Gylhad

Chapter One
In which we meet the protagonist and her small, furry pink nemesis.

Lacey twisted her key in the lock waiting to hear the familiar click as the door to her small apartment was locked. Lately the keyhole had been stubborn, and she was constantly worried about breaking the end of the key off in it. As it finally clicked into place, she glanced at her watch. It was just past seven and she wanted to run over to the convenience store across the street to pick up something for tomorrow’s breakfast. She hated working late; it really cut into her regular schedule. She had missed her weekly Karate class for the third time in a row. Her teacher sent increasingly frustrated emails each time, wondering where she was. Enough of the hasty excuses, she was a student and she only worked summers, so she couldn’t use that as an excuse he had said in his last message. She was not looking forward to seeing him this Saturday, knowing he was going to work her extra hard because she would undoubtedly be out of condition.

She ran down the apartment stairs, taking them two at a time. Her heart rate increased as the adrenalin flowed through her body. When she'd moved in, she cursed her luck for only being able to find a walk-up in her price range. Even the dorms, as crusty and smelly as they were, had elevators. As she reached the bottom of the concrete steps, she suddenly slipped, her ankle turning as she grabbed the railing for support. She managed to catch herself before any serious damage was done, which was a blessing, since she'd broken it a few years ago by tripping over a garden hoe, and it had never completely healed properly. She swore as she straightened up, cursing her clumsy nature and the quack of a doctor who had put the pins in her ankle. She also knew better than to run down the stairs, and was happy no one had seen her, least of all the hottie in the apartment to the left. Hopping down the remaining steps, she quickly walked to the crosswalk and waited for the light to change. As she was about to step onto the street, she was startled and almost knocked over, as a small, hairy man barreled around the corner, almost knocking her over.

“Hey!” She yelled angrily, “Watch it.” The man ignored her and kept running. Self-consciously she felt for her pockets to make sure everything was still in there, then realized, with the exception of her jacket, she was wearing pocketless sweats. “Jerk.” She yelled at the receding figure, who was, by now, too far away to hear. She quickly stepped off the curb and was three steps into the intersection when a loud honk startled her and a car sped past, almost running over her foot. Dazed, she realized the don’t walk sign was lit, and traffic was entering the intersection. "Great, just great," she thought, hurrying back to the safety of the sidewalk

"I hate the city," she thought, furiously watching the inconsiderate drivers. "Would just as soon run a pedestrian over to avoid being late getting wherever the hell they're going." She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and fingered the pocket change she had brought to buy cereal with, thinking about moving back to the country where she'd grown up. Then she thought of the reasons she'd left, trying to avoid becoming a cookie-cutter small town dweller who marries their high-school sweetheart and pops out three kids before turning twenty-five. Not that there was any danger of that, since she's only dated sporadically in school , and only once since. "There's a big world out there." She'd told her family and friends, "and it's passing me by."

" Well, it's almost hitting me now." She muttered to no one in particular as the light changed and it was once again safe to cross the street.

As she opened the door to the convenience store the crater-faced cashier stared at her suspiciously over the top of his pornographic magazine. She glared at him but he continued to watch her as she prowled the aisles. Grabbing a carton of orange juice and a random box of cereal, she quickly perused the tabloids near the counter, looking for inspiration. One story caught her eye.

‘Scientist discovers portal to another dimension, brings back Elvis.’ She rolled her eyes in disgust, but the first part of the headline stuck in her mind. "An alternate dimension," she thought, "what a wonderful place for Elvis to be living. I wonder if he’s got Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana with him?" She paid for the juice and cereal, escaping the sleazy stare of the cashier, into the cool Philadelphia night. The 'walk' light begin to flash and Lacey hurried across the street just before it changed. As she stepped onto the curb at the other side, another car barely missed hitting her, tires squealing as it pealed off into the night.

“What is wrong with the people in this city?” She wondered, disgusted.

Returning to the relative safety of her dingy apartment, Lacey was greeted by Uber, the pink dashound. The dog was insane and completely untrainable. Lacey couldn’t believe she had been talked into looking after the animal for her friend, Meg. Meg was out of town visiting her parents, and she didn’t trust her sister to look after the animal after the last time when her kids had decided to see what Uber would look like if they died his fur hot pink. The poor animals fur was still growing out in a weird mottled pattern and attracted strange looks wherever he (and subsequently she) went.

“Down Uber!” She demanded half-heartedly as he jumped all over her, scratching her sweats with his claws. They needed clipping, but Lacey wasn’t about to take the task on herself. Last time she had gotten near Uber’s paws she’d almost had her wrist slit open and wasn’t looking forward to it happening again anytime soon. She heard a now-familiar banging noise on the floor as the occupant under her objected to Uber's mad high-pitched barking. Ignoring it, she put away the groceries and pulled out a dish of day old spinach lasagna from the fridge. Shoving it in the microwave and hitting the cook button, she walked over to her computer and flicked the mouse to bring down the screen saver. The last page of her editorial came up. It was almost finished, but a day past the due date. The student editor was growing impatient; “Lacey, your editorial is due, you said it would be finished on time. I don’t have it yet…” Blah, blah, blah… she thought, hitting save and shutting down the computer, she grabbed the remote and flipped the TV on. Settling down on the comfortable overstuffed sofa, she was soon lost in the mindless existence that can only come from bad sitcoms.

She woke early with a start. Her neck was sore and there was a sharp pain in her arm, which, upon further exploration, turned out to be a fork. She had fallen asleep on the couch watching a rerun of MASH. Blinking sleepily, she hit the menu button on the remote and discovered that it was only seven AM, an ungodly time for a night owl to be awake. Rubbing the various aches and pains from a night spent in bizarre positions on a sofa not large enough to spend a night on comfortably, an ominous squish and subsequent moisture seepage through her sock revealed that Uber had, at some point during the night, decided it would be fun to soil her Turkish rug. She yelled at the dog and chased it around the room until her landlord rang with a demand to keep the noise down.

“You’re not the only one in this building…” The man yelled, his French accent making his words seem odd and incoherent. She listened to his tirade for another minute before she made a feeble excuse and hung up.

“Uber!” She screamed as the dog came skittering into the room. “Walk. Now.” The two words the animal seemed to understand also seemed to be the key to the part of his walnut-sized brain that told his bladder it would be a good time to empty itself. She tried to console herself this time with the thought that at least he was peeing on the ugly tile and not the rug as she went to get the disinfectant.

After cleaning up dog pee for the third time that day, Lacey was more than ready to take the animal home, to the pound or just give it to someone on the street. Loyalty to Meg, however, vetoed this decision and she found herself attached to the end of a leash, the object of many curious stares at the park. She tried to ignore the inevitable gasps of shock, horror and mirth from other dog owners and early morning joggers, and was quite proud of her success, until a man barreled into her while she was walking past the duck pond. The splash was horrific as two humans and one fuchsia dog fell into the pond, scaring the ducks and causing the young girl who had been feeding them to burst into tears and run to her mother, screaming about the 'bad lady.'

When she came up for air, Lacey saw the man, also surfacing. He seemed pretty old and not at all the kind of man who would be running blindly through a public park. She saw that Uber was already on the grass, shaking himself and spraying dog scented raindrops all over the surprised bystanders. The man sputtered and spit out pond water and a small amount of scum, which she realized the pond, and likely herself now, was covered in and headed for dry land. Uber was, of course, barking his indignation in that manner that only small, irritating dogs can. She wanted to scream, which she did, the second she was out of the brackish water, as she suddenly recognized the man as the rude idiot who had bumped into her last night, almost causing her to be hit by that car.

The small audience that had gathered by the pond were awarded the spectacle of seeing a very wet woman with a small pink dog screaming at a little man with a very long, soggy beard.

They began to clap.