Here is my alternative ending to A Boy and His Dog
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Here is my alternative ending to A Boy and His Dog
Here is my alternative ending to A Boy and His Dog
I truly enjoyed reading A Boy and His Dog. This short story created very strong imagery in my head. I have missed this part that fictional stories can create in the imagination. Here below I will list the original ending of the story, followed by the alternative ending that I create. Please Let me know what you guys think!
Original ending
“She got a pouty look on her face, “if you love me, you’ll come on!” I couldn’t make it alone out there without him. I knew it. If i loved her, She asked me, in the boiler, do you know what love is……”
My alternative ending
“She got a pouty look on her face, “if you love me, you’ll come on!” I couldn’t make it alone out there without him. I knew it. If i loved her, She asked me, in the boiler, do you know what love is.?
As I turned to face her, she put a knife right against my neck. I was in complete shock. “I will murder us both” she said to me with a craze look in her eye. “We either move on together or we both leave this planet” As I felt the knife digging deeper into my neck, I saw out of the corner of my eye that blood has stood up and leaned down in attack position. I moved my body so her back faced blood and within a second, blood pounced on back and dug his teeth into her neck. As she released me, I turned to see her legs kicking in the air as Blood used every ounce of his strength to end her life. Her leg movement came to a sudden stop as blood worked his way to heart.
Never in my life have I seen such an event of loyalty. I was never going to leave Blood behind. Nothing could get between my relationship with my dog.
…
In the nursery, the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off towards a distant streaming river…
Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, there was a voice madly repeating the day, over and over again…
“Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”
As the voice frantically repeated itself, and the kitchen continued to psychotically make breakfast of ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, and twenty dozen bacon strips, the noise reached a crescendo…
Then there was the crash.
Fire consumed the harried house as it fell into itself floor by floor, attic to kitchen, kitchen to cellar, and cellar to sub-cellar. The crash rumbled and jarred the foundation of the house as it crumpled like paper. The fire roared on as it spread through the yard, hissing on the freshly showered grass. The dead land was consumed and the neighborhood went up into the night until the dawn broke through the haze created by the night.
In a once immaculate street stood stone and concrete pathways, caved in cellars, and odd charred beams. There was a hissing of the last mechanical whirs before the silence suddenly laid over the ruins. The silence was odd and hadn’t been known for many years. The land gave a quiet whisper as the last of the human’s touch on the world had been carried away on the wind.
The breeze blew slightly through the charred, dead grass, and the earth moaned from the weight of the cracked concrete slabs. The earth rejoiced in its victory as it began to grow again.
And in years time, it may see the faces of its old friends once again.
Original ending:
And now I’m here with you, Pac. I wrote about it but didn’t remember the name. The Tupac Shakur Foundation headquarters in Stone Mountain, replete with an arts center and a peace garden. It’s pretty far from where you died and not at all where I wanted to end up, but here in post-apocalypse world we take what we can get. Jack has put me here in the shade by your bronze statue. He’s sitting right beside me, crying.
Here’s the truth: I don’t like hip hop. Never did. I don’t even like you. The Malcolm X stuff, the partying and guns, the charges of sexual assault – there’s not a lot we have in common. But your book paid the rent for a few months in Brooklyn. I sent a copy of it to Marie for Christmas, just as a joke, since she hates your music. She sent it back. Inside the cover she wrote, “I don’t want this in the same house as my daughter,” and I got so mad I didn’t call her until the Creep started. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered.
Life is short, Pac. I should have known that. Should have learned that from you.
“Susan,” Jumping Jack says now, his voice soft. His eyes are still watery but his face is calm as he raises the pistol. “I guess I have to do this now.”
Just then, a white government van whips into the driveway and stops with a squeal of brakes. Men in hazmat suits jump out. Rescuers!  Their leader looks just like Ed Harris. He is talking quickly, words that I barely catch – you got her here just in time, we’ll help you, we have a cure – and then I’m in a military infirmary, voices and blurred images swirling around me, the heart monitor beeping like a hip-hop song, and then one of the white-garbed doctors turns out to be Marie, with Mike and happy baby Monica at her side, and we laugh and laugh at our good fortune while mourning the rest of the world, and then Jack fires his gun, and the screen goes dark.
Alternative ending:
As Jack carries me in, I see a bronze statue of Tupac. Immediately I read the sign on the wall, The Tupac Shaker Foundation. The irony is crippling…literally. My body is beginning to resemble Tupac’s statue more and more by the second, rock solid and cold. Jack places me next to Tupac’s statue and then sits down next to me.
“Susan,” Jumping Jack says, his voice soft. He raises his arm and points his finger into the distance. “Is that who I think it is?”
My eyes follow in the direction his finger is pointing, and then I see him. Tupac. Not another statue of him, but the real deal…in the flesh. My first thought is, “crap, my book was a lie…he’s not dead.” I can’t believe it. I am looking right into the eyes of a supposably dead man.
He begins walking towards us. His gold chain blinding me more and more with every step. “I can help you,” he says when he reaches us. Jacks eyes immediately light up, and he jumps to his feet. “She has the creep,” he says. “And I have the cure,” Tupac responds.
The next thing I know I am laying on an operating table. Doctors are surrounding me, poking and prodding. One doctor looks down at me and says, “count down from ten, when you wake up you will be cured.” I follow his directions and begin counting, “10, 9, 8…” and then darkness.
When I awake, I can move. My body aches like I just worked out for ten hours straight, but I no longer am paralyzed and I am thankful. I am in a hospital bed, hooked up to a bunch of monitors. The door of the room I’m in opens. In walks Marie. “Oh Susan! I am so happy you are alright,” She says. I immediately ask her where Mike and Monica are. “They’re just outside the door, we are all fine,” she says calmly. A wave of relief washes over me. “Where is Tupac,” I ask. Marie looks at me, confusion washes over her face. “What are you talking about Susan? Tupac has been dead since 1996. You’re exhausted and just had a traumatic past few days…get some rest.”
The writing ends there, the paper ripped as if forced out of the typewriter. You peer inside the machine and see paper remaining, but once you unjam it, the paper you retrieve is blank. So much for getting the rest of the story. You’d have liked to uncover more about what happened to all those who were affected those years ago.
The surrounding area on the small desk is empty but for dust and unidentifiable debris. Interestingly, the chair is positioned as if someone pushed straight back, perfectly, from the desk and just stood up and walked away.
The account of the man’s loss in mental capacity was accounted perfectly on that paper. Your father and brother went through the same motions. Not for the first time, you feel guilty that Mom and you were somehow immune to whatever was infecting everyone around the world. You could still think clearly, but what can you do with that anymore?
The rest of the room seems to have been left tidy and untouched. You try to place the man, whose descent into “sillyness” you just read, in this room. Limp, sheer curtains; large, pale blue area rug; a twin-sized bed with nearly wrinkle-less covers. You can’t do it. The papers (manuscript?) told more about the brother, Bobby than anything else. After rummaging through the small room, you find nothing useful to take away. Except, of course, the writings. You shove those into your backpack, take a sip from your canteen, and close the door gently on your way out.
Here is the link to my new favorite book! I know that it is going to help me survive inside The Bunker!!
The ending of this short story was so sad to me… I really wanted the house to survive so this is how I would rewrite it:
Five o’clock. The baths filled with warm water, for the children needed to take baths. “Bathtime! Bathtime!” The house sung awaiting the squeals of the young children it once knew.
Six, seven, eight o’clock. The uneaten dinner sunk down into the disposal system and dirty dishes whirled into cleanliness. The house was clean, beds were warm, it had fulfilled its daily duties.
Nine o’clock. Blinds closed, shutting out the remains of the other houses destroyed and shadows of what once was. Before the war, this street was filled with laughing, playing children and families who took great pride in their community and their homes.
As the night drew to an end, the house accepted its lonely fate of another day, only accompanied by the stray dogs it had taken in.
A new day of duties was just around the corner, but for now it was time for rest.
An alternate ending to The Defenders by Philip K. Dick.Â
The tube back to beneath the surface had been sealed. Moss, Franks and Taylor shared a look between them that communicated sheer panic and a loss of words. There was no way back to their society underground, no way to see their families again or to live like they once did. They were stuck above ground with the leadys and the knowledge that the world that they thought they had been protected from was actually a world they were kept from.
Franks lifted his Bender gun, gesturing towards the nearby leadys.
“What do you say? With the lot of us, we could probably blast them all out of here and then we could take back what’s meant to be ours. They didn’t tell us about all this, who knows what else they’re hiding from us.”
The other men nodded and waved over the small group of soldiers they’d brought along. The leadys looked on impassively and didn’t make a move or sound, even as they all lifted their guns.
“Fire!”
In blasts of dust and metallic noises, the group of humans shot at the leadys until they were all decimated, the only remaining sign of them being a faint smell of molten metal and tart rust left in the air. As they destroyed the first group, more and more spilled out from the facilities around them. The men fought furiously, if it could be called fighting, because the leadys took their deaths without a single show of retaliation. By the time the sun had rose above them, revealing a lush and healed earth, they were alone.
“That was the last of them, I think. Good work, guys.” Moss waved to the soldiers and they all lowered their guns. Without the leadys, it was unsettlingly quiet save for a soft wind that would gust by them and chill them through their lead suits.
“So what are we going to do now that we can’t go back down? This world is all ours again but it’s nothing without our families,” Taylor said, tossing his gun to the ground. Now that there was nothing to fight, it seemed like a waste to hold a weapon in such a beautiful area.
“I say we get the Soviets. If we build a base and then dig our way down their tubes while they’re digging up, we can ambush them and kill them all. War won, problem solved. Then we can work on getting our own people out.” It was Franks who suggested this and they all agreed, their original mission still in mind. They grabbed their guns once more and began to march out down a path that was clear in the almost untouched grass. A full day passed before they spotted them. A line of Soviet soldiers standing feet ahead of them.
“What are they doing here? They said they fused their tubes together too.” Moss muttered, readying his Bender gun.
“I don’t know but they seemed ready for us. I bet the leadys were on their side, this is no good at all. Shoot what you can then retreat, we can’t win like this.”
The group fired at command, some going down in the Soviet fire and the others fleeing. The three researchers remained but their forces were heavily lowered in number.
“Those damned robots lost us so much time. It’s like the war’s started over again but instead of square one we’re at negative two. We’re going to have to build everything back up again, thank goodness we have us three.” Franks looked at Moss and Taylor, shaking his head. “This finishes now.”
Months later and the group had managed to build barebones auxiliary weapons. They ate the worst food, mostly out of foraging, their efforts more focused on destroying the Soviets than providing. What had been a beautiful untouched field before was already full of craters, dead grass and a cemetery of metal scrap from all their tests and primitive building. But finally, they were ready to face the Soviets. Again, they marched down the beaten path to where the Soviets were situated.
“No way. They spent the same time we did building up their own forces. Fire at will, retreat if they’re too much for us!” Both sides sent bombs flying towards each other, killing some and clearing the earth beneath them in an earth-shattering blast. Soon, they retreated once again, their forces dwindled and their blood heated. They had to build better weapons, more weapons. They couldn’t let the war not end victoriously this time.
This routine continued over months until both sides were eliminated. The once lush world was once again inhabitable, a tundra of explosive discharge and hot, punishing winds. The world was quiet once more, but also a hellish landscape for any human who dared to return to it. And yet, that was when the tubes were finally cleared and the societies below re-emerged.
“Whoa–this is even worse than the leadys said. And no wonder we haven’t heard anything, they’ve been killed in this climate as well. The men we sent up above must have died as well. It’s a shame. But we have much work to do, we have to go back down and create a more powerful bot that can do what the leadys once did for us.” The leader they had sent up said. He dropped back down under the surface to begin the process over again.
And so the humans were doomed to repeat their mistakes, too selfish and individual to have accepted the utopia the leadys had created for them.
So this little post here is going to be about “The Screwfly Solution” by Raccoona Sheldon. I do recommend reading it, but if you are not one who likes to read about violent things and really screwy situations I would not recommend this story.
That being said, everything below here is straight up SPOILERS.
The Screwfly Solution- How It Ended
“The thing I have to write down is that I saw an angel too. This morning. It was big and sparkly, like the man said; like a Christmas tree without the tree. But I knew it was real because the frogs stopped croaking and two bluejays gave alarm calls. That’s important; it was really there.
I watched it, sitting under my rock. It didn’t move much. It sort of bent over and picked up something, leaves or twigs, I couldn’t see. Then it did something with them around its middle, like putting them into an invisible sample-pocket.
Let me repeat—it was there. Barney, if you’re reading this, THERE ARE THINGS HERE. And I think they’ve done whatever it is to us. Made us kill ourselves off.
Why? Well, it’s a nice place, if it wasn’t for people. How do you get rid of people? Bombs, death-rays—all very primitive. Leave a big mess. Destroy everything, craters, radioactivity, ruin the place.
This way there’s no muss, no fuss. Just like what we did to the screwfly. Pinpoint the weak link, wait a bit while we do it for them. Only a few bones around; make good fertilizer.
Barney dear, good-bye. I saw it. It was there.
But it wasn’t an angel.
I think I saw a real-estate agent.”
TLDR: Anne is dying and sees an alien/angel. She concludes that it is a real estate agent who (with their alien species) caused the femicide and the desire to murder in humans so that they could live on Earth.
I really like this ending, but I think that it could have given Anne a better, more badass exit.
Anne is a badass because she:
Because she is a badass she needs a badass exit not some lame death. So I decided to give her the ending she really deserves.
The Screwfly Solution- How It Should Have Ended
Good-bye, dearest dearest Barney.
I lay here on the rock looking at the moon. The smell of iron exuding out of hole in my side. I have to tell you something, Barney. I finally saw the reason for all this madness.
A few days ago while I was getting water I saw it. I was bent over slurping water greedily into my mouth when I heard silence. Not a single animal dared to make a noise. That’s when I saw the angel. It was a large man floating around looking at the trees and patting the earth. Every once in a while he would scoop dirt up and place it into this invisible pocket in his middle. He didn’t see me or if he did he didn’t care. He left as soon as he came.
I promise I’m not going crazy, Barney. I know I have been left to my own devices, but I saw what I saw. And you know what Barney, I think I know what’s happening. I think some alien race is trying to pick us off. Just like with screw flies, they made the females disappear and made the men turn on each other.
Even worse, I think the alien was a real-estate agent.
I don’t know, but I have a strong feeling about it. They wanted us to kill each other so they could have our planet.
After that I got really scared. I was afraid that one may come back and see me this time. So I did what any person does in fear: started collecting weapons to protect myself. I fashioned a spear of sorts and even made a makeshift knife.
I think it’s ironic that I’m more scared of the aliens than the men who could be in the forest right now for hunting season (of course hunting females). But I decided that I have to fight back. This is our planet. They can’t put me and the whole world through this–this shit just so they can take it from us.
They have to be taught a lesson. And I was going to teach them that lesson.
So I lied in wait for days, barely leaving the top of the rock. Days turned into weeks. This anger being the only thing keeping me alive.
One night it was raining, hard. I laughed to myself remembering the time that Alan and you installed that rainfall shower head in our bathroom. I hated the thing. I always said if I wanted to feel like I was caught in a storm I would move to Seattle. My thoughts turned to Seattle. I wonder what Seattle is like now. Are there any women there? Any men? Anybody? Probably not.
All my thoughts blurred into one jumbled mess, distracting me from the surrounding rain.
All the sudden it stopped, the rain I mean. The rain stopped so suddenly that it actually frightened me. I sat up slightly, looking over the side of the rock.
He was back. It was time.
He was once again floating around, looking at the ground. Probably trying to see how the rain affects this part of the land and how the drainage is (you know like a real-estate agent).
I slid down from the rock holding my spear and knife. Silently, I edged closer to him. I then threw the spear at him. The second I threw it I thought to myself “Huh, I wonder if this will work.”
And by golly, Barney it did. It landed into the back of his head. He turned towards me, surprised. Using that to my advantage, I lunged at him with the knife and started wildly stabbing him. Anger I didn’t know I had overtook me. I just kept hitting him with the knife, wanting him to feel what I felt.
Just when I thought I had one the battle, he shot out some laser or something from his middle. The laser emitted this crazy white light that hit me on my side. I was so overcome with adrenaline though, I really didn’t feel it. I just kept going. Eventually, he stopped fighting.
I don’t really know how to kill an alien/angel, but I guess I did it Barney. I mean he turned stone cold grey, so I guess he was dead.
Injured, I somehow managed to get myself back up to the rock. Now the pain was setting in and it wracked every nerve in my body. It was like giving birth to Amy times a million.
I’ve been rocking myself back and forth since to take my mind off the pain. It hasn’t been working, Barney.
I guess this is goodbye old pal. I don’t know if you’re out there anymore. Honestly, I don’t even know if anyone is out there anymore. But, I hope by some miracle that you are alive and kicking. I hope you read this. I hope you remember me.
Goodbye, Barney.
Behind the Process
This assignment was quite difficult for me. I found it hard to write an ending that was good and could fit in what I wanted to say. I actually wrote this alternative ending in one sitting as I found that it made me focus on the story. It almost made me insert myself into the story and write like I was doing what Anne was doing. Once again, I found that the easiest part of this assignment was to add gifs. I feel that gifs add a je ne sais quoi to a post and make it less boring (for everyone). I also think that the gifs are something I did well. I think I did it well because I was selective of the gifs I chose and stuck to a color theme. Sidenote: I like black and white gifs because the simplicity of the colors makes the reader focus on the content of the gif and heightens their experience. Something I want to improve is my grammar and paragraph breaks. It’s been a while since I had an English class, so I know that my paragraph breaks and grammar are a bit rough. I did like this assignment because it allowed me to be creative in both the writing and digital arenas. I’m proud of this assignment and I learned that I have to not worry about screwing up and just do it.
Hopefully, everyone appreciated the more badass end that I gave Anne. That’s it folk, I’ll catch you on the flipside.
