As Long as the Dog Lives

It took me three attempts to watch the movie Twister. I was with two friends in middle school and it was one of their favorite movies. At sleepovers, they insisted that we watch it. But in the first few minutes, as the family is rushing towards the storm shelter as the tornado bears down on them and the little girl cries out for her dog, I started to cry and begged them to turn it off.

I was only able to watch it once they had assured me repeatedly that the dog lived. I was then able to watch the opening scene where the little girl’s father is swept up into the tornado to his death while she watches in terror, clutching her little dog.

“That’s fine,” I said. “As long as the dog lives.”

There are certain rules to speculative fiction. I see them frequently in submission guidelines. No excessive gore, no explicit sexual scenes, no sparkling vampires. There are certain things that even in literature that pushes the boundaries, we will still not accept.

I admit it. I killed a dog in a story. Once, only once, and I promise it was necessary to the plot. Still, I remember reading the story to my fiancée for the first time (she insists that I read my work aloud to her) and the look on her face when the dog died. It was a look of disappointment. Someone else also died in the story, but that didn’t bother her. What bothered her was that the dog didn’t live.

I had the same reaction when I read a certain short story by Stephen King in his collection Bazaar of Bad Dreams. (This is your spoiler warning. Stop reading now if you haven’t read this collection. It is fantastic and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining your enjoyment of it. Though if you have read it, feel free to continue.)

I read Stephen King’s story “Premium Harmony” in a high school classroom waiting to judge a debate tournament, my little bit of community service on a Saturday morning. I finished it just as the students were about to start giving their first speeches. I found it incredibly difficult to focus. I was so just upset by the conclusion of the story. Because the dog didn’t live.

A woman had died, though a profoundly unlikeable woman from how King had written her. But the loss of even a profoundly unlikeable and fictional person should still be sad. However, I was devastated that the dog had died such an incredibly horrible death, baking in hot back seat of the car. For the rest of the day, I carried a weight in my chest of grief for that imaginary dog.

Perhaps this says something about me as a reader that I tend to reserve my empathy for those poor unfortunate animals that have done nothing to deserve the tragedy forced upon them by their calloused writers. Perhaps this says something about me as a person that I am more accepting of pain, suffering, and death happening to a person than to a pet.

But let the whole world burn. As long as the dog lives.