Antagonistic Zach

 

I'm excited to offer my first link to the Red Riding Hood. I love Nichole's blog, In These Small Moments, and Cheryl's blog, Mommypants, and we've become Twitter buddies as well. So it was only a matter of time before I discovered their Red Dress Club last fall and wanted to get in on the fun, but kind of had a lot of other things going on. I was surprised how well this went considering my creative writing skillz are quite rusty, and the prompt seemed pretty challenging. I had no idea where this story was going to go and it changed directions several times even though it's really short. So much fun!!

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Antagonistic Zach

Awash in fear, Xandra's face was pallid in the rare winter Seattle sunlight. "Back away slowly," she thought to herself as the Doberman approached her with a throaty growl. "Could this really be happening?"

Dogs excite fear in many people, but not to the extreme degree they affected Xandra. Even as a baby, she had inherently sensed they were a nemesis. Fortunately, her family hadn't owned any pets, so as long as she could claim allergies as a reason not to love them, she didn't find it difficult to avoid them. Given that she had never told a soul about this heart-wrenching phobia, it was quite a shock to find that her only enemy in human form had deduced her secret.

"Help!" she screamed hopelessly, her voice getting lost in the wind whipping off the waves. "I need help!!"

Just as she reached the edge of the pier (that had only hours ago teemed with fisherman) and had nowhere to go but the hypothermia-inducing Pacific ocean, the sun reflected off of something in her peripheral vision. "Knife the dog with the fish blade!" she thought. "Let me see if I can reach it without encouraging an attack. Maybe my luck hasn't completely run out after all."

Near enough to touch it now, she slowly reached out and picked up the knife, holding it in front of her to keep the dog at bay while she tried to calm her nerves and draw upon her Navy S.E.A.L. training. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the boat. Proudly, Zach stood at the helm watching his carefully orchestrated scenario unfold.

"Question for ya, Zach. Red or blue?" Xandra asked, a possible escape plan developing in her mind.

"Sorry?" he replied.

Then before he could figure out what she meant, Xandra turned and threw the knife with the precision that one expects from an assassin of her caliber. Unprepared, Zach only had time to slightly shift to the side, avoiding a deadly hit, but still sustaining a serious injury. Vexed by the turn of events, the Dobie wasn't sure if he should attack Xandra or assist his beloved owner. Water sprayed up from the sea startling him to action, but it was too late. Xandra had stealthily crept around his blind side and was almost to her car. Yelping in frustrating, the dog could only watch as Xandra sped away, her quick reflexes and MacGyver-like ability to resolve a perilous situation having saved her yet again. Zach gripped his bleeding shoulder and vowed that next time she wouldn't be so lucky.

This post was inspired by the prompt to write a 26-sentence piece in which each sentence starts with sequential letter of the alphabet, starting with "A."