"I soup ate a word, dog,"

I couldn't make sense of it. The letter had been slipped underneath my door in an unmarked brown-paper envelope. I had no idea who it was from or what it meant.

Inside the envelope, in blue crayon, the message was haphazardly scrawled across an unsophisticated sheet of coloured card. It possessed a curiously infantile quality, and exuded an eerie feeling that took hold of me, and only grew stronger as I read and reread the letter.

As I sat there turning it over in my mind, my phone rang, freeing me from my trance. It was an unregistered number. I hesitated for a moment before answering.

"Hello?" I said.

"I soup ate a word, dog," whispered the voice on the other end.

Those very same words that’d been encircling my thoughts since they were slid underneath my doorframe, were now being spoken aloud, down a telephone line and directly into my ear.

"Who is this?" I asked, “what do you mean? What do you want from me?”

But there was no reply, only static.

“Don’t phone me again.” I said and hung up, putting my phone in Do Not Disturb mode for good measure.

In all likelihood, it was probably just some brat playing elaborate games. However, to quell my thoughts, I began to research the phrase. Of course, all of my searches came up blank. There seemed to be no connection or meaning behind the words at all.

It was complete nonsense. I pushed it away, into the back of my mind, and returned to work.

Days and weeks passed me by, and all the while I received ever increasing quantities of letters and phone calls, all with the exact same phrase. Even after changing my number the calls persisted relentlessly.

"I soup ate a word, dog,"

What, I assumed, had begun as a childish and silly prank, had turned into a plainly purposive and distressing harassment. I couldn't bear it any longer, and so I asked around, and was put in touch with a well-regarded private investigator.

He arrived at my apartment, one month passed the initiation of my torment. In advance of his arrival, I’d collected all the letters and records of the phone calls, and we discussed the incidents at length together.

He gave me his assurance that everything would be fine, just fine, that he would get to the bottom of all of this. He confessed that he was a little bemused by my situation. I supposed that Private Investigators usually dealt with extra-marital affairs and that sordid sort of thing. Nevertheless he agreed to commit fully to my case, to the full extent of his abilities, and went away, promising to update me if he uncovered any information.

A week or so later he called at my apartment again. He was very apologetic. He had been unable to uncover any reason or sense behind the messages, there was no precedent for this behaviour, and he could find no graphological hallmarks of ownership on the letters.

However, he declared to me that there was, in his words, a flower in the desert. From the phone records, he was able to determine the likely origin of the calls. A derelict house on the outskirts of town. I thanked him for his time, paid him for his services and returned to my thoughts.

I simply couldn't comprehend why any of this was happening, and what on earth it all had to do with some disused house? To me, it didn’t seem like a flower, it just seemed to be another sour note in the repetitive and disorienting melody that had been plaguing me for the last month and a half.

Perhaps if I went there myself, I thought, then I could begin to understand. So, I took the car out and drove to the edge of town, parking outside the house. As soon as I stepped out, I was hit with an intolerable disquiet.

The house stood there, alone and forlorn, the final residence on a demolished street. The rest of the neighbourhood cleared, presumably to make way for a new development.

In front of the derelict house was the last remaining garden of the neighbourhood, sparse and dry, home only to bindweed and creeping thistles. The paint on the exterior walls were tagged with spray paint and chipped away, revealing the crumbling brickwork. All the windows long shattered, and loose off their hinges, creaking and banging softly against their frames.

As I stepped into the porch, the rotten floorboards groaned as if they desired to break under my cautious weight. The walls inside were buckling and peeling, and with each step I dislodged plaster and dust from the ceiling which came tumbling down in crumbling clumps. As I moved further through the building, I caught glimpses of other rooms, with their musty aged furniture and shattered picture frames coated in dust. This house belonged only to time now.

I searched the building and found nothing but cobwebs. Then, I noticed a door underneath the stairs, to the basement. I twisted the grimy handle. The basement itself was dark and I could see very little, so I turned on my phone torch. I took great care stepping down onto the staircase, again I’d found the wooden planks rotten and unstable.

As I arrived at the bottom of the stairs. There, etched into the wall, was the phrase that had tormented me so.

"I soup ate a word, dog,"

I abandoned all my attempts to comprehend the words, now accepting them as the obscure and sinister presence they had become.

Standing there, consumed by that cryptic manifestation, I heard a dragging sound.

Turning, I found myself confronted by the umbra of a figure. It was something like a young child, but her form was distorted, she had long boneless arms and was poised on top of two stubby spindled legs.

She lumbered toward me, half-falling, half-walking. She whispered those senseless words.

This creature surely was the source of my persecution.

“I soup ate a word dog,” she whispered again, emphasising each word with terrible and peculiar inflections. There was no mistaking it. The voice from the phone calls belonged to her.

This was the pernicious being that had tormented me so, sending me those senseless letters and making those relentless phone calls. But why? What had I done to attract her ire?

Every step she took, she came closer to me, closer to the light. Her movements were graceless and disconcerting.

In my panic I’d taken leave of my senses. I scrambled away and attempted to surmount the staircase. The wood buckled underneath my indelicate movements, snapping, and sending me falling back to the cold basement floor.

She raised one of her lithe, boneless arms, and with a remarkable strength she took hold of my shirt and threw me back to the wall, pounding me against the etched phrase.

She held me there, suspended against the basement wall and whispered into my ear, each syllable coloured with erratic emphasis, "I soup ate a word, dog, I soup! I soup!” Then she turned and plodded away, all the while maintaining her possession of me, keeping me fixed in place.

I whimpered like a dog. There was nothing for me to say, no reasoning with this creature, and I was no match for her unwieldy force.

She held me there with ease, one arm pinning me mid-air against the wall, all the while busying herself with something in the corner of the room.

Eventually she turned back, and began to struggle towards me on her spinning top legs. She stepped back into the light again. I saw clearly her shadowy and warped features. Her rotten smile. Her dark and sunken eyes. And, in her spare hand, she held an open can of soup.

She compelled my mouth open, nursing me with the liquid, pouring it down into my throat. I could only swallow or choke, and as I drank the rancid soup, I felt my mind slipping away. I couldn't speak. I could hardly think. All I could do was listen to her repeat that damn phrase over, and over, and over.

"I SOUP ate a word, dog,”

"I soup ate a word, DOG,”

"I soup ATE a word, dog,”

"I SOUP ATE a word, dog,”

"I soup ATE a WORD, DOG,”

"I SOUP ate A WORD, dog,”

"I SOUP ATE A WORD, DOG,”

The last thing I recall was the child’s twilight face, and her sinister smile spreading impossibly wide across it, as she whispered.

"Welcome to the soup."

-

I woke up in a hospital room. Several weeks had passed since the day I’d driven to that house.

The doctors told me that I had been found wandering the streets, repeating the same words, over and over. They’d brought me back here to monitor my condition, and, upon my arrival, I’d collapsed from exhaustion and fell into a catatonic state. They had no medical explanation for my affliction.

When I explained to them the circumstances that had brought me here, they agreed to arrange a meeting for me with the police. They came to visit me at my hospital bed and we discussed everything. The harassment, the investigation and the incident; taking care to leave out any details that might result in my institutionalisation. They too went away promising to uncover the truth, and they too were unable to find any leads on my attacker.

In fact, upon arriving at the supposed scene of the crime, the police found no house at all, construction had already begun on the development a few days prior. The house had been reduced to nothing, and the basement filled with concrete.

I suppose no one else will ever truly know what happened to me, no one will ever truly understand what I went through, why I had to go through it or how it even happened.

As for myself, I've been left with only one reasonable explanation.

I soup ate a word, dog,

​

​

xxx