Published Fiction: Cow Dog and Swift

 This piece of flash fiction was originally published in The Writers Post Journal in October 2005. Sadly, the publication no longer exists.  
Update, This piece has been reprinted in Fiction Southeast.

Cow Dog and Swift

Screen Shot of the print page.

I often wonder the worth of food, the midday meal, the tiresome dinner, the dog in the backyard.  My wife May has fattened the beast up – a Great Dane exercised to extreme, made to be our cow.  The kid loves the cow dog, calls it Mabel, treasures gorging the thing.  She doesn’t understand our family predicament, but eats and eats and eats.  The kid eats beyond comprehension; so she must understand, I will force comprehension upon her.  Today is the dog’s day to become shredded beef and steak, to meet my long, curved knife; the kid will eat well, dine on the fine meat, burgeon on.  Eventually the kid’s turn on the chopping block will come.  We have read Jonathan Swift, treat his words as biblical – Swift was an honest, correct prophet.