Rocky

At the park, Susan was pleased to see their special bench was vacant. She hurried over to snaffle it before some random stroller turned up. This was the very bench she and her sister always preferred when they managed to get together for lunch. It only happened every other month when she had a layover in Cairns. They would bring their sandwiches or salad here, sit in the dappled shade and watch the birds playing in the lake as they caught up.

Today's visit was nostalgic. Her sister, Rachel, was never going to share this bench with her again. Rachel was dead. Susan was still trying to get her head around the idea of a world without her zany sister. Rachel was the most spontaneous and creative person she had ever known. Susan was “the sensible one”.

She was only in town for the day, so hadn’t told Steve she was coming.

Steve was Rachel’s husband, a policeman, staid and sober. Steve and Rachel were yin and yang. At the funeral two weeks ago, Steve was like an automaton going through the motions. Susan thought perhaps he was still in the denial phase of grief, unable to comprehend he had lost the love of his life.

Rachel had been the single passenger in a small plane. She had been videoing and photographing Lizard Island from the air for an art project she was working on. The plane went down. The pilot was killed on impact. Susan survived the crash by just 48 hours, her body so broken there was no chance of saving her.

Susan felt the tears well up as she thought of the pain her sister must have suffered before she died. She felt the monstrous hole inside her fill up with an ocean of tears.

“Susan . . . Susie . . . Is that you?”

Startled by a deep voice she didn’t recognize, she looked up. There was a man in the distance, but he was too far away to have called out to her. Then her peripheral vision picked up movement from her left. She turned just in time to see a huge German Shepherd launch itself at her. Susan squealed, throwing up her arms to protect her face.

The dog was on top of her, it’s forelegs over her shoulders, sniffing her face and her hair.

“Susan, it is you!” said the voice, the voice that seemed to come from the dog.

She was being smothered in doggy licks and covered in doggy saliva. Susan squealed again. “Oh, stop it, Suse, you sound like one of those silly girls.”

“Get off me.”

“Rocky. Down. Rocky, get down now.” The man from the distance was running towards them as fast as he could. He had Steve’s voice. It was Steve sliding to a stop in front of them.

“Steve!”

The dog had jumped down and was prancing around Steve, tongue lolling out, tail wagging.

“Hi Susan. What are you doing here?”

“Never mind that. That dog . . .”

“Ahh, yes.”

“Let me tell her, Steve, let me!”

Susan’s jaw dropped. “It can talk.”

“Hey, enough with the it!”

“Well, go on then Rach . . . tell your story,” Steve suggested to the very definitely male dog.

“Rach? Rachel? What?” Susan tried to stand up and quickly flopped back on the bench. Nothing was making sense right now. The loss of her sister had obviously warped her brain.

“Susie, it’s hard to explain. Oh Steve, you tell it.”

“Okay. Short version, when the plane crashed, Rachel was rescued by a surgeon who lives on Lizard Island.”

“He’s the classic mad scientist. His name’s Finkelstein,” the dog added. “Hey, does that make me Finkelstein’s monster?”

Steve sighed and continued. “He couldn’t save her body, it was too smashed up, but her brain was still working. He was training some young shepherds as guard dogs. Rachel’s brain was transplanted into the least promising shepherd.”

“Hey, that’s not nice!”

“Well, he said you weren’t aggressive. You were too playful to be a good guard dog.”

“Too cute?”

Steve rolled his eyes and turned back to his sister-in-law. “As you can hear, he also adapted the vocal chords.”

“So, this dog . . .”

“. . . is your little sister. I’m back, Susie!”

“In a male dog’s body?”

“Hell yeh! I’m a boy. I can wee standing up. Jealous?”

“Shit, Rach, it really is you.”

The tail wagged.

Turning to her brother-in-law, Susan quietly asked, “So, what happens now?”

The dog struck a pointing pose. “I’m going to join the police.”

“What?”

“Yeh, Steve’s going to transfer over to the dog squad and recruit me, aren’t you Darling?”

“She has this crazy idea that we’re going to be the Batman and Robin of the police dog squad.”

“It’s not crazy. I need stimulation.”

“She goes bonkers if she’s left alone for even half an hour.”

“It’s a dog thing. Time works differently for us.”

Susan was still trying to make sense of the bizarre story the dog and the human were telling her . . . her sister and her brother-in-law. She shook her head, trying to shake some reason into her poor brain. Her phone alarm chose that moment to sound.

“Oh no, I have to go.”

“Okay Sis, glad I got to tell you this in person.”

As the shepherd bounded away towards the water, Steve gave his obviously stunned sister-in-law a hug. “Take care of yourself, Susie. Give me a call when you get home.”

“Ah, sure. This might make more sense in a few hours.”

Steve smiled a sad smile and wandered after his wife. The shepherd came buzzing back, jumped up to give her another flurry of kisses, then winked and raced after Steve.

“Did I just see that dog wink at you?” said a woman walking by.

“Yes, she did.”

“She? Isn’t it a boy dog?”

“Hmm yes, but she identifies as a bitch.”