Plump red lips give birth to the word “dweller” on a sullen rainy eve. Hit by a falling drop, the word falls, it falls. But, after drying in the wind, it rises again. It gathers poise and dances among falling glistening bulbs of water. It moves through the cool air, patiently but pleasantly, toward another verbal entity, a beautiful one without context: “mongrel”. These two words tickle each others shared Ls and Es. A third word then enters the mix, “jargon”, who greets “dweller” and “mongrel” by tickling shared Rs.

Meanwhile, three tense dogs encircle each other at ground level, below the words, simultaneously smelling each other’s asses but finding it impossible to distinguish their own smells from each others’. Each fears the others are dangerous.

The floating words, like the tense dogs, take interest in each other but not strongly enough to embrace the risk of mis-meaning or grammar breaking. So they wander in opposite-ish directions. They deflate from lack of stimulation. Gravity takes them.

They fall towards the dogs below who bark defensively at one another, but suddenly stop when a word slips into each of their ears.

Now there are three dogs, each enamored by a different sound. One receives “dweller”. Another receives “mongrel”. And the third hears “jargon”.

Instead of barking, the dogs do amateurish impressions of the human sounds they’d heard. They imitate each other and each other’s imitations. Listening to each other’s garbled re-interpretations, they forget the original words. They build misinterpretations upon misinterpretations upon misinterpretations. They laugh at phrases they make forming funky re-imaginings of humans.

The words emerge differently after each trip through a dog brain. JOGONGREL. DWELLARG. MARGONELL.

The human speaks to another human. “Mr. President,” he says. And the dogs chase after the sounds, competing playfully with each other to win the game of fetch.

The words travel too quickly, though, and the dogs cross the entire White House green, reaching the President’s feet only after the words arrived there. From the grand granite front steps, the President looks down at the dogs with great expectations of them, but all they have to say is NELLARGONLER.

The President scoffs, says “stupid dogs”, and leaves them alone affront the White House, where they proceed to conduct a grand operation of sexual intercourse involving grunts in a weird hybrid dog-human language.

The President returns only afterwards. Firstly he remarks about the smell. “Disgusting, smelly dogs. You are gross.” Secondly he receives a phone call from his wife, who expresses distaste that he’d forgotten his niece’s birthday.

“Fuck,” he says, pondering for a moment afterwards.

He notices the newly pregnant dog. Then tells his wife “hold on” and that he had “figured it out”.

When the President claps his hand, the pregnant dog gives birth to a puppy.

“Oh, aren’t you cute?” The president coddles the pup, enamored by it. Then he grabs its jaw and directs its gaze into his eyes. He speaks to the pup, “I’m going to name you ‘stone’, because I’m going to kill two birds with you.”

After putting the puppy down, the president snaps his fingers. His assistant scurries to his side. “Charles, please get rid of these dogs.”

“Yes sir,” the assistant said, and pushed them on their way.

But the President said, “not that one”, pointing to the new puppy, “Keep that one here and find me a big strong man. Also, a can of peanut butter.”

The assistant shoed the other dogs away and then walked into the White House.

The President looked at the sparsely clouded sky. Flocks of geese were flying over the left wing. And a beautiful swan separated from the pack, circling the presidential pond.

The President’s assistant returned with an enormous kitchen chef by his side.

“Where’s the peanut butter?” the President asks.

“I’ve got it right here.”

“Good. Put it on the dog.”

“What?”

“I’ll do it myself.”

The president poured his bottle of water into the half-empty jar of peanut butter, closed the jar and shook it up, as to soften it. Then he dumped the liquidy peanut butter all over the newborn puppy’s head, across its back, and even all over its tail. He began rubbing it into the dazed pup’s fur. Confused, his assistant came to help him, but was careful not to dirty himself up too much.

Once finished, the President pointed to the large chef and said, “You, come here. Throw this dog.”

“What?”

“Throw this dog as high as you can. Just listen to me. Trust me.”

The chef looked toward the assistant confused, almost as to ask whether the president was serious or not. The assistant nudged him along and said, “well, go ahead already.”

So the behemoth of a chef wrapped his left hand around the pup’s front legs and his right hand around its hind legs. He swung the dog between his legs, forward, and then back between his legs. He heaved with all his might and launched the dog 30 feet in the air.

“Crap, that is just a no-good dirty-crap throw,” the President said as the dog fluttered in the air. “That won’t do.”

The dog lost consciousness from hitting the ground.

“Go get that dog, and really throw it good this time.”

The chef threw the dog a second time, triple as high. It was easier this time with it unconscious. At the pinnacle of its flopping flight, the peanut butter coated-dog attracted the swan. The swan licked at the peanutty goodness, but became stuck in the dog’s thick fur.

As the dog fell back onto the White House green, the swan was pulled down with it, desperately flapping its wings and diverting the falling path but being unable to escape it.

Together they landed on the other side of the lawn, near the gates.

“My lord,” the chef said.

The other dogs came to the unconscious dog’s rescue, and collaterally to the rescue of the attached swan, carrying the two of them to the President’s feet. The President’s assistant quickly covered them with a blanket.

The timing was perfect. That very moment, the President’s niece arrived alongside the First Lady.

Awkward pause, especially because the young niece appeared made scared by the President.

Still awkward, but softened by the President’s optimistic smile.

The First Lady said, “Sarah, look at your uncle. He wants to wish you a happy birthday!”

She was surprised when he announced, “Yes, Sarah, happy birthday! I have a gift for you! Just close your eyes for one second.” He cued his wife to cover the girl’s eyes. When she did so, the President removed the blanket himself to reveal a beautiful swan, but unfortunately one contorted and in terrible pain.

The President dragged the pained swan when it didn’t obey his verbal prompt. That was when he and his niece noticed that it was attached to an unconscious, peanut-butter coated dog.

His niece was horrified. His wife was furious. The both of them were disgusted.
“So, uh, here’s your birthday gift. Happy Birthday!” he said awkwardly and while peering out the corner of his eye expectingly at his assistant.

All of the sudden a barrage of sounds like “DWELLOGON”, “MARGODO”, and “ONLLARGON” emerged from the distance. They grew louder and louder, and were intermixed with barks and huffing and puffing..
“MODOWELLLARNO!!!”

The three original dogs showed up, yelling their screwy versions of human language. They began licking their pup, clearing it of peanut butter. At the same time they said, “ARGOMELLO”, “OGOMARL”, “ONLONGODON”, and similar.

In short order they detached the dog and the swan. The president’s niece giggled and clapped as the freed swan flew in an upwards peanut-butter raining spiral into the sky — as the pup awoke from its coma and was consoled by its family — and as the dogs all ran off together, the little one trailing behind the others just slightly — them all howling funny words. “ONARGMARL”, AROGO”, “OGOMARMED”, and *FRUMEEJOANGUS“. The little pup was fluent by birth.

The magical moment came to an end once the dogs exited the gates. The girl’s smile weaned. She lowered her clapping hangs. And it set in that her birthday present was a fleeting one.

A teardrop slipped down her cheek and dripped off of her chin bone. When it hit the ground, she was lifted into the sky! The swan, having bathed itself in the presidential fountain, flew the girl into the distance. She cheered and cried cries of joy, and tried imitating the dogs’ sounds as she disappeared into the horizon.

Onlookers praised the man.
“Amazing job, Mr. President.”
“Fantastic. Just fantastic.”

But when he saw the look on the face of his wife, he retreated immediately deep, deep into the White House.

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