Chapter 3

The next day, my parents left. They took Buddy to the park, a daily ritual that had become the center of their lives. "We need to clear our heads," my mother had said, "and Buddy loves his walkies." They spoke as if a walk in the park would solve the fact that we were about to be homeless.

This was my chance.

The moment their footsteps faded down the stairs, I sprang into action. The apartment felt unnervingly quiet without them. I went straight to my parents' bedroom, to the spot where Buddy's plush bed sat. In my first life, I had never dared to touch his things. Now, I ripped the bed apart.

Inside, underneath the foam padding, I found it. My old, worn-out teddy bear from when I was a child. Its throat had been torn out, and its button eyes were scratched into nothing. But that wasn't the worst part. Tucked inside the torn stuffing was a small, half-chewed piece of a wiring cap. It was blue.

I ran to the kitchen and looked under the sink. The pipes were old and rusty, but one wire connected to the dishwasher's heating element was new. Its protective cap was gone. If that wire had come loose, it could have electrified the entire sink area. I washed dishes there every single night.

He had tried to kill me. Even before the bite, he had been planning it.

My hands were shaking, but not from fear. It was pure, cold rage. This thing wasn't just manipulating my parents; it was actively trying to eliminate me.

I needed more than just a feeling. I needed undeniable proof. I took the small amount of cash I had hidden away, money I' d been saving for an emergency, and ran to the pawn shop down the street. They sold all kinds of used electronics.

"I need your smallest camera," I told the man behind the counter. "A nanny cam. Something easy to hide."

He sold me a tiny black cube for thirty dollars, almost everything I had. I ran back to the apartment, my heart pounding. I found the perfect spot: a dusty ventilation grate in the corner of the living room, high up on the wall. It had a direct view of the whole room, including the kitchen entryway and Buddy's bed.

I carefully positioned the camera inside the grate, the tiny lens peeking through a slit. I connected it to my old laptop, which I hid under my bed. The setup was crude, but it would work.

I finished just as I heard them coming back up the stairs. I scrambled into my room, my breathing heavy.

That night was torture. I pretended to be asleep, listening to my parents coo over Buddy, feeding him scraps from their meager dinner of canned beans. They didn't offer me any. I didn't want it.

Later, when the apartment was finally dark and quiet, I pulled the laptop from under my bed. The screen flickered to life, showing a grainy, black-and-white view of the living room.

For hours, nothing happened. Buddy slept on his bed. The only sound was my father's snoring from the other room. I started to feel a creeping doubt again. Was I going crazy?

Then, around 3 a.m., he moved.

He didn't wake up like a normal dog, stretching and yawning. He rose in one fluid, silent motion, as if pulled up by strings. He stood perfectly still in the center of the room, his head cocked, listening.

The sight was so unnatural, so eerie, that I held my breath.

He padded silently into the kitchen, disappearing from the camera's view. I could hear faint scratching sounds, then the soft clink of a glass bottle. What was he doing?

A minute later, he came back into the living room. In his mouth, he was carefully carrying my mother's bottle of sleeping pills. She took one every night for her "nerves."

He walked over to the small table next to the couch where I kept my water bottle. With a dexterity that should have been impossible for a dog, he used his nose and paw to unscrew the cap. I watched, horrified, as he tipped the pill bottle.

One, two, three, four... ten pills. He tipped ten pills into my water bottle. Then he carefully nudged the cap back on, not screwing it tight, just placing it on top so it looked normal.

He carried the pill bottle back to the kitchen, and I heard the faint sound of the medicine cabinet closing. He returned to his bed and lay down as if nothing had happened.

I stared at the screen, my entire body trembling. He was trying to poison me. He was going to make it look like an overdose, like a suicide. In this economy, with our family's problems, no one would have questioned it. A depressed girl takes her own life. It would have been a sad, but believable, story.

The rage inside me burned away any remaining fear. This wasn't a dog. It was a monster wearing a dog's skin. My parents weren't just neglectful; they were harboring a murderer.

I looked at the water bottle on the screen, then at the creature sleeping peacefully on his bed.

He had sealed his own fate. And he had sealed my parents' fate along with it.

I saved the video file. I now had the proof I needed. Not for the police, not for my parents. They would never believe it.

It was proof for myself. It was the justification for what I was about to do.