“Okay,” Logan reasoned, lifting his hands high in the air, “I know this has to seem like revenge of the body snatchers or something—but we’re just twins. It’s nothing sinister.”
The dog answered with a loud bark, followed by a vicious growl.
“He invited me here as a guest! He’ll be back in just a few weeks—”
Another bark. Another growl.
“Fine! Don’t believe me!” He pointed angrily down at the tile. “But that’s a thirty dollar steak you keep stepping on, I probably have to get a tetanus shot, and I really have to pee!”
Spartacus walked straight over to the counter, looked up at Logan, and lifted his leg.
“Oh, that’s really mature...”
There was a knock on the door, and Logan looked over at the clock in horror. Was it seven o’clock already?! When did that happen?!
“Look,” he gentled his voice as much as possible, inching out towards the edge of the refrigerator, “I really have to come down now, okay? Will you let me come down?”
The dog stood up on his hind legs and bared his teeth.
“Come on!” Logan pleaded, glancing anxiously towards the door. “Look—we both said things we didn’t mean. Both did things we shouldn’t have.” There was another bark, and he lifted a stern finger into the air. “Yes, we did. You shouldn’t have peed on the counter, and I shouldn’t have pelted you with olives. We’re both at fault, so let’s just call a truce.”
There was another knock, and he dropped his face miserably into his hands, raising his voice to be heard from the outside. “Lacy, I just...” he gazed down at Spartacus, still ready to pounce, “I’m going to have to raincheck, okay? Something’s come up.”
There was a pause and he heard her shifting curiously on the doormat—probably peering in through the window. “Is everything alright?” she called back. “You sound weird.”
His face tightened with a grimace, as Spartacus seemed to snicker in the corner.
“Everything’s fine! I’ll call you later, okay?”
Another pause, followed by a telltale creak.
“...you know your front door is open, right?”
“Close it at once!” he shouted. “Please just close it and walk away! I think...I think I’m coming down with something. Highly contagious! You can’t come in here!”
For a second, there was silence. Then a voice spoke up from right outside the room.
“Highly contagious, huh?”
Logan’s head snapped up to see her standing in the kitchen doorway. Arms folded across her chest. A bemused twinkle in her eyes as she stared up at his perch upon the refrigerator.
“Lacy—get out of here!” he cried, scrambling to get onto the floor. “It’s the dog, he—”
The second his feet touched the ground, he was body-slammed into the far cabinets. His hands came up automatically to defend himself, but they were no match as the giant dog tackled him to the floor—coming down hard upon his chest. A silent cry caught in his throat as he braced himself for the fangs, but instead, a warm tongue licked right up the side of his face.
First one eye opened. Then the other.
“What the fuck—”
Before he could pull himself off the ground, Spartacus attacked again. Licking, nuzzling, kissing, and periodically yipping with excitement whenever Logan opened his eyes.
“Don’t look highly contagious to me.” Lacy giggled, kneeling down on the floor beside them and petting the dog behind the ears. “Looks like the two of you had a little stand-off.”
“He tried to kill me,” Logan panted, squirming back into the wall as Spartacus did his very best to shove his entire nose into the man’s ear. “I swear...he tried to kill me.”
To prove his point, he lifted his hand—still gouged with a dozen little puncture points. To be fair, it didn’t look nearly as bad as it had felt while trapped on top of the fridge...
She took it quickly in her own, turned it over, then handed it back to him with a grin.