[Fiction] Bucket's Day at the Beach by Jacob Shelton

FICTION - ISSUE FOUR

Bucket's Day at the Beach

JACOB SHELTON

Katelyn, Ben Tom, and Bucket tumbled out of the backseat and ran across the pebble beach toward the water. Katelyn, Ben, and Tom were people – human beings; Bucket was a dog. Before you get too anxious I’d like to make something perfectly clear – this isn’t going to be one of those stories where I introduce an animal into the literary equation only to do away with it in order to gain some easy sympathy from you. It’s cheap and I won’t do it. As the omniscient narrative voice in this story, I happen to know that Bucket will live a long life full of love and adventure.

So anyway, Tom drank too much and drowned but no one noticed because Ben had gotten his foot caught in a bear trap.

“Why is there a bear trap on the beach?”

Katelyn cried to the sky as Ben screamed in agony, the jagged teeth digging further into his skin with every failed escape attempt.

“Because I put it there,”

I answered from the chair in my bedroom.

“Your story was really boring and I decided to spice it up a bit.”

Jacob Shelton is a writer and comedian from Austin, Texas. He lives in Los Angeles and thinks about what it would be like to be a dog walker instead of whatever it is he's doing that day.