4/29/2004

Necessary cruelty

Tony Poshnik felt awful about kicking that dog into a sewer, especially in front of his girlfriend. Katrina was an animal activist, a true lover of poochies, and so for Ploshnik to plow into the dachshund’s belly in her presence was most inopportune, at least from an 'exploitation-of-affection-for-animals-into-romantic-conquest' point of view. But it had to be done for safety’s sake of all pedestrians on the street--that dog was an exploding dyno-pup, a creature engineered in the labs at the eastern end of the city, where, it was said, genius terrorists were at work turning man’s best friend into man’s worst nightmare. Someone evil had lit a fuse under this particular dachshund on this particular day, so Tony had no choice but to apply his punting skills.

The dyno-pup was an indirect product of the late 1980s, when people would spend thousands frivolously on fleeting, often perverse fancies. One fanciful notion, conjured by twisted billionaire Drew Finnegan Clontzburg was to wire open the jaws of a Yorkshire terrier and insert strike-anywhere matches. Another pastime was to fire chihuahuas out of slingshots at passing streetcars from high-level condominium towers, to see whether the mexicali critters would go splat or merely crunch a few bones. Needless to say, Clontzburg and his ilk were dangerous, sadistic assholes.

(unfinished of course)

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