Enter the Hound: The Origin of Inu

Chapter 3: Home for the Holidays

 

            The drive home was long and uneventful.  Ashley stopped twice for gas, cursing under her breath at the obscene gas prices.  Thanksgiving was two days away, so the price of gas was only going to get worse.  At least traffic wasn’t as bad as she had expected, and that was a plus.  Still, she was only too thrilled to pull into the driveway.

            Brittany, the obese family beagle, greeted her eagerly as she walked through the back door and stepped into the kitchen.  Ashley crouched down and submitted to being licked all over.  Brittany didn’t care if Ashley was fully human or not; she just wanted attention.

            “Alright, Thunder Mutt,” Ashley laughed as Brittany pressed herself against the mutant’s legs for more petting, “I’ll love on you.  You act like you never get any attention, goofy dog.”

            Brittany tore herself away from Ashley and made a beeline for the front door.  She jumped and danced in front of the door, then ran back to Ashley; and then she turned around and repeated the routine.  Ashley sighed.  Of course Brittany didn’t want attention.  She just wanted to go outside.  She always wanted outside.  Setting her bag down by the back door, Ashley walked through the kitchen and into the living to let the dog out.

            “Don’t you put that dog outside!” her mom called from the bedroom down the hall.  “She just came in not five minutes ago.”

            Busted.  Hearing Tawnie’s voice, Brittany stopped dancing at the door and jumped up onto the couch.

            “Nice try, Brit,” Ashley said, scratching behind the beagle’s ears.  Brittany snorted and laid her head down between her paws.

            From upstairs came the sound of rolling thunder.  It traveled from one end of the house to another, down the stairs, and entered into the kitchen in the form of a small boy in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume.

            “Aunt Ashley!” cried the boy, leaping and attaching himself to her waist.  Like Brittany, the kid didn’t care if his aunt was normal or not so long as he got her attention.

            “Hey there, Dominik,” Ashley said, leaning down to give him an awkward hug.  “Where’s your mom?”

            “She’s upstairs sleeping.”

            “Why?”

            “‘Cause she has a headache.”

            “And what were you doing up there?”

            “Playing.”

            Ashley arched an eyebrow.  “Why?”

            Dominik shrugged.  “I dunno.”

            “Well, if your mom is sleeping because she has a headache, don’t you think you should be quiet?”

            “...Oh...yeah, probably.”

            Ashley sat down beside Brittany and took a good long look at her nephew.  Kelly, her younger sister, had gotten pregnant in high school and had Dominik during Ashley’s senior year.  As far as Dominik knew, Ashley had always had dog ears.  He thought they were cool and kept asking when his would come in.  He didn’t understand when Kelly and his grandparents tried to explain that his Aunt Ashley was adopted.

            “Hey, Aunt Ashley, guess what I am!”

            Ashley furrowed her eyebrows and pretended to think really hard.  “Hmm... are you a pickle?”

            “No,” Dominik giggled.

            “Are you...a platypus?”

            “What’s a platypus?”

            “It’s like a beaver and a duck.”

            “Oh...no!”

            Ashley threw up her hands in defeat.  “I give up!  What are you?”

            Dominik spun around and struck a dramatic pose.  “I’m a Ninjun Turtle!”

            “A Ninjun Turtle, of course!” Ashley laughed.  “How could I miss it?”

            And with that Dominik sped off to his room to fight crime and keep his mother from sleeping in true ninjun turtle style.

            Tawnie entered the living room just as Dominik made his noisy exit.  Ashley stood hugged her, engaging in the typical “welcome home” chitchat: “How’s Kelly?”  “How’s dad?”  “Let me tell you what a pain your dog has been.”  The usual.

            Kelly had been having a lot of migraines lately.  It ran in mom’s family and was kind of a curse to the woman in the Parker bloodline.  Ashley sympathized, but she also knew that Kelly had a low tolerance for pain and tended to exaggerate.  Besides, it couldn’t have been that bad if Dominik was able to make that much noise without disturbing her.

            Dad had been working a lot of overtime at the steel factory.  Work was making him an old man before his time.  He wasn’t twenty anymore; seven days of twelve-hour shifts with one weekend off a month was a lot harder to handle than it used to be.  He would finish up that night, and then he’d be off from Wednesday until the following Monday.

            “You just missed him,” Tawnie said.  “He left about twenty minutes before you pulled in.”

            It was only 5:35.

            “Your dog has been a pain in the ass all day today,” Tawnie continued.  “The weather was so nice and she kept wanting in and out, in and out.”  Here she turned her attention to Brittany, who raised her head and wagged her tail.  “I am not your yo-yo, dog!”

            Brittany jumped off the couch and danced at the front door.  Grumbling, Tawnie opened the door and let her outside.

            Ashley just smiled.  It was good to be home.

*********************

 

            Thanksgiving had never been a huge affair at the Boyce household.  Mom put the store-bought turkey in a roasting bag, dropped it into a pan, and let it bake without giving it a second thought.  She boiled eggs for deviled eggs, boiled potatoes for mashed potatoes, boiled water for Stove Top Stuffing; dad took responsibility for boiling the turkey neck and whatever else came in that little bag inside the turkey since he and Dominik were the only ones who actually ate them.  Ashley joined her sister in toasting and breaking up bread for the homemade stuffing that mom would make in addition to the Stove Top Stuffing.  The gravy always came out of a jar and was heated at the last minute.  The dinner rolls were in the freezer and would either be forgotten and baked at the last minute, or burned, or mostly likely both.  There might even be canned yams or a couple of baked sweet potatoes.  But there would be no other relatives joining them, no friends, no reclusive neighbors or co-workers.  It was always a small, intimate family gathering...with a lot of leftovers.

            This year was no exception.

            Dinner was held at 3:00pm – why, Ashley hadn’t a clue – and the leftovers were put away by 4:00.  Mom and Ashley did the dishes while dad and Kelly watched football and played “Ninjun Turtles” and “army guys” with Dominik.

            By 5:00pm, dad was already picking at the leftovers in the fridge.

            By 9:00pm, everyone except for Ashley and dad was in bed.

            By midnight, dad was snoring on the couch and Ashley was fighting Brittany for space on her own twin-sized bed.

            “Spoiled dog,” Ashley muttered.

            Brittany snorted and wagged her tail.

            The subject of Genome was never hinted at or discussed