Weekly Prompt

 

Prompt came from: https://fabledplanet.com/50-fantasy-writing-prompts/ 

Prompt: A deceased pet from the past shows up in your house – but now, they can talk. And they have something very important to tell you.

The lights were off, only light came from the faint orangish-flame burning in the sutt covered fire place my great-great-grandfather built with his own hands seven decades ago. Hell, he’d built the entire house from the first brick to the last stone paver in the driveway. Each generation had kept it up from then on, right to the moment it had been passed onto me the other month when my father had taken his last breath thanks to cancer. Right along side him had gone his trusted beagle, Servy. Servy, had came to my father when he was a pup from the woods behind the house. Father had found him wondering around, hungry and thirsty. He rushed him back to the house, begging his mom to keep him. Grandma had tried to tell dad no, but one look at the ruggied dirt covered puppy had her caving and shaking her head. Who knows why dad named the little black and white beagle Servy, but he did and the dog grew up to be the most loyal thing in the world. It did not surprise me that he took his last breath two days after my dad did. He vet said it was no uncommon for dogs who grew up with someone to pass along with them as well. It hurt me as much to lose Servy as it did my dad. 

I’d felt lots of loss in my life over the last ten years. It shouldn’t. be new to me, but I doubted it ever got easier to lose a loved one. I feared each of us had to suffered the grief process no matter what it was. I assumed that’s why I found myself sitting in my dad’s favorite, brown leather chair, the one that was conformed to his ass and had no cushion left in it, staring into the fire like a lost person remembering all the good times dad, mom, my wife and two children had together. All the ones I loved and lost over the last ten years were alive in my memory tonight, full and bright no matter how much I wished their ghost were not haunting me.

Whoof. Whoof. Whoof.

“Where is that coming from?”

I stood and made my way over to the front window, peeking through as I clicked the front porch light on. Doubted I’d see anything. There were no homes within a mile of the farm. All that I’d be able to see were empty horse pasters. Dad sold all his horses the moment he was diagnosed with cancer of the pacourous. They’d told him from the get-go there was no chance of surviving it and he knew I had no dream of running the horse farm. I loved the house and would keep it, but did not want the ordeal of keeping up the farm.

The light blinked on and off twice then fluttered to a bright life, revealing . . . “What in the world?”

I rushed over to the door, throwing it open and stepping onto the front porch, kneeling down, jerking back upright before I called Servy to me. There was no way in the world the dog I saw sitting in the front yard was Servy. I’d buried him next to my dad almost a month ago. Whatever dog sat there staring at me was just similar in looks. That’s all.

“Shoo, go away. Find you way back home.” I turned to go back in and got my hand on the door when the most unbelievable thing in the God-green Earth happened.

“I am home, Pinky-Boy.”

Only one person called me Pink-Boy in my life, my father and he only did so when we were alone, or when no humans were around us. And there were none around me right then. Hell, there was nothing around me then, but a damn dog that resembled a dead one.

“You are not going insane, Pickard.” The dog was at the foot of the porch when I turned back towards the front yard. “I have a message for you from your family.”

“Message from . . . Are you . . . I’m . . . There’s no way in the world I’m seeing or hearing this.”

The dog, no Servy, trotted the rest of the way up the porch and came up to my feet and sat down, staring up at me with his tongue hanging out. “You are.” He bobbed his head. “Your family, Lisa-Ann, especially says for her daddy to bring the horses back to the farmie for her to watch from above.”

Oh my God. There was no way, to disbelieve what I was hearing. Lisa-Ann had only been five when the drunk driver hit my wife’s car and took my entire family from me. My wife, Jessie, our son, Harry and our baby girl Lisa-Ann had all died on impact, leaving me to live a life without them all. Lisa-Ann had loved to come to the farm and see her grandpa, she never called it anything other than farmie and loved to ride the horses. She swore to her grandpa that she’d be a jockey one day like her grandma had been. Maybe, the message was from his family. Maybe, they were alive and watching him from the Good Heavens above and wanted him to know. Watned to give him a way to make it through the rough time that lay ahead of him now that he was all of the Hunkard family that lived.