I Do (Hate You) by Sienna Blake

James

You’d expect a German shepherd to have a decent poop. I mean, he’s not a Chihuahua or something, but oh my God this was elephant-size feces.

Shell and I stood there holding our noses while he did his business, not wanting to scream and scare the shit out of him. Actually, that was exactly what we wanted to do. But we didn’t want to make him get scared and stop.

When he was done, Booty started scratching the sand with his back paws, marking his territory, I guess. I instinctively lunged away until Shell screamed, “Don’t let him kick the poop up! That is precious poop that could contain the key to our freedom. Literally!”

I lunged forward with the plastic bag to pick up the pile of turd while Shell pulled Booty out of range on his leash. I stopped a few meters away when the smell hit me full force.

“What are you waiting for?” Shell screeched and yanked on the leash, which apparently Booty thought was a game. He jumped up and down and ran circles around her while Shell tried to step over the leash so she wouldn’t get both of us wrapped in it.

Instead of answering, I just dry heaved for a minute or two, which made Shell do the same. “I can’t,” she moaned, trying to get as far away from the poop as possible, but by then I was committed.

“Get back here,” I growled, which of course made Booty growl. I’d seen those terrifying training videos of German shepherd police dogs sinking their teeth into officers in a leather protection suit. I didn’t want to find out how big a chunk of my ass Booty could bite off if he took the notion.

“It’s okay, boy. Good boy,” I crooned as I got closer to the shit pile. Shell gave up resisting and let me drag our bound hands closer so I could open up the plastic bag.

My stream of consciousness turned into a long stream of curse words. “Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a cracker, how in the hell did I let you talk me into this fuckery?”

I would have gone on longer and louder, but I finally realized that the more I talked, the more I had to breathe, which as much as I tried not to, seemed to involve my nose. I picked the poop up with the bag, flipped it inside out and grabbed two sticks off the beach to go through it in a kind of chopstick scenario.

“Do you see the keys?” Shell asked, one hand holding the leash and the other holding her nose.

“No keys, but I’m pretty sure this is a hairpin and I think that thing there is a bouncy ball. No wonder this dog takes a dump as big as a rhino. He eats anything and everything. What is that? A key off a keyboard?”

I kept poking the pile with my sticks as it grew smaller and smaller, and we had to admit there were no keys in there.

Dammit.

“What do we do now?” I asked Shell as she put that plastic bag into a larger one and handed it back to me.

“We better go find Aunt Tillie and the stripper and give him his dog back.”

I flipped the bag into a trash can that was on the edge of the beach and we took turns scrubbing our hands in the ocean.

Shell patted the dog’s head as I took my turn dunking my hands. “I guess we know why he named him Booty, but I think Stinky Booty might be more accurate.”

“Or maybe Ass Trash,” I offered up.

We walked back through the trees so we wouldn’t be noticed, coming up with various stupid names for the smelly dog while we giggled like fifth graders.

When we got to Tillie’s villa, we saw someone walking toward us farther up on a gravel path. Instead of ducking behind another bush, we just let ourselves in her front door without knocking.

“I hear her singing in the bathroom off the main bedroom,” Shell said. “Come on.”

Shell and the dog dragged me through the living room and into Tillie’s bedroom. Booty was ecstatic to find his master lying there in bed. Shell and I were horrified to see that he was lying there handcuffed with only his crotch covered.

“Hi guys,” he said cheerfully to all three of us. “Did you have any luck?”

“What the hell happened here?” Shell asked. “Did someone break in here and handcuff you to the bed?”

“Uh, no,” he mumbled. “No one broke in, I mean. They’re my handcuffs.”

“No, they’re not,” Shell whispered through gritted teeth. “They can’t be your handcuffs because you said that these were your handcuffs.”

She waved our joined hands in the air causing the chain to rattle and me to flinch, surprised at having my arm flung out and waved around.

I read somewhere that all humans have their breaking point. Apparently, Shell’s involved a stripper who couldn’t keep track of his hardware. But right at that moment, I had a more pressing issue.

When I tuned out Shell’s angry whispers, I heard Tillie in the bathroom singing Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” I was pretty sure that a stripper handcuffed to a bed and a woman in the next room singing “I’m hot, sticky sweet…from my head to my feet” meant we needed to get the hell out of there before we saw something we wouldn’t be able to unsee.

“Um, Shell…”

“Shut up, James. If these aren’t his handcuffs, then we just lost an hour of our lives walking a dog and sifting through his poop for nothing.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s my bad,” the stripper said sweetly, which was at odds with the spiked leather bikini underwear he was wearing. “I thought I’d lost the handcuffs, but they had just slid down behind the bed. Don’t worry, we found the keys too.”

“Yeah, because that’s our big worry right now. You getting stuck in handcuffs,” she snarked at him.

“Seriously, Shell, let’s get out of here,” I insisted.

Too late.

“I hope you’re ready for this, big boy,” Tillie said from the bathroom, and it must have finally occurred to Shell what was about to happen.

“Oh no,” she said. “No no no no…”

Before Shell could turn away Tillie had kicked the door open with a pair of stiletto boots. The only other thing she was wearing was a red lace teddy that had little tassels on the nipples.

I had about half a second to gape at Tillie before Shell dragged me out of the bedroom, through the suite and out the door.