Speaker 1: The Baptism of a dog Man, Mumbai, India. I would
Speaker 1: like to share a dog man's story that I've written
Speaker 1: inspired by a true event that happened with me. I
Speaker 1: still can't wrap my head around it. Writing this story
Speaker 1: is probably away from me. To make sense of it,
Speaker 1: I will reveal to you what part of the story
Speaker 1: is true toward the end. Usually we have heard stories
Speaker 1: only about encounters with the vicious, cryptid dog man. Here
Speaker 1: is a legend about how a dog man probably comes
Speaker 1: into being as a result of the apathy of the
Speaker 1: very society we live in and certain dark forces we
Speaker 1: know almost nothing about. I grew up in a part
Speaker 1: of Mumbai, India that has always identified themselves as nastis,
Speaker 1: meaning non believers, non believers in everything from the great
Speaker 1: gods to the damned devils. But something happened in this
Speaker 1: quaint town that crushed this belief to blunt yards. My
Speaker 1: town is located on the outskirts of the National Park,
Speaker 1: so close to the woods that it gets preposterously chilly,
Speaker 1: especially at night. Outsiders find it eerie, but to us
Speaker 1: it just means that ice cream lasts longer. I was
Speaker 1: employed for the longest time but managed to get a
Speaker 1: job as a postman thanks to my childhood friend Tahas,
Speaker 1: who works as an accountant at the local post office.
Speaker 1: Postmen get designated zones in which they have to deliver.
Speaker 1: Lucky for me, I got to sign. The area where
Speaker 1: Tahas and I have lived all our lives is on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the National Park. Unlike in foreign trees,
Speaker 1: Indian postmen do not get vehicles for delivery and have
Speaker 1: to deliver mostly on foot. I didn't mind that. I
Speaker 1: thought it would help me shed the extra pounds that
Speaker 1: I had put on while I was unemployed. But delivering
Speaker 1: posts turned out to be a thankless job. To pull
Speaker 1: my spirits up, I would plug in my earphones and
Speaker 1: try to bob my head to the sickest beats on
Speaker 1: the way to the houses. It seldom helped. Now, I
Speaker 1: would often cross our town's colorful marketplace, where I was
Speaker 1: always greeted by this cute little black and white Streek
Speaker 1: dog I called her Patchy. She would jump in glee
Speaker 1: and put her four limbs on my hips because she
Speaker 1: knew I carried in my shirt pocket the tastiest roasted
Speaker 1: chickpeas a form of healthy energy replenishment. In case I
Speaker 1: got really tired, which was often, but I would still
Speaker 1: give her a handful of chickpeas as it was extra
Speaker 1: extraordinarily amusing to see her relish the snack. She'd nibblely
Speaker 1: licked my hand clean in a matter of seconds, but
Speaker 1: made sure that her teeth never hurt me. Patchy was
Speaker 1: undoubtedly the highlight of my day, the smile in many
Speaker 1: miles of misery. One morning, I got an earfull at
Speaker 1: the post office for having a delivery backlog, and I
Speaker 1: was given an ultimatum by my superior to finish off
Speaker 1: all of the deliveries by the end of the day
Speaker 1: or else he would fire me. I was not ready
Speaker 1: to face the demons of unemployment again, so I was
Speaker 1: hauling ass across town to deliver the backlogged post and
Speaker 1: new post. I was rushing past the marketplace when I
Speaker 1: heard a bark from across the street. Oh no, not today, sweetie,
Speaker 1: I thought, no time for doggy loving when your ass
Speaker 1: is on the line. But the black and white qutie
Speaker 1: barked again and gave the cutest smile. It was enough
Speaker 1: to make a heart of stone melt, and mine is
Speaker 1: merely made of tender. I reached in my pocket for
Speaker 1: her favorite roasted chickpeas, and her ears perked up, and
Speaker 1: I know she was salivating in anticipation. Patchy darted across
Speaker 1: the street, and in a flash, a sedan just steam
Speaker 1: rolled over her out of nowhere, the horrid yelp. It
Speaker 1: is an imprinted scar in my memory, like a third
Speaker 1: degree burned passers by. I tried to stop the car,
Speaker 1: but the reckless ass sped away. I didn't care for that.
Speaker 1: All I cared for was the highlight of my day,
Speaker 1: and she was just crushed under its wheels. I ran
Speaker 1: to her and sat down on the filthy road where
Speaker 1: she laid, and she looked surprisingly fine but motionless. So
Speaker 1: I lifted her head in my palm and it felt wet,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't blood. It was her brains. One side
Speaker 1: of her skull was missing and her brain was spilling
Speaker 1: out and in shock. I sat there with the dog
Speaker 1: in my arms for the longest time. My buzzing phone
Speaker 1: jolted me out of the days. It was my supervisor.
Speaker 1: I hope you're done with most of your deliveries. Report
Speaker 1: back to me at six pm on the dot, hopefully
Speaker 1: with your post bag empty. The fact was I had
Speaker 1: barely started for the day. I laid Patchy back down
Speaker 1: and wiped her brains off my fingers with my handkerchief,
Speaker 1: and I looked around for help. I was lucky a
Speaker 1: nearby shop owner was already on call with the authorities.
Speaker 1: He gave me a nod, and I'm not proud of it,
Speaker 1: but I left the beloved street dog and I rushed
Speaker 1: to complete my deliveries. I had lost one worthy thing
Speaker 1: in my life, and it made no sense losing another.
Speaker 1: I ran, and I ran like the wind, even though
Speaker 1: my appalling fitness allowed me only to move like a
Speaker 1: slow breeze across the marketplace many times. But Patchie still
Speaker 1: lay there in the middle of the street. This is
Speaker 1: what often happens in my country. The authorities don't give
Speaker 1: a shit about us, much less a dead dog. And
Speaker 1: then the late evening heat scorched her dead body to
Speaker 1: the point where it began to emit the odor of decomposition.
Speaker 1: I covered my nose with my handkerchief until I realized
Speaker 1: I was inhaling Patchi's brain off of it, and I
Speaker 1: shoved it back into my pocket. I couldn't help but
Speaker 1: just go on with making my deliveries. The deadline of
Speaker 1: six pm flew by as if in seconds. I made
Speaker 1: deliveries into the dead of the night, and I was
Speaker 1: cursed by sleepy homeowners. And still I was unable to
Speaker 1: finish all the deliveries. It was impossible with the backlog.
Speaker 1: My crazy supervisor called me to the post office at
Speaker 1: that hour, only to fire me and take away my
Speaker 1: ID card in the remaining post letters. I phoned my
Speaker 1: friend the post office account at Tahas, but even his
Speaker 1: pleas to the supervisor didn't help. I was having the
Speaker 1: worst day of my life. I was dejected and defeated,
Speaker 1: and I walked home alone. The chill, the fog from
Speaker 1: the National Park crept in once more. Crossing the marketplace,
Speaker 1: I dreaded seeing the dead dog again, but she wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Thank god, the authorities had picked her up for a
Speaker 1: decent burial, I thought. I walked up the druid, desolate
Speaker 1: street and shop shutters down. Not a sound but that
Speaker 1: of the wishing wind. I saw a shadow moving down
Speaker 1: the street. It went past the light of the street
Speaker 1: lamp and appeared beneath another. This time it was not
Speaker 1: a shadow, but because it was clearly lit, my eyes widened.
Speaker 1: It was a dog, and I couldn't believe it. It
Speaker 1: was black and white. It was Patchy, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: But she looked strange, a little off. I felt a
Speaker 1: lump in my chest and a ball of fear or happiness.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. How could she be alive? I saw
Speaker 1: her die this morning. I saw her brains in the road,
Speaker 1: and I smelled her decomposing body. How could she be alive?
Speaker 1: I couldn't wrap my head around this. And then she
Speaker 1: started limping toward the curb. There was a decrepit woman
Speaker 1: sitting there. She had white hair and a multicolored surrey.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't see her face, not that there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough light. There was. She was sitting under the street light,
Speaker 1: but her face was complete darkness, as if she were faceless.
Speaker 1: She stretched her hand out to Patchy and started applying
Speaker 1: a yellow paste on the dog's head where the skull
Speaker 1: had broken off. Ah, it's t merick, I thought. Tameric
Speaker 1: is a local aniseptic found widely in Indian kitchens. She
Speaker 1: was applying it to heal the street dog. Maybe I
Speaker 1: was misreading the situation. The woman was here to help hell.
Speaker 1: She practically resurrected my beloved Patche using ancient Indian medicines.
Speaker 1: Still applying the tameric, the woman looked at me. The
Speaker 1: chill ran through my entire body. My muscles, which were
Speaker 1: aching after the horrid day, throbbed in much greater pain,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly relaxed. Feeling strange but relieved. I smiled
Speaker 1: at her, and she picked up something from beside her.
Speaker 1: It was pieces of brain, and she shoved it inside
Speaker 1: the dog's head. Her entire fist was inside. The dog
Speaker 1: let out a deafening howl, brandishing her teeth, which appeared
Speaker 1: much larger than before. And then it struck me why
Speaker 1: Patchy looked so strange. She had somehow become larger in
Speaker 1: a matter of hours, but still she was supposedly dead.
Speaker 1: This is not my Patchy, and this is not a woman,
Speaker 1: I thought. I gasped out loud at the realization, as
Speaker 1: my gut sank a thousand feet. But now Patchi turned
Speaker 1: toward me and growled as if I was the one
Speaker 1: who shoved a hand on her skull. I backed up,
Speaker 1: and Patchy jumped up onto her hind legs, just as
Speaker 1: the old decrepit woman stood up I waited for the
Speaker 1: dog's fore legs to come back down, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: What the hell? The darkness in the woman's face became bigger,
Speaker 1: as big as a wrecking ball. It seemed as if
Speaker 1: she had opened her mouth wide, and a low rumble
Speaker 1: filled the air, and my chest vibrated like a tuning
Speaker 1: fork and my stomach I vomited. My ears hurt like hell,
Speaker 1: and blood ran out of them. The damn dog started
Speaker 1: sprinting menacingly on his hind legs toward me. The black
Speaker 1: and white face with ghoulish, shining black eyes and a
Speaker 1: yellow red head, scowled and drooled. I ran back down
Speaker 1: the road as fast as I could, not looking back
Speaker 1: even once, and I dashed into the post office and
Speaker 1: locked myself in the strange booth. Outside the door, there
Speaker 1: was a loud bang, and then howls, and then scratching claws.
Speaker 1: Why does Patchie want to kill me? I was good
Speaker 1: to her, I fed her. Now she can't be Patchy.
Speaker 1: The thoughts plagued my mind all night. I don't remember
Speaker 1: whether the scratching stopped first or exhaustion consumed me. I
Speaker 1: was woken to Knox and my supervisor's bossy shouts early
Speaker 1: the next morning, who locked this room? And what are
Speaker 1: these scratches? I have important files in here. Relieved, I
Speaker 1: opened the door for the supervisor and standing behind him
Speaker 1: was ta Haas. They were shocked to see me and
Speaker 1: my clothes were stained. I had shit in my pants
Speaker 1: due to the fright during the night's ordeal. I hadn't
Speaker 1: realized it at the time. Tahas took the day off
Speaker 1: and he took me home and he bathed me and
Speaker 1: sat with me patiently, even though I didn't say a
Speaker 1: word to him. He prepared some food and we ate
Speaker 1: and then he put me to sleep. He is a
Speaker 1: true friend. Indeed, that evening I said to him, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you, but I don't understand it myself.
Speaker 1: There is no need. He said, Let's go out for
Speaker 1: drinks to your favorite place. Well that brought a smile
Speaker 1: to my face and a time that seemed the darkest.
Speaker 1: Our favorite, extravagantly secret, magical place for locals to drink
Speaker 1: was the National Park. The park stays shut at night,
Speaker 1: and so we entered unnoticed from a secluded end of town.
Speaker 1: We had broken a hole at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: National Park's boundary wall. And that night, Taos and I
Speaker 1: purchased our whiskey from the local liquor shop and we
Speaker 1: entered the park woods. It was serene and quiet and calm,
Speaker 1: like this town is always supposed to be. It took
Speaker 1: my mind off the horrific memories of last night, the
Speaker 1: dog and the shadow woman, the howls and the yelps.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I closed my eyes while walking, and a
Speaker 1: tear fell down my cheek. It was a good thing.
Speaker 1: It was pitch dark in the woods, so Tahis couldnot
Speaker 1: see them. What sort of man cries in front of
Speaker 1: another man? I thought, A manly one, I realized later.
Speaker 1: Soon we were drinking and smoking heavily, reminiscing about how
Speaker 1: we used to score on girls and all the mischief
Speaker 1: we would gravitate to, and we laughed and laughed. A
Speaker 1: haunting image came screaming back to me, that of the
Speaker 1: decrepit woman shoving her hand inside Patchie's head, and I
Speaker 1: stopped laughing. Though Tejas could not see my face, he
Speaker 1: could sense something was wrong. Do you hear that too?
Speaker 1: He asked me. Hear what? The faint sound of hoofs
Speaker 1: thumped the ground. The thumping increased as if there were
Speaker 1: hundreds of animals approaching and we could not decipher what
Speaker 1: they were. The woods were laden with ferocious leopards infamous
Speaker 1: for claiming many innocent lives. Run whispered Tajos, and we
Speaker 1: took off at a sprint, blind and in the opposite direction,
Speaker 1: leaving all our booze behind. I crashed into the thick
Speaker 1: trees and I couldn't see a thing, but I could
Speaker 1: feel fear like water up the nose. Tahis helped me
Speaker 1: up and we darted through the thicket, bruising ourselves with
Speaker 1: whips from the bushes. But then we heard approaching hoofs
Speaker 1: from this direction as well, then the left, and we
Speaker 1: ran towards the right, and something surrounded us. The thumping
Speaker 1: was so loud that Tahas and I huddled together and
Speaker 1: we sat down, waiting for an inevitable stampede. The hoofs
Speaker 1: sped toward us, but stopped merely a centimeter short, and
Speaker 1: wind gushed past as dust filled the air to a
Speaker 1: stifling point, and then everything went silent. We couldn't see
Speaker 1: a thing. With trembling hands, I lit the flashlight on
Speaker 1: my mobile phone, expecting to see a leopard or a
Speaker 1: panther or a wild boar, But no, what we saw
Speaker 1: were deer, hundreds and hundreds of deer like mannequins, standing
Speaker 1: paralyzed in fear. What were they petrified of? Was it us? Well,
Speaker 1: that was unlikely. I couldn't understand, but I hope that
Speaker 1: they weren't scared of the same thing I ran from
Speaker 1: the night before. I reached for Ta Hoos's hand. It
Speaker 1: was frigid, much colder than mine, and we slowly stood
Speaker 1: up and started squeezing past the deer, making sure not
Speaker 1: to touch and alarm them, and we heard footsteps. They
Speaker 1: were bipedal something heavy beneath which twigs and branches snapped
Speaker 1: like crackers. Whoever or whatever this was, stealth was not
Speaker 1: its tactic. Fear was its tactic. I tugged at Tehos's shirt,
Speaker 1: indicating him to be still, and then a loud thud,
Speaker 1: as if something jumped into the crowd of deer and
Speaker 1: between us. Chaos ensued as the deer ran helter skelter,
Speaker 1: slashes and growls and yelps and pounding hooks filled the night.
Speaker 1: Warm liquid sprayed over us from all directions, and I
Speaker 1: still remember the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
Speaker 1: Something was slaughtering the deer ruthlessly, and I shined my
Speaker 1: flashlight in the direction of the pandemonium, and beyond the
Speaker 1: carnage of the bleeding dead and scurrying injured, we saw
Speaker 1: it me for the second time in Tahas for the first,
Speaker 1: and standing on its hind legs was the dog Patchy.
Speaker 1: The dog had become grotesque and taller, nine maybe ten
Speaker 1: feet tall, still with the yellowish shade on its head
Speaker 1: and a throbbing brain poking out with vicious claws and incisors,
Speaker 1: and its muzzle was covered in blood. It saw us
Speaker 1: and shoved aside the deer in our path, and it
Speaker 1: curved its lips ominously back when it looked at me,
Speaker 1: almost like a smirt has pulled me back. But I
Speaker 1: was trampled down by the running deer, whose hoof snapped
Speaker 1: in my right forearm in half. But I somehow managed
Speaker 1: to stand back up despite the piercing agony. The sinister
Speaker 1: dog growled at Tehos and he charged. Instead of running away,
Speaker 1: tey Haas too, charged at it with clenched fists. The
Speaker 1: dog opened its mouth wide and I pleaded with tey
Speaker 1: Has to stop, but it was too late. Nick cleanly
Speaker 1: bit Tajos's head off as swiftly as plucking out flowers.
Speaker 1: Just when did life leave his body? I don't know,
Speaker 1: because even without his head, his clenched fist delivered an
Speaker 1: almighty punch square to the dog's muzzle, but it didn't
Speaker 1: affect the dog at all. It approached me slowly, and
Speaker 1: the gore and shock of my best friend getting brutally
Speaker 1: beheaded made me freeze where I stood. It spat my
Speaker 1: friend's head at my feet, all slimy and bloody and
Speaker 1: cut up by the dog's incisors. The dog started bending
Speaker 1: and letting out steamed breath onto my bloody face. It
Speaker 1: smelled horrific, like the right of many bodies that had
Speaker 1: just slain before my eyes, and it went past my
Speaker 1: face below and poked its chin at my shirt pocket.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand it first, but when I noticed the
Speaker 1: crunching sound coming from my pocket, I realized that the
Speaker 1: dog wanted the roasted chickpeas within I'd carried it to
Speaker 1: chomp on while having drinks with Tahas. This monster, this
Speaker 1: monster wants roasted snacks. Perhaps a part of my cute
Speaker 1: little patchy was still alive inside this insidious, abhorrent, despicable creature.
Speaker 1: With my working left arm, I fished out a fistful
Speaker 1: of roasted chickpeas and I threw it to the ground.
Speaker 1: The dog roared and spat right in my face, and
Speaker 1: I thought I would disintegrate. I took out another fistful
Speaker 1: of the snack and held it out in my trembling palm,
Speaker 1: and just like the patchy, I knew the monster nibble
Speaker 1: and licked my hand clean in a matter of seconds.
Speaker 1: I thought, surely it would chew off my hand, but
Speaker 1: the teeth shockingly never hurt me. The brute licked my
Speaker 1: face and the roughness of its tongue scratched my skin,
Speaker 1: and then it grabbed Tahas's limp body between two of
Speaker 1: its long, skinny fingers and dragged him into the murk,
Speaker 1: away from the reach of my frail flashlight. I dashed
Speaker 1: away from among the slain bodies as fast as my
Speaker 1: aching body could. The pain was unbearable, to the point
Speaker 1: that I could see darkness blacker than the blinding wooded
Speaker 1: night creeping in front of my eyes, and I stumbled
Speaker 1: out of the hole into the National park's boundary wall
Speaker 1: and collapsed to the coal numbing ground, and I whirled
Speaker 1: my eyes to stay open. I had to do one
Speaker 1: more thing. I saw the slabs of the wall that
Speaker 1: we had broken and thrown aside, and I crawled into
Speaker 1: it on my elbows, the stony glacial earth, cutting deep,
Speaker 1: grabbing the wall slabs between my left and both hands,
Speaker 1: and painstakingly sealed the wall. Only then did I allow
Speaker 1: my knees to buckle below me. But something held me up.
Speaker 1: It didn't let me fall. I turned to look, and
Speaker 1: I saw first a multicolored serri and then her face,
Speaker 1: as dark as a black hole. The shadowy, sinister face
Speaker 1: moved as she spoke, you seem hurt. Won't you let
Speaker 1: me apply some to merit to your wounds? You'll feel
Speaker 1: better than ever. She put her hand in my pant
Speaker 1: pocket and pulled out the brain smeared handkerchief I had
Speaker 1: almost forgotten about, and she swallowed it. The low rumble
Speaker 1: echoed it once again, engulfing me in waves of misery,
Speaker 1: and I let out a scream, through which escaped every
Speaker 1: ounce of my depleted energy, and it drowned in the
Speaker 1: cackling laughter of the decrepit old woman. As I faded
Speaker 1: into the killing night. The town still mourns the death
Speaker 1: of Tahas's young, brave life. As for me, I try
Speaker 1: to get by with PTSD counseling to deal with my
Speaker 1: survivor's guilt. We should have never gone out that night,
Speaker 1: and especially with all that had happened with me the
Speaker 1: night before. My hand had healed overnight courtesy of the
Speaker 1: decrepit woman. I'm still awaiting its haunting repercussions, keeping in
Speaker 1: mind what that kind of healing has done to the
Speaker 1: once lifeless patche my quaint town. And now you too
Speaker 1: know the story of the birth of our town's dog
Speaker 1: or dog Woman, to be precise, It is as if
Speaker 1: I got baptized by consuming my dear friend Tahas. Even
Speaker 1: though the National Park is now permanently shut and its
Speaker 1: boundary wall is completely sealed with the dog Man inside,
Speaker 1: we are not safe. From time to time I see
Speaker 1: the monster standing atop the tall boundary walls, now even
Speaker 1: taller eleven feet. Its body structure looks oddly like that
Speaker 1: of my dead friend. It lurks in the darkness of
Speaker 1: the streets and people go missing. I'm sure they're dead,
Speaker 1: but not me, even though I have felt it stalking me.
Speaker 1: Now I can't help but accept the fact that there
Speaker 1: is still some kind of weird bond between me and
Speaker 1: the killer creature, the monster, the dog man, my sweetie Patchy.
Speaker 1: The end. Now for the part of the story that
Speaker 1: is true. The dead dog was really resurrected by that woman.
Speaker 1: I would see this patchy dog every day on my
Speaker 1: way to work. One day, a car ran over its head,
Speaker 1: crushing a part of it, just like I have stated earlier,
Speaker 1: And for two whole days I walked past it as
Speaker 1: it lay on the side of the road, stinking like
Speaker 1: any dead animal. It had shrunken to half its size
Speaker 1: than when it was alive. The next day, the body
Speaker 1: had just disappeared. Five days after that, while coming back
Speaker 1: from work way past midnight on a one lane empty road,
Speaker 1: I was stopped in my tracks by a dead dog,
Speaker 1: now miraculously alive. I was shivering, and it had become
Speaker 1: fat again, but its brains were still hanging out. They
Speaker 1: were glistening in the light. And I saw it walk
Speaker 1: to this woman in the darkness who was applying to
Speaker 1: Merrick on its head, muttering something I couldn't hear. When
Speaker 1: they noticed me, they just stared at me for an eternity.
Speaker 1: I was so petrified that I couldn't move. I called
Speaker 1: up a friend, waking him up from a deep slumber.
Speaker 1: I didn't care. I told him, dude, get your car
Speaker 1: pick me up right now, and that he did. But
Speaker 1: the four minutes he took to reach me felt like ours.
Speaker 1: My friend saw the dog, but strangely not the woman.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe he missed seeing her since we were
Speaker 1: in such a horrid hurry to get the hell out
Speaker 1: of there, but my friend kept saying that there was
Speaker 1: no one there. What the hell. I still can't understand
Speaker 1: how a dead dog can come to life just by
Speaker 1: applying to merit. Surely some dark forces are at play here.
Speaker 1: I really don't know. Now that dog is healed completely
Speaker 1: and actually acts quite normal. I see this dog every day,
Speaker 1: but I've never seen that woman again, and I never
Speaker 1: wont to PostScript. It is okay for you to reveal
Speaker 1: my name, even if you decide to read out the
Speaker 1: real part of the story, because fortunately in India, telling
Speaker 1: such stories is not frowned down upon. Unreal things keep
Speaker 1: happening to many around here, and I've told this story
Speaker 1: to my parents and friends, as they have shared their
Speaker 1: true experiences with me, and I believe them just like
Speaker 1: they believe me. If you or your listeners would be interested,
Speaker 1: I would love to share their stories with you too,
Speaker 1: but sadly they're not cryptid stories. There are more about spirits,
Speaker 1: both good and bad.