Free The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians by Andersen Prunty Page B

leaves the house so she never has the chance to take the dog back. The man never even lets go of the leash. The sex is subpar and awkward.
    One day, the dog chews up one of the man’s shirts. “We have to get rid of it,” the man says.
    “ I’ll just take him and go home.”
    “ Nope. Gotta make sure he’s far away. I need my shirts. And you need to learn about loss.”
    The man drags the dog into the kitchen. He rummages through drawers and opens cabinets. In the refrigerator he finds a pair of large wings. “These oughtta do it,” he says.
    He holds the wings against the dog’s fur, as though they’ll just magically adhere themselves. They don’t. “Whatta you think’s the most humane way to go about this?” he asks. “I got staples, nails ...”
    “ I don’t know what you’re planning to do but you’re scaring me. And you’re scaring the dog.” She points to the dog, its tail between its legs and whimpering.
    “ Maybe glue. Yeah, I got some good glue.”
    “ I can’t let you do this.”
    “ You can and you will. This here’s my dog. You ain’t got no say in it.”
    The woman is now crying. “It is not your dog.”
    The man slathers glue on the base of the right wing and sticks it to the dog, under its right shoulder. “We done been over this. This here’s my dog and I get to choose what happens to it. When you went and moved in you unconditionally accepted the fact that this here was my dog. If you was so upset about it, thinkin’ it was your dog and everything, you woulda called the cops or somethin’.”
    The woman takes a deep breath. “There haven’t been any cops for years.”
    “ I suppose that’s my fault too, huh?”
    “ I can’t stand here and watch this anymore.”
    The woman wants to attack the man but she’s afraid he will hurt her and the dog and then it will have all been pointless. She leaves the room and sits on the rancid couch in the living room, turning on the TV and watching static patterns snow across the fractured glass. In a few minutes the man walks through the living room, carrying the dog. Both wings have now been affixed to the dog’s back.
    The man chuckles. “If you love somethin’ you got to set it free.”
    The woman buries her face in her hands and cries, her shoulders heaving.
    She doesn’t want to follow the man and the dog outside but curiosity gets the best of her. She thinks maybe the dog will run off and she can run after it, knowing the man will be too lazy to follow. The man delicately descends the porch steps and stands in the wasted front yard. A boy rides his bike down the street, dragging an old pushmower behind him. The mower is running, loud, almost drowning out the boy’s shouted obscenities.
    “ Here goes,” the man says. He tosses the dog up into the air and the wings begin flapping. The dog rises into the sky, higher and higher, until it flies so high that it goes into orbit. By this time, it’s well out of sight.
    The man and woman go back inside. The man keeps the empty leash strapped to his wrist. In the following days he becomes despondent and mentally abusive. He brings home hideous women covered in various lumps and odors. The lumpy women make fun of the other woman and, eventually, she leaves. She goes back to her house but someone has planted a garden in it. She lies down between two rows of lettuce and stares up through the glass ceiling and waits for her dog to stop orbiting the earth.
     

Two Children Who Want to Drive Off a Cliff
     
    An eight feet tall man runs upon a narrow dirt path through a dense jungle. The jungle is very dark and smells like death. It’s filled with the squealing sounds of imagibeasts. Soon the man emerges from the jungle into the bright daylight. He continues running. The path ascends the side of a mountain. Halfway up the mountain a car is pulled to the shoulder of the path. The man, being so tall, reaches the car in no time. Two children lean against the driver’s side door of the black