Watching a program about humanity’s furry friends and the multitude of ways people and other animals interact, I learned about an incident that stuck heavily in my mind long after the program was over.
The show talked about a dog that had long been known for appropriating items and taking them to his own toy box.
The wife of the family owning the habitually larcenous canine became sick with cancer. She was released from the hospital. In her weakened condition, she could not go upstairs to her bedroom but could only sleep on the couch that was downstairs.
One day she awoke to find herself surrounded by dog toys and small items. Further examination showed that the toy box of the relentlessly acquisitive dog was empty.
The dog had put all of his possessions beside the ailing woman.
Why had he done this? I thought about this question and ran it by several of my friends. Possible answers thought of by myself and others were that the dog was trying to engage the woman in activity or was trying to cheer her up by giving her the items that the dog knew made him feel good. Perhaps the dog believed that he could aid her healing by giving her what he found most precious.
For a long time, this story percolated in my mind.
On another day, I happened to hear a Golden Oldie: “Lipstick on your collar/Told a tale on you, boy/Lipstick on your collar/Said you were untrue.â€ÂÂ
The scenario of the song began playing out in my mind. What if the lipstick were even more blatant than being on the collar? What if . . . ?
The story of the generous dog and the song’s tale of the carelessly unfaithful man are completely unrelated. But somehow they coalesced in my mind to form a short story. It is called “The Life that Lipstick Split in Half†and is online at http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=372494.
What do my readers think of how I melded these stories into my own special, fictional short story?
