Arnold the Arsonist Dog

Arnold was a Airedale terrier who lived in a nice home with a nice family in a nice neighbourhood. Outwardly, he too was nice. Well behaved; fetched sticks and came back when called, didn't chew shoes or pee on the rug. But he wasn't a nice dog. He had a deep emptiness inside him that wouldn't go away; he lay awake at night in his basket in the kitchen, the appliances staring at him with their little red and green eyes. Sometimes he would whimper, softly, and other times he would howl. His owners just blamed the next-door neighbour's Springer spaniel, and his plight went unnoticed.

In the day he would try his best to keep up appearances. Play with the children, wag his tail, lick his bollocks - the usual doggy rituals. But Arnold was little more than a hollow shell of a dog. He had bad thoughts. Bad, bad thoughts. Thoughts about the Anderson's Maltese poodle and thoughts about biting Mrs McKendall's big swollen ankles and much, much worse. His mind was dirtier than those special red bins in the park. His insomnia was a problem and when he did sleep, his nightmares were getting worse. He dreamt of blood and teeth and fire. Always fire, burning fiercely in his mind with such intensity that he woke up with smoke in his nostrils. Burning down the houses of the dogs he didn't like, of the children that pulled his ears, of the cars that nearly hit him and the cats that shat in his garden. Burning down the woods to chase out the rabbits. Burning down the town, razing it to the ground. And dogs were afraid of fire, more so even than we are, so as you can see, Arnold was a very troubled little hound indeed.

In the daytime he'd fill his mind with happy thoughts like rooms full of Pedigree and bouncy balls, but at night, the thoughts of fire would come creeping back to singe the corners of his little doggy mind. And the emptiness and hollowness and sadness inside him eventually became anger and hatred, a hatred so great that it, too, burned him inside out. And one night, when the family had forgotten to take him for walkies, he cracked.

Arnold left the kitchen through the back door, which one of the children had left ajar. He ran down to the shed and seized a petrol can in his sharp doggy teeth. And he ran out the front gate, sloshing petrol about as he went, frothing at the mouth, madness in his eyes. He poured it over Mrs McKendall's house and he poured it on the spaniel's kennel and he poured it on the Briggs's awful Volvo estate and he ran round the block, pouring petrol on fences and doorsteps and shop fronts. Then he ran back home and picked up a big stick in his mouth, and, nudging dials on the cooker with his nose, set it alight. And with his burning torch he scampered round the neighbourhood setting everything ablaze, howling and growling as he did so, running in circles as if he were insane, and he was. He was a canine anarchist, a harbinger of fire and death and doom, and he was maddened with desire to burn, burn more, burn everything. The fires began to leap and smoke and his beady brown eyes were set aglow with orange light. He began to dance and spin through the fires, barking joyously at the beauty of destruction. Down with the neighbours! Down with their fancy houses I'm not allowed into, down with their children who put me in their horrid clothing! Down with society! Down with cats! And he danced and danced in the flames until the neighbours began to wake and panic and dial nine nine nine.

Meanwhile, Arnold had caught fire. He burnt with the ferocity of his melancholy and the heat of his repressed desires; he barked with the joyous liberation of self-destruction. The flames grew brighter and his barking and leaping and dancing, having reached their zenith, began to slow.

In the morning police were puzzled as to how the fires started. The investigators found abundant evidence of arson but had no suspects, and no leads. But if they had nudged a small pile of ash by the gutter, they'd have found a small metal tag that said Arnold, though they'd never have believed in an arsonist dog.