The dog was drooling black foam, Satan’s hound embedded with the jaws of death, the maw of hell snickering out from it, oozing slime.

You ran as fast as you possibly could, your jeans falling down towards the pavement as you ran away from the demon. You fought them back up your hips as your feet slammed into the unforgiving pavement. The sun licked the back of your neck, and you foamed sweat, adrenaline, urea, and hope from every pore of your being.

The world was ending anyway. Satan had shown himself on the news, and your leaving of this earth via rabid demon hound seems the best thing you could hope for. Better even than melting into the mayonnaise of malaise.

You watched the fall coming from the softness of your couch: Clowns dressed in black and with rosy cheeks went on television and made deals with hopeless, bereft nuns on how God could improve his image, and though their knees went bloody with prayer, the nuns never seemed to reach, nor hear, the word of God. They became hopeless.

All that happened was that the earth flatulated itself, and the holes of gas from the end of both doom and hope erupted, and the demons began to chase every beating heart.

The dog was your demon, and you ran from it, thinking of the prayers, the gods you had learned about, and trying to select the right words, the right deity to protect yourself from sharp, demonic hatred. Was it that you never cared? Or that caring never mattered? Or that mattering was never much of a concern of yours? Suddenly, you feel the fool, as the claws drag on black concrete at the end of the world, the ululating tongue growling at you, and the behemoth beast comes closer.

You feel its teeth

snag on your jeans

and then you hear

that silent hum of the end

trilling in your heart.