Beagle Narc 

 M: Where’s the sausage?

N: They took it from me. In Customs.

M: Who took it from you?

N: The Customs people. It’s their custom. That’s why they call it that.

M: How did they know you had sausage on you?

N: Oh, they didn’t know, until a little dog told them. And get this – a Beagle dog.

M: A Beagle.

N: The Customs people use Beagle dogs. So sweet, those soft floppy ears, those big eyes looking up at you sadly when they smell the sausage in your bag – Did you try to smuggle foreign sausage? Why, Mister? Say it ain’t so.

M: A narc Beagle.

N: A German Shepherd, that’s all I ask for. I respect a German Shepherd. No shame in getting busted by a German Shepherd.

M: It’s weird about German Shepherds. You know . . . the association with the Nazis.

N: I’m not sure it’s fair.

M: I’m not either, but, you know, you see one and it’s like, What did you do in the war?

N: But oh, the banality of Beagle.

M: I suppose you didn’t get the cheese through, either.

N: No. Beagle got it.

M: The same Beagle?

N: Yes, the same one. They don’t have a sausage dog and a cheese dog. Same one.

M: They can smell sausage and cheese.

N: And heroin. And cocaine. And impure thoughts.

M: I don’t want heroin. I want cheese. And Soppressata.

N: I could make Beagle sausage, I tell you. Yum.

M: That’s the thing about Beagles. About animals, really. About the natural world.

N: What’s that?

M: They don’t have any morals. You can get them to do anything. No questions asked.

N: Well. Before humans, they didn’t need any morals.

M: Hm, yes. They had it made.

N: And for humans, that was our downfall, you know.

M: What’s that?

N: Morals.

M: Ah yes.

N: Can you find it in your heart to forgive the Beagle his trespasses?

M: That’s the thing about my heart, I can never find anything in there.

N: Oh I know, I know.

M: Think about it, we invented flying machines. You go in a metal tube filled with 230 other people all the way to Italy, but you can’t bring back a sausage? Why did we bother?

N: Well I for one will never trust a Beagle again.

M: I for two.

N: With those Beagley little eyes.

M: That’s our dystopian future. Robot masters with their Beagle sidekicks. “Who. Is. A. Good. Boy. Who. Who. Who.”

N: This is ruining our evening. We have to set about getting over this, or we’ll never get over it.

M: That’s true. We can’t let them win.

N: The Beagle People!

M: We have to take back control of our lives!

N: My God what have they done to us!

M: They stole from us, that’s what they did, my dear. And they have not only normalized it . . . they made it adorable.

N: They’ve adorableized it!

M: I mean . . . I don’t feel violated at all.

N: Oh God! Oh God Oh God Oh God!

M: Leaving us with nothing but this, this, pathetic anecdote.

N: “A Beagle took our cheese and sausage at the airport.”

M: The story of our lives. Anecdotes.

N: That’s what they do with our lives. Churn them up into anecdotes. Like . . . sausage.

M: You know, he had on this little jacket –

N: – A jacket?

M: Well, I don’t know, he was wearing this thing on his back, like a cape.

N: I see.

M: And it said, “K-9” on it. As in, the letter K and the number 9. Instead of c-a-n, i-n-e.

N: Well, they dumb it down a bit for them. Dogs can’t spell too well.

M: I suppose you’re right. In any case, it just means “dog.” So the dog was labelled, “Dog.”

N: It means he’s an official dog. Like on TV, they go to raid a house and they have those blue windbreakers that say “DEA” or “FBI.” I reckon they can only wear them when going to raid a house.

M: Not on a stakeout. Not undercover.

N: “Hey . . . you’re not wearing a wire or nuthin, right? Wait a minute – what’s that jacket say?”

M: I grew up watching those shows and dreaming of the day I too would wear one of those windbreakers . . .

N: You gotta earn the windbreaker. You gotta break a lotta wind, the old-fashioned way.

M: Do windbreakers even work? Any coat, a sweater, your naked body – anything is a windbreaker. Talk about marketing. It completely keeps the wind from touching you!

N: All will be calm within a 20-inch radius, even in a gale.

M: You see? You can’t trust anything anymore.

N: Everything is doubtable.

M: And redoubtable.

N: Dogs in windbreakers.

M: A simple thing like smuggling becomes a farce.

N: If they just let us get away with it, we’d be normal.

M: Right. Everything would be fine and there’d be nothing to talk about.

N: Exactly. Now we have to wait.

M: Yes. For what?

N: For some new silliness to keep us from thinking about how ridiculous our lives are.

M: I’ll just turn on the news.

N: Did someone turn it off?

Patrick Cole lives in Barcelona and holds a Master’s degree in nautical archaeology. His novel Gemini was recently short-listed for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction, and stories of his have appeared in numerous notable publications including the Writing That Risks anthology, Parcel (a Pushcart Prize nominee), High Plains Literary Review (also a Pushcart Prize nominee), Rivet, and The Conium Review. His poetry was published recently in Angry Old Man, The Offbeat, Arsenic Lobster, The Ekphrastic Review and The Heron Tree.