Storytime Blog Hop October 2025 - Black Dog
Hello, and welcome to my fourth blog hop contribution! Thanks for reading if you do <3
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Oscar’s life was categorized by his million-dollar home, his
fast car, and his beautiful wife and children. Doors flung themselves open to
him, revealing lucrative opportunities, and Oscar quickly climbed the ranks.
But when Oscar’s boss was caught embezzling millions, the company went
bankrupt, and Oscar was left behind.
In a matter of
months, everything was gone. Oscar was left in a small, grungy apartment on the
edge of town, with no job, no money, and no future.
When Oscar
walked into the woods that day, he didn’t intend to come out. He’d brought the
rope, now to find sturdy tree.
Instead, Oscar
found a black dog, one who looked eerily like his childhood companion, sitting
under the sturdiest tree. Before he could say anything, the dog was facing him,
eyes piercing red.
Oscar was
suddenly scared.
The dog stared at him for a moment
before it growled, lips peeled back in a menacing and incisor-filled snarl.
When it took a step towards Oscar, Oscar took a step back. And when the animal
began to charge, Oscar dropped the rope in his hands and started sprinting back
from where he’d come.
All the while, the dog ran right
behind him, barking and growling, its paws almost touching the backs of Oscar’s
legs.
Oscar wasn’t sure how long had
passed. He was ready to give up, his legs on fire from lack of exercise over
the last seven years, when he saw the road coming into view through the tree
line. He pushed himself harder than he thought was possible, was on the verge
of safety, when he tripped over the edge of the road, his body hurling itself
into the middle of the two lanes.
He spun, but the dog was there,
staring him down with those big, red eyes as Oscar sat on the asphalt. He tried
crawling backwards, one arm in front of him, as the dog lunged.
“Hey!” a voice suddenly shouted,
horns blaring all the while.
Oscar looked up and reeled back when
he saw that in place of the dog with red eyes now stood a huge semi-truck, its blinding,
white lights blazing down on his prone form.
He looked around frantically as he
stood, but there was no dog in sight. “Uh…sorry!” he called to the driver as he
moved aside, though the driver only responded by sticking his middle finger up
at Oscar before driving away.
With nothing but confusion spread
across his face, Oscar stared after the truck. When it was gone, he looked
around again. But the black dog was gone, and so was the rope that Oscar had
brought with him, lost deep in the forest. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to
find it again.
At that moment, Oscar’s phone
started to buzz. He reached a shaky hand into his pocket, already walking along
the road to where he’d parked.
“H-hello?” Oscar said, clearing his
throat, but with little success.
“Oscar?” a familiar woman’s
voice came through the phone.
He blinked, looking at the caller ID
to make sure it was really his wife. When he verified that it was, he held the
phone up to his ear again, his car just over the horizon.
“Karmen, hi,” he croaked, trying not
to sound too excited. “What’s uh… what’s going on?”
Karmen was quiet for several
seconds, giving Oscar enough time to make it to his car. He slid his free hand
into his other pocket, looking for his keys, though he was having a hard time
locating them. “The kids wanted to talk to you,” she finally said.
Oscar paused. “They… do? Can I talk
to them?” he blurted, unable to hold back his elation.
Karmen was silent again. “Yes
but… keep it short.”
There was movement, and voices in
the background, before another familiar voice came through the phone. “Dad?”
Oscar began to
tear up. “Hi sport! How ya doin?” he asked his son, still fumbling for the keys
he could not find.
“I’m okay. Jenna’s here too,” his
son, Heath, remarked cooly. “She says hi,” he added, then cleared his
own throat. “We… miss you. Mom said she misses you too.”
Oscar was crying now, leaning
against his car. But he kept the sob that threatened to overflow out of his
voice. “R-really? She said that, huh?” he almost couldn’t believe it.
There was movement again, Karmen’s
voice in the background, before her voice came through again. “The kids and
I… we’ve been talking. I think they… we want you to come home.”
Oscar gulped. “But…what about the
money? Your… requirements for coming back,” he reminded her.
Karmen sighed. “Clearly this
arrangement isn’t working for anyone. Look just… come home, Oscar. We’ll talk
more when you get here.”
Oscar nodded despite Karmen not
being able to see. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
With that, the phone went dead.
Oscar breathed a sign of relief, tears flowing freely down his face as a lone
car sped rather quickly past him on the highway, coming a bit close to him as
it rounded the bend. But that reminded him about his keys, which he began
searching for again, but to no avail. He searched for a solid twenty minutes,
but his keys were nowhere to be found. They must’ve fallen out when he’d been running
or were in the road where he’d fallen.
Oscar sighed loudly, about to
backtrack down the road, and glad the sun wasn’t fully set yet. But as he began
to turn away from his car, he heard the inevitable growling of the black dog.
Oscar gulped and turned to face the
creature. But instead of the black fur and red eyes he expected to see, he heard
horns again and saw a pair of headlights coming right for him instead.
Man parked on side of road is
killed in freak highway accident.
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Other Oct 2025 Blog Hop Stories:
Very well written but also a bit weird.
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