AKA Barking Up The Wrong Tree

            Kamila looks a little like a pretty teenage boy. She also seems more Lithuanian or Latvian than Polish. Perhaps it is the straight black hair against her youthful white skin. She certainly has this intoxicatingly attractive appearance that I generally associate with the Latvians and Lithuanians. Jesika in Costa’s is Polish though. She is almost as pretty. Kamila also has a modern witch look about her. That’s the only way I can describe it. Certainly she has a moody expression when Michelle, who is very overweight, introduces her to my mother. She appears to listen but simultaneously is a touch false. There is definitely something that warns me. Stupid as I can be, I ignore it. The boy look is her physique too, as she is slim, has small pert tits, and a teenage boy’s bum. The skin is so smooth. She tells me she is twenty four. Sometime later it is twenty nine.

            Before too long I cannot keep my attraction hidden. We both strive to retain more than just a sliver of professionalism. I start to fail catastrophically. She also changes. She sits on the pouf in my mother’s bedroom if we are not chatting, and plays on her smartphone. I notice but dismiss it. Marie usually has my mother organised in the toilet. I am more interested in my imagination. Its ability to create virtual reality in my head has been fully fired up since Kamila’s arrival. All it takes is a flirtatious look from her, and I am lost in The Matrix: Sexual Revolution. She will occasionally put her hand on my shoulder, although I admit I put mine on hers first. This just adds to the intrigue, and the volatility of my thoughts. Sometimes I feel that she is just toying with me. Once she leaves, I still take the red pill.

            The social media public shaming about the recently exposed but long distant past issue is ongoing, but has died down a tad by now. It keeps dredging up the sludge from the bottom of the barrel. The campaign has caused me panic and paranoia. There has been trouble with the neighbours. Oskar arrives in February 2020, twenty months after Kamila. He is meant to be three months. I cannot afford the freight from Denmark. I drive to Bolton to collect a different puppy from Junaid, who is Kurdish. He bought a similar dog from Hanne and travelled there to get it. He cannot cope with him. Jedi, as he is called when I take possession, has allegedly been attacked by a small dog and has a small white mark across his nose. He is what I imagine the Baskerville hound to be. A devilish creature. His huge black and tan body is terrifying. He has massively strong shoulders, a Great Dane’s head, and fangs that look like a giant wolf’s. He seems more Rottweiler than Dobermann, but apparently is from Hanne’s best pedigree stock. Junaid claims to have not received the papers. I take him anyway and drive back here to the West Coast via Belfast docks, well before Brexit. The customs have no wish to examine him. ‘Oskar’ suits him better.

            He barks constantly but does have a friendly nature. At ten months, he is still no threat to anyone. This begins to alter over time. I might develop denial, concurrently. I have no choice however but to accept the second-hand puppy. I transferred seventeen hundred euros for him. When the women come to help, he jumps up frantically in the back garden at the kitchen window.  You might not be mistaken for thinking he has rabies. He gets so anxious. People say he is picking up from my emotionality. Once, after he chases my mother’s cat, I whack him hard on his rear end with a rolled-up newspaper. He is terrified. A couple of times out walking he takes a baby nip at the leggings of women passing by, but does not break any skin. The Gardai do not seem that bothered when one woman goes to the station. They just remind me about the requirement for a muzzle.

            He sleeps in my bedroom with Lucy. There is much pushing as he dives under the wooden slats of my bed. He bullies her when he arrives. On the beach on the first day out he gives her a fairly vicious nip. She is also a Dobermann, but much smaller, and is not imported. She has the docility for which the English and Irish lines are famed. She will cry if you breathe on her too strongly. Well perhaps not, but I am sure you get my drift – she whimpered heavily when he nipped her, for sure. Kamila used to let Lucy in from the back garden when I went away for the day. My after-visit lewd fantasies are becoming more obsessive. It is her androgyny that catalyses the feverish virtual day dreams. This of course is well before joining the virtual reality addicts recovery group. Even now her white wispy nakedness stands in a dewy mist in the hall, or in the fog-filled kitchen. Her cold skin is almost there to touch. That slim smooth body stands still, with tiny goose pimples.

            One particular conversation stands out. It might have sealed my fate. I am working out front, cutting the hedge. I have been doing this quite often. Kamila mostly arrives half an hour early before her call. She parks her black VW estate in front of the neighbour’s bungalow. The road is set back there. She is usually doing her make-up. I wave and stroll over and chat. She smiles.

            “Hello Madam!”

            “Hello!”, she says, seemingly quite coyly.

            “May I ask what you’re doing here?”

            “I’m waiting to go see client,” she answers, with a sense of aloofness.

            “We’ve had some reports of drug dealers loitering in the area!”

            “Is that so?”

            “Yes Madam! Do you mind if I carry out a body search?”

            “No! Go ahead!”

            This is the vital tease. I have opened the door. In my mind my hands are already slowly pushing up inside her black top and her lacy black bra and caressing her firm small breasts. I go back down between her legs and squeeze her cunt over her trousers before pushing down into her silky black panties. It is too much for me. It happens in microseconds. I know the trouble that came with the very brief liaison with Ciara before. She had not even admitted to having a boyfriend. This time I am aware Kamila is married. She has told me. I give her a mischievous smile, and walk back to my front garden. For once I restrain myself and retreat. Later, I fess myself up to Michelle. Her and I get on. She is always a bit of a laugh.

             I am concerned as to how things might deteriorate. A few weeks later a meeting is convened. Michelle, and Catherine O’Dowd from the health service, meet with me in my mother’s dining room.

            “The carers are just here for your mother!”

            “Yes, but that’s a bit difficult isn’t it Michelle if my mum won’t do anything for the       carers, and I have to step in every time to help! I can’t avoid being in contact with     Kamila then, can I?”

The two now very serious-looking women remain silent. I wish I had that ability to stay schtum when there is very little else to say.

            By this stage my mother’s cognition is poor. The gnarled beech tree in the middle of the circular lawn in the front garden has been getting on my nerves for some time. She proudly referred to having planted it herself. Unfortunately it blocks out the view of the mystic mountain and the big grey blue bay. It’s white trunk and twisted branches provide the earie frame for a flat bouffant of dark green leaves. Now however there will be no protest. One afternoon I get the chainsaw out and cut it down. Afterwards, I saw it into pieces. One part of the trunk leans by the front porch. It looks like a giant wooden leg.

            Eva plays the classical violin. She walks too fast around my house, like Road Runner in fact. She utters a dark remark on the severing of the tree.

            “It’s werry strange. Like omen!”

            I feel she is making too much of it. It makes me think however. My mother’s tree. It did look very weird. Janet has so many books on magic on her book shelves.

            Eva is temperamental but real. She peeps her horn when she sees me walking the dogs during lunch, as I try and create a routine to avoid the women, and Kamila in particular. One day Oskar is pulling really hard. He is immensely strong. I see him as an ox of supernatural strength. Lucy plays up when she is out with him. At this stage I am not aware there is a particular way to put a choke chain on a dog, nor am I inclined to use the muzzles. Oskar just bashes his on the tarmac, same with Lucy. There is a fairly plain-looking, very robust woman standing a few houses down from mine. She talks on her mobile phone while her white fluffy Bichon Frise yaps at Oskar. Ever since what I am told was a bite by the small dog, he goes insane when small dogs bark at him. This happens now. Somehow, in a second, Oskar slips free from his choke chain. Oh no, I think. My brain freezes.

            “Oskar! Stay!”

            He does sit for an ever so brief moment, but on his haunches, ready to spring. Then he does just that. I am awoken from my walking slumber, like a trainee zen monk finding sudden enlightenment.

            “Oskar!”, I shout loudly.

            I start to sprint. The woman and her small dog are about fifty yards away. She is now fully aware of what is happening. There is shrieking terror all over her face. She throws down her phone on the road, then bends down hysterically and picks up her tiny creature. Oskar is bounding towards her like a tornado, growling viciously. He jumps up on her. His two massive paws slap onto her chest.  She screams and throws, much more than drops, her dog onto him, and falls sideways down on the road. This all happens ten yards in front of me in what seems like slow motion. It is really tiny seconds. Oskar has the white Bichon clasped in his jaws. He shakes its body back and forth as if it is a caught rabbit. The little dog still yaps. I arrive running.  Without a second thought – Oskar is still only fifteen months – I give him two strong kicks in the ribs, and pounce on him. I prise open his jaw, while wrestling him. The Bichon escapes. Oskar is back in my control. The woman is scarpering off with her dog under her arm. She appears to whimper as she scampers. Once I have both mine back in the house, I go to find her. She has taken refuge in a neighbour’s. When I ask, she shows me the dog. It has a small tuft of bloodied fur under its belly. I apologise profusely and beat a hasty retreat. I hope out loud that she can forget it all as quickly as possible. Ultimately, this does not happen.

            Marie encourages me to get rid of the dog. I will not listen. She has been flirting with me ever since I made a joke about Kamila and I. She is in her fifties and is also married. One day outside the toilet, waiting for my mother to finish, she stares at me unflinchingly. I tell her abruptly to stop. I have no interest in her, but she will not let up.

            “Where else am I meant to look!” she exclaims, defensively.

I walk off in a huff.

            On another day Kamila asks if she can take the felled wooden trunk from the front porch. I am surprised. I assume she has been spoken to, and that we are both meant to be cooling off. I agree all the same. A few days later she is very stressed. Her two daughters tire her out, along with her Polish mother-in-law. At the end of the call, I ask if she wants to come and see the work I have been doing in the back garden. She says yes.

            “I’ll get Oskar and bring him in and put him upstairs.”

            “Ok.”

I go look for the lead. She waits inside the locked back door. I bump into Marie in the hallway.

            “Kamila is just coming out to see the garden.”

            “Oh,” she says, and follows me, uninvited.

I walk to the garden door.

            “You two wait here, and I’ll get him.”

            They stand, nervously. I go out and grab Oskar. I have not found the lead, so I am holding him firmly by the collar. The two women have already started to come outside. I turn and notice this.

            “Oh! Ok! I think he’s ready,” I blurt out.

I bring him towards them. Kamila is tense. He senses this. I have forgotten she owns a small dog. The smell of it is surely on her. I decide only then to introduce the two. Again, he has no muzzle on, and is pulling, but I have him. He starts to smell her, and shoves his giant snout right into her crotch and takes a strong sniff, almost lifting her up with his force. She goes more stiff. Then in an instant he smells her thigh and bites it. She screams. I pull him back immediately before he gets his teeth in more deeply. This is his territory. I should know. The two women instinctively slam the door and lock me in the back garden. I run to the garage with the dog. I am in a state of shock. Once he is locked inside, I bang on the door to be let back in. Marie eventually opens it. Kamila has gone down to my mother’s room. She has taken off her trousers. Her legs look skinny rather than slim. She wears nylon black panties. There are three tiny incisions on her thin pale thigh. She is very angry, understandably.

            “Oh dear! It’s not too bad, is it! I forgot! He must have smelt your little dog!”

            “That dog is crazy!”

            “I’m so sorry!”

            Before too long, she is walking down the driveway. Marie takes her to emergency. That is the last I see of Kamila in the house. I ask for her not to come back.  A solicitor’s letter arrives a year later, the first of many. One day, I see her hoovering vigorously on her knees in the display window of Harvey Norman. She spots me, stops and goes over to her supervisor, then points at her leg and rubs her thigh.

AKA Barking Up The Wrong Tree

            Kamila looks a little like a pretty teenage boy. She also seems more Lithuanian or Latvian than Polish. Perhaps it is the straight black hair against her youthful white skin. She certainly has this intoxicatingly attractive appearance that I generally associate with the Latvians and Lithuanians. Jesika in Costa’s is Polish though. She is almost as pretty. Kamila also has a modern witch look about her. That’s the only way I can describe it. Certainly she has a moody expression when Michelle, who is very overweight, introduces her to my mother. She appears to listen but simultaneously is a touch false. There is definitely something that warns me. Stupid as I can be, I ignore it. The boy look is her physique too, as she is slim, has small pert tits, and a teenage boy’s bum. The skin is so smooth. She tells me she is twenty four. Sometime later it is twenty nine.

            Before too long I cannot keep my attraction hidden. We both strive to retain more than just a sliver of professionalism. I start to fail catastrophically. She also changes. She sits on the pouf in my mother’s bedroom if we are not chatting, and plays on her smartphone. I notice but dismiss it. Marie usually has my mother organised in the toilet. I am more interested in my imagination. Its ability to create virtual reality in my head has been fully fired up since Kamila’s arrival. All it takes is a flirtatious look from her, and I am lost in The Matrix: Sexual Revolution. She will occasionally put her hand on my shoulder, although I admit I put mine on hers first. This just adds to the intrigue, and the volatility of my thoughts. Sometimes I feel that she is just toying with me. Once she leaves, I still take the red pill.

            The social media public shaming about the recently exposed but long distant past issue is ongoing, but has died down a tad by now. It keeps dredging up the sludge from the bottom of the barrel. The campaign has caused me panic and paranoia. There has been trouble with the neighbours. Oskar arrives in February 2020, twenty months after Kamila. He is meant to be three months. I cannot afford the freight from Denmark. I drive to Bolton to collect a different puppy from Junaid, who is Kurdish. He bought a similar dog from Hanne and travelled there to get it. He cannot cope with him. Jedi, as he is called when I take possession, has allegedly been attacked by a small dog and has a small white mark across his nose. He is what I imagine the Baskerville hound to be. A devilish creature. His huge black and tan body is terrifying. He has massively strong shoulders, a Great Dane’s head, and fangs that look like a giant wolf’s. He seems more Rottweiler than Dobermann, but apparently is from Hanne’s best pedigree stock. Junaid claims to have not received the papers. I take him anyway and drive back here to the West Coast via Belfast docks, well before Brexit. The customs have no wish to examine him. ‘Oskar’ suits him better.

            He barks constantly but does have a friendly nature. At ten months, he is still no threat to anyone. This begins to alter over time. I might develop denial, concurrently. I have no choice however but to accept the second-hand puppy. I transferred seventeen hundred euros for him. When the women come to help, he jumps up frantically in the back garden at the kitchen window.  You might not be mistaken for thinking he has rabies. He gets so anxious. People say he is picking up from my emotionality. Once, after he chases my mother’s cat, I whack him hard on his rear end with a rolled-up newspaper. He is terrified. A couple of times out walking he takes a baby nip at the leggings of women passing by, but does not break any skin. The Gardai do not seem that bothered when one woman goes to the station. They just remind me about the requirement for a muzzle.

            He sleeps in my bedroom with Lucy. There is much pushing as he dives under the wooden slats of my bed. He bullies her when he arrives. On the beach on the first day out he gives her a fairly vicious nip. She is also a Dobermann, but much smaller, and is not imported. She has the docility for which the English and Irish lines are famed. She will cry if you breathe on her too strongly. Well perhaps not, but I am sure you get my drift – she whimpered heavily when he nipped her, for sure. Kamila used to let Lucy in from the back garden when I went away for the day. My after-visit lewd fantasies are becoming more obsessive. It is her androgyny that catalyses the feverish virtual day dreams. This of course is well before joining the virtual reality addicts recovery group. Even now her white wispy nakedness stands in a dewy mist in the hall, or in the fog-filled kitchen. Her cold skin is almost there to touch. That slim smooth body stands still, with tiny goose pimples.

            One particular conversation stands out. It might have sealed my fate. I am working out front, cutting the hedge. I have been doing this quite often. Kamila mostly arrives half an hour early before her call. She parks her black VW estate in front of the neighbour’s bungalow. The road is set back there. She is usually doing her make-up. I wave and stroll over and chat. She smiles.

            “Hello Madam!”

            “Hello!”, she says, seemingly quite coyly.

            “May I ask what you’re doing here?”

            “I’m waiting to go see client,” she answers, with a sense of aloofness.

            “We’ve had some reports of drug dealers loitering in the area!”

            “Is that so?”

            “Yes Madam! Do you mind if I carry out a body search?”

            “No! Go ahead!”

            This is the vital tease. I have opened the door. In my mind my hands are already slowly pushing up inside her black top and her lacy black bra and caressing her firm small breasts. I go back down between her legs and squeeze her cunt over her trousers before pushing down into her silky black panties. It is too much for me. It happens in microseconds. I know the trouble that came with the very brief liaison with Ciara before. She had not even admitted to having a boyfriend. This time I am aware Kamila is married. She has told me. I give her a mischievous smile, and walk back to my front garden. For once I restrain myself and retreat. Later, I fess myself up to Michelle. Her and I get on. She is always a bit of a laugh.

             I am concerned as to how things might deteriorate. A few weeks later a meeting is convened. Michelle, and Catherine O’Dowd from the health service, meet with me in my mother’s dining room.

            “The carers are just here for your mother!”

            “Yes, but that’s a bit difficult isn’t it Michelle if my mum won’t do anything for the       carers, and I have to step in every time to help! I can’t avoid being in contact with     Kamila then, can I?”

The two now very serious-looking women remain silent. I wish I had that ability to stay schtum when there is very little else to say.

            By this stage my mother’s cognition is poor. The gnarled beech tree in the middle of the circular lawn in the front garden has been getting on my nerves for some time. She proudly referred to having planted it herself. Unfortunately it blocks out the view of the mystic mountain and the big grey blue bay. It’s white trunk and twisted branches provide the earie frame for a flat bouffant of dark green leaves. Now however there will be no protest. One afternoon I get the chainsaw out and cut it down. Afterwards, I saw it into pieces. One part of the trunk leans by the front porch. It looks like a giant wooden leg.

            Eva plays the classical violin. She walks too fast around my house, like Road Runner in fact. She utters a dark remark on the severing of the tree.

            “It’s werry strange. Like omen!”

            I feel she is making too much of it. It makes me think however. My mother’s tree. It did look very weird. Janet has so many books on magic on her book shelves.

            Eva is temperamental but real. She peeps her horn when she sees me walking the dogs during lunch, as I try and create a routine to avoid the women, and Kamila in particular. One day Oskar is pulling really hard. He is immensely strong. I see him as an ox of supernatural strength. Lucy plays up when she is out with him. At this stage I am not aware there is a particular way to put a choke chain on a dog, nor am I inclined to use the muzzles. Oskar just bashes his on the tarmac, same with Lucy. There is a fairly plain-looking, very robust woman standing a few houses down from mine. She talks on her mobile phone while her white fluffy Bichon Frise yaps at Oskar. Ever since what I am told was a bite by the small dog, he goes insane when small dogs bark at him. This happens now. Somehow, in a second, Oskar slips free from his choke chain. Oh no, I think. My brain freezes.

            “Oskar! Stay!”

            He does sit for an ever so brief moment, but on his haunches, ready to spring. Then he does just that. I am awoken from my walking slumber, like a trainee zen monk finding sudden enlightenment.

            “Oskar!”, I shout loudly.

            I start to sprint. The woman and her small dog are about fifty yards away. She is now fully aware of what is happening. There is shrieking terror all over her face. She throws down her phone on the road, then bends down hysterically and picks up her tiny creature. Oskar is bounding towards her like a tornado, growling viciously. He jumps up on her. His two massive paws slap onto her chest.  She screams and throws, much more than drops, her dog onto him, and falls sideways down on the road. This all happens ten yards in front of me in what seems like slow motion. It is really tiny seconds. Oskar has the white Bichon clasped in his jaws. He shakes its body back and forth as if it is a caught rabbit. The little dog still yaps. I arrive running.  Without a second thought – Oskar is still only fifteen months – I give him two strong kicks in the ribs, and pounce on him. I prise open his jaw, while wrestling him. The Bichon escapes. Oskar is back in my control. The woman is scarpering off with her dog under her arm. She appears to whimper as she scampers. Once I have both mine back in the house, I go to find her. She has taken refuge in a neighbour’s. When I ask, she shows me the dog. It has a small tuft of bloodied fur under its belly. I apologise profusely and beat a hasty retreat. I hope out loud that she can forget it all as quickly as possible. Ultimately, this does not happen.

            Marie encourages me to get rid of the dog. I will not listen. She has been flirting with me ever since I made a joke about Kamila and I. She is in her fifties and is also married. One day outside the toilet, waiting for my mother to finish, she stares at me unflinchingly. I tell her abruptly to stop. I have no interest in her, but she will not let up.

            “Where else am I meant to look!” she exclaims, defensively.

I walk off in a huff.

            On another day Kamila asks if she can take the felled wooden trunk from the front porch. I am surprised. I assume she has been spoken to, and that we are both meant to be cooling off. I agree all the same. A few days later she is very stressed. Her two daughters tire her out, along with her Polish mother-in-law. At the end of the call, I ask if she wants to come and see the work I have been doing in the back garden. She says yes.

            “I’ll get Oskar and bring him in and put him upstairs.”

            “Ok.”

I go look for the lead. She waits inside the locked back door. I bump into Marie in the hallway.

            “Kamila is just coming out to see the garden.”

            “Oh,” she says, and follows me, uninvited.

I walk to the garden door.

            “You two wait here, and I’ll get him.”

            They stand, nervously. I go out and grab Oskar. I have not found the lead, so I am holding him firmly by the collar. The two women have already started to come outside. I turn and notice this.

            “Oh! Ok! I think he’s ready,” I blurt out.

I bring him towards them. Kamila is tense. He senses this. I have forgotten she owns a small dog. The smell of it is surely on her. I decide only then to introduce the two. Again, he has no muzzle on, and is pulling, but I have him. He starts to smell her, and shoves his giant snout right into her crotch and takes a strong sniff, almost lifting her up with his force. She goes more stiff. Then in an instant he smells her thigh and bites it. She screams. I pull him back immediately before he gets his teeth in more deeply. This is his territory. I should know. The two women instinctively slam the door and lock me in the back garden. I run to the garage with the dog. I am in a state of shock. Once he is locked inside, I bang on the door to be let back in. Marie eventually opens it. Kamila has gone down to my mother’s room. She has taken off her trousers. Her legs look skinny rather than slim. She wears nylon black panties. There are three tiny incisions on her thin pale thigh. She is very angry, understandably.

            “Oh dear! It’s not too bad, is it! I forgot! He must have smelt your little dog!”

            “That dog is crazy!”

            “I’m so sorry!”

            Before too long, she is walking down the driveway. Marie takes her to emergency. That is the last I see of Kamila in the house. I ask for her not to come back.  A solicitor’s letter arrives a year later, the first of many. One day, I see her hoovering vigorously on her knees in the display window of Harvey Norman. She spots me, stops and goes over to her supervisor, then points at her leg and rubs her thigh.