught his eye was the giant bite taken out of the bowl.\u00a0 This dog was definitely not all bark.\u00a0 Looking outside of the cell, he noticed a lone leather shoe, tipped on its side.\u00a0 It was black and seemed to be the type worn by those who wanted to seem more professional than they actually were.\u00a0 Next to the shoe, he spotted what looked like an empty syringe.<\/p>\n
That’s when it hit him.\u00a0 This wasn’t a pound.\u00a0 It was an illegal research facility masquerading as a pound.\u00a0 Somewhere here they developed chemical substances to test on these dogs.\u00a0 Most seemed to be fatal, but one…one seemed to have been successful.\u00a0 As successful as you can call a hyperaggressive abnormally strong dog that can break through steel like bamboo.\u00a0 The “researcher” that was monitoring this Storhund must have gotten in his way and been dragged off, his shoe getting left behind as he frantically kicked either the dog or to gain purchase.<\/p>\n
This was turning out to be a rather interesting Saturday night after all.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/teaching\/ar1101-c18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/02\/Mystery_setting_sketch-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"