There Will Be Blood

The Boy got a shaving kit for Christmas. Nothing too unusual about that, except that it was clearly Hydra’s little hint for him to start shaving before his smooth pale face turns into a prickly kiwi. She always comments on that few-day transformation with the same line: “You look like a homeless man.” And before she starts putting coins into his empty nut bowl on the table, he usually drags himself to the bathroom, muttering and sighing dramatically about how hard his life is.

Like many other hints, subliminal messages, and telepathic signals, the Boy completely ignores them. Hydra keeps forgetting that this kind of communication only works between us, not with him.

What definitely didn’t miss the mark, though, was the huge block of alum stone that came with the set. The Girl also bought him a straight razor, and to everyone’s shock, she still thought it was a great idea, even knowing that Traitor would be holding it in his clumsy hands.

“Jesus Christ,” Grandpa muttered when he saw that medieval torture device. Back in his day, he used to shave with one too, because it was either that or nothing. “It’s easier with a regular razor,” he said. Easier, maybe, but maybe the Girl wants him to take the whole top layer of skin with it and be done with shaving forever. Or maybe she’s watched too much Sweeney Todd and decided to give him a more… permanent solution.

You can’t do that with a safety razor. One thing was clear: there would be blood.

What I didn’t know was that I’d be the first one in history to actually use Traitor’s manly alum block. We went out for a quick pee walk, and my paw slipped off the curb right into the sharp gravel that’s everywhere these days. Of course, I wasn’t wearing my boots, since the Boy said we’d be “just a minute.”

That excuse wouldn’t matter to Hydra. We could already hear her voice echoing in our heads: “I’ve told you thirty times he has to wear his boots outside now… salt… gravel… as if I’m talking to a wall… blah blah… now it’ll get infected… blood everywhere… disinfection… amputation… and it’s your fault… no one ever listens… socks… you watch him… you’ll be the one dealing with it… there, you see!”

And yeah, it bled a lot. The Boy was wiping the bloody hallway as fast as he could, because our Girl is like a shark — she can smell a drop of blood from the other room — and we didn’t want her coming to investigate. Meanwhile, I was standing politely in the bathtub with my paw on the alum block, trying to stop the bleeding with all my strength. The Boy promised me an entire chicken breast from his dinner if we managed to cover it up and escape Hydra’s inevitable lecture.

Success! The alum really worked. It’s just a shame that the first one to bleed was me, only because Traitor hadn’t tried the razor yet. My paw secret got exposed later that evening, when Hydra caught him sitting on the floor with me in the dark office, feeding me tiny cubes of chicken from his plate. He had to confess, because saying “I just didn’t feel like eating it” would have earned him a death a hundred times more painful than from a dull blade.