Dead Puppies (A Fantasy)

So I'm asleep in bed. It's six-ish, time to get up on a weekday. Past time on a week day, but it's not a weekday. It's Saturday.

And Barley the Dog-Faced Boy is huffing his breath into my face to wake me up so he can go pee and bark at squirrels.

It's Saturday, I don't want to get up. Mo is still asleep, miraculously, therefore I should get to sleep.

The dog isn't having it. So I get up to let him out, thinking, I can go back to bed. I can.

As he's walking down the hall ahead of me, he's wagging his tail, THWACK-THWACK-THWACK against the hallway wall, the wall that is also Mo's bedroom wall.

Dog, I said. If you wake her up, I'll murder you. Dead. No excuses.

So I slowly open the sliding glass door to let him out, close it even more carefully and tip-toe back to my bed. And I'm almost there when Mo comes out of her room, ready to embrace the day.

So I killed the dog. Because dead puppies don't wake my kid up.