SaM - You Can Be The Dog

Sam stood under a tree, listening intently. He heard a quiet rustling sound, and cocked his imaginary laser gun. It was the year 2078, a whole century in the future, and things were dangerous out on the recently colonised colony planet of Eris.

Nothing happened, and he relaxed fractionally.

Then Max fell on him, clawing and biting, but not very hard. After a valiant struggle, Sam managed to throw him off, and stood over him, his laser pointed threateningly.

"But it was too late!" said Max. "The space monster had bitten him!" He mimed biting Sam's head.

Sam glared at him. "You did not! I captured you and brought you to the colony base!"

"And then you turned into an evil alien zombie oozing green goo!" responded Max. He stood up. "I win!"

Sam sighed. Max always won. "Okay, I'm a mutant monster space marine now." He adopted a threatening pose, and tried out a growl.

It was cut short when a group of three girls ran up to them. Sam knew them. They were in his grade. "Max!" said Jennie. She was a dark haired girl that Sam didn't like much. For some reason she kept trying to talk to them.

Max glared. "What do you girls want? Sam was just about to go on a bloody rampage all through the Eris colony base!"

"You guys are such babies," said Jennie, flipping her hair. "You're way too old to play pretend."

Max glared some more. Sam envied him sometimes. He wasn't shy at all. "Oh yeah? What are you girls doing? Sucking on your pacifiers? You know, because you're babies?" Max's wit was one thing about him that Sam didn't envy.

Jennie smiled. "We're playing house. And Max... the twins need a dad."

Max looked at the other two girls, who were named Melanie and Pelanie. "I'll say." Their dad had died under mysterious circumstances a couple of years before. Nobody knew how, but everyone knew he'd been involved in a lot of shady stuff.

"In the game, stupid!" said Pelanie. She looked about ready to punch him.

"Oh..." said Max. "Good luck with that." He turned back to look at Sam. "Try foaming at the mouth more, Sam. Every good monster foams at the mouth."

Sam looked back at the girls. They showed no signs of leaving. "I think they want you to join their game." Besides, he wasn't sure exactly how he was supposed to foam at the mouth. Spit a lot, maybe?

"Ooh..." said Max. He turned back to the girls. "Is there an alien invasion in your game?"

Jennie looked thoughtful. "Uh... Yeah. They're invading, um... Antarctica. Okay, you're the dad, I'm the mom, and Pelanie and Melanie are the kids."

"What about me?" said Sam, who wasn't sure when they'd decided that they were playing.

The girls stared at him, like they'd only just noticed he was there.

"Um..." said Jennie. "You can be the dog, Sam."

"Aw..." Sam had no idea how to play or what that meant exactly, but the way she'd said it spoke volumes.


Sam made it through five minutes of watching Max come home from work and greet the girls, and then watching Max and the girls sit down to dinner, before he said "This is boring. I wanna play something else."

"Yeah!" said Max.

At the same time, Jennie said "Shut up, Sam! Dogs don't talk!"

A long, confused silence followed.

"You're the kind of dog that doesn't talk," said Jennie at last, in a decisive tone of voice.

"How do you know?" said Sam. "Maybe I just never had anything to say." That had happened a few times, or so he'd heard.

"Or he could secretly be Cerberus the mythical three headed hell hound," put in Max. "Hiding his extra heads behind each other!"

Sam grinned. "Yeah! Maybe I'm here to rip the flesh from your bones." Finally, things were getting interesting.

"Gross!" said Pelanie.

"You're weird, Sam," said Jennie. "You should be happy we even let you play."

"Max is weirder," muttered Sam. At they weren't beating him up, he thought. That didn't happen as much as it used to now that he was friends with Max, but it was still one good thing about talking to girls. Most girls.

Jennie started to say something more, but she was drowned out by the school bell.

"Now look what you did!" she said to Sam. "We can't play at all anymore."

"Actually, I don't think..." began Melanie.

"Shut up, Melanie!" said Jennie, as they walked down to the school building.

Once they were gone, Max said "Girls are weird."

"Yeah," said Sam.


Back in class, Miss Dobson handed back everyone's homework. "Well done, Sam," she said, giving him his homework. Sam smiled. He'd got a B+.

"Hey!" said Max, looking at his own worksheet. It was marked with a big F. "How could you fail me? My answers were the same as Sam's!"

"That's right, Max, they were," said Miss Dobson. "They even had the same name on them."

Max looked puzzled. "I thought it was one of the questions," he said. Sam winced.

To Sam, Miss Dobson said, "Sam, you need to stop letting Max copy your answers. One day you'll be gainfully employed and he'll graduate with NO SKILLS WHATSOEVER, and he'll be out on the street BEGGING, and you'll be so guilty you'll give him ALL YOUR MONEY, but it'll be TOO LATE FOR HIM, and he'll spend it ALL on DRUGS, and you'll both die PENNILESS and ALONE!" She stopped, out of breath.

"Wow, all that because he can't do long division?" said Sam. He was pretty sure that Max wouldn't beg for money. Steal, maybe. But never beg. Although, Miss Dobson was a teacher... Maybe she knew something he didn't.

"Never underestimate the power of a good education, young... man," said Miss Dobson. She walked on.

Max snorted. "That's never gonna happen. I tried acid once. It wasn't as great as everyone says."

"Don't let the teacher hear you say that," whispered Sam. It probably shouldn't have surprised him that Max had tried drugs, he thought. His family was almost as crazy as he was.


Sam came home, dropped his bag on the floor, flopped on the couch, and stared at the TV. Then he got up again, and turned it on.

He was happy for about fifteen minutes, until his older sister, Sarah, marched into the room and changed the channel.

"Hey!" said Sam. "I was watching that!"

"And now I'm watching Happy Days," replied Sarah. She sat down.

Sam looked at the screen. He wasn't a big fan of Happy Days, mostly because his sister liked it so much. "I was here first!" he protested.

All Sarah said in response is "Shut up, Sam, I'm trying to watch this."

Sam jumped off the couch and headed for his room, annoyed. Why was every girl so pushy? Besides, Casablanca was better than Happy Days. Way better. Happy Days wasn't a classic. He could tell because it wasn't in black and white and film critics didn't keep talking about it. He wished they had a VCR or something.

A musty smell greeted Sam as he entered the bedroom. One day he'd really have to look for all those treats he'd dropped down the side of his bed. They'd be all rotted and disgusting by now, but at least his room wouldn't smell so bad.

Sam covered his nose, and turned his computer on. He'd won it in a competition over the summer, and nobody was going to make him sell it. Computers were really interesting, he thought.

After messing around with a few games, and getting used to the smell, Sam wrote a program. It went
10 PRINT SAM IS COOL
20 GOTO 10

He left the computer filling up the screen, and fell onto his bed. At least the computer liked him. Even if he had to tell it to.

"Hey!" said an unexpected voice. Sam looked around, and noticed that there was a cockroach on his pillow. It didn't bother him. He was used to cockroaches. "Get off the bed!" said the cockroach. "I was using it!"

"Sorry," replied Sam, and slid off onto the floor.

He lay there until the cockroach said "Hey kid."

"What?" said Sam. He sat up. The carpet had been digging into the back his head. It was a very stiff carpet.

The cockroach jumped off Sam's bed, navigated its way around a few fallen books, and climbed onto Sam's knee. "You're a doormat, do you know that, kid?"

"I am not!" protested Sam. "I'm just..." He considered why he was sitting on the floor, and hung his head. "I guess I sorta am..."

"You need to be more assertive," said the cockroach.

Sam thought about this. "Like Humphrey Bogart?"

"No!" said the cockroach, annoyed. "Not like Humphrey Bogart! Just say no once in a while. Quit being so pathetic. It's depressing."

Sam thought some more. "But won't that make people mad?" He didn't want to make anybody angry at him. It never seemed to help.

"Who cares?" said the cockroach. It made a punching motion with its left upper arm. "If you really want something, you gotta take it. You can't just wait around for somebody to hand it to you."

"I... guess," said Sam slowly. The cockroach had a point, maybe. It couldn't hurt to try, could it? Actually, it could hurt, and he knew it. But still. The cockroach had a point.


He made his first attempt during dinner. They were having pork chops, with pork chops on the side.

"Pass the salt, Sam," said his mother.

Sam swallowed, then said "No."

His mother looked right at him, and Sam shrank back in his chair. "What?" Her voice was icy.

"Here!" said Sam quickly, grabbing the salt and plunking it down in front of her. Well, that hadn't worked. Maybe he should try it on someone who terrified him less, like Satan or something.


He got his next opportunity the day after. He and Max were in the school library, a small, run-down room with a single bookshelf. There was nobody else around; the school hadn't been able to afford a librarian since 1861.

"I feel like a nerd," said Max, looking around nervously. "What if the paparazzi see us?"

"Shut up, Max," said Sam. He hefted a book of Norse mythology from the shelf and opened it on a table. "I keep telling you, there's lots of neat stuff in books."

"And I keep not believing you," said Max. He stayed where he was, as far away from the shelf as possible, and lowered his voice. "Haven't you heard? Books give you cancer."

Sam flipped through the pages. "Listen, this part is about the Norse god Odin. He ripped out his eye and put it in a well."

"Huh? Really?" said Max. He pushed Sam out of the way and poured over the book. "Let me see!" He read, or at least looked at the book. "Nice pictures."

Sam and Max read through the book for a while, Sam helping Max with some of the bigger words. Sam liked mythology. It was violent.

"Well well. Look at the nerds."

Sam looked up quickly. It was Roger, the second biggest bully he'd ever known.

"I'm not a nerd," protested Max, shoving the book away from him. "He is!"

"Shut up, Max," said Sam. He looked at Roger. Be assertive. Right. "What do you want?"

"You got any money?" said Roger, with his hand out.

"Yes," said Sam. He realised why Roger was asking. "I mean, yes. But you can't have it."

Roger narrowed his eyes. "Why not?"

"Oooh!" said Max. He leaned forward. "Go get him, Sam!"

"'Cause I said no," said Sam. It was hard to keep the tremor out of his voice.

Roger punched him.


Max clambered onto the bookshelf and produced a knife. "Nice going, Sam." He stood on his toes, and hacked away at the webbing binding Sam to the ceiling.

"You coulda helped," said Sam. Stupid Roger and his stupid spider silk. He wasn't even a spider, as far as Sam could tell.

"You're not supposed to fight in the library, Sam," said Max. "Tisk tisk." He cut one of Sam's arms free.

Sam rolled his eyes. It was obvious that he'd just wanted to watch the fight. Sometimes he joined in, sometimes he didn't. It was always hard to tell what Max would do.

"Why'd you stand up to him, anyway?" said Max. "And... would you be willing to do it again in a steel cage in front of hundreds of paying customers?"

"A-- Ow!" Max had grazed him. Sam tried his best to keep still, and said "A cockroach told me to be more assertive. I think he was r... Max? Are you okay?"

Max pulled himself back up onto the bookshelf. He looked to be okay. He'd only fallen onto his head. "Never trust a cockroach, Sam."

Sam shrugged with his free arm. He usually didn't trust them, but it had just seemed like good advice. "Hey Max," he said. "Where did you get that knife?" He clearly hadn't been holding it when they'd come in.

"None of your business, Sam," said Max.


Back on the playground, Sam and Max sat under the big tree.

"That was fun," said Max. "Let's do it again sometime."

Sam ignored him, and continued picking bits of web out of his fur. He noticed Jennie, Melanie and Pelanie coming towards them, and groaned.

"Max, we're playing house again," said Jennie, the second she was close enough. To Sam, she said "You can't play. You're too weird."

"If Sam's not playing, neither am I," said Max. "You girls are so boring!"

Jennie sighed loudly. "Okay, he can play. But he still has to be the dog."

This looked like a good time to be assertive, Sam realised. It was a good time because most girls didn't hit. "No," said Sam. "I wanna be a policeman." It was the first thing that came into his head that sounded interesting.

"You can't," snapped Jennie, folding her arms. "You'd just weird it up. You have to be the dog."

"I have to be the policeman or else I'm not playing," said Sam. He folded his arms too, and tried to look serious.

They glared at each other until Pelanie said "Just let him be a policeman so we can play!"

"Fine!" said Jennie, with one last glare at Sam.

Max and the girls pretended to be in the living room, watching TV, while Sam waited outside, which was really just a couple of feet away.

"Knock knock," he said, after a minute or two.

"I'll get it!" said Melanie. She opened the imaginary door. "Oh, hello, officer."

"Hello, ma'am. I'm here to investigate an allegation of domestic abuse," said Sam. It was the kind of thing he'd heard the police say. Or was that the social workers? He could never remember.

"Um..." said Melanie. "Come in?" She motioned through the door.

"Aaaah!" said Max in mock horror. "It's the fuzz! They've found us! Run!" He ran right into Sam, who grabbed him and held him up by the neck. Then he dropped him. Max was kind of short, but he was still heavy.

Jennie put her hands on her hips. "Why should we run?"

"Because we're secretly a family of serial killers, on the run after we killed fifty thousand people back in Deadguyton!" said Max.

"I said abuse, not murder!" protested Sam. "You can't just change it like that!"

"I didn't change it!" said Max. "We're an abusive family of serial killers!"

"No!" said Jennie. "We're not playing this!"

"Thrilling car chases are way more interesting than... whatever you wanted to play," said Max. He mimed driving a car, making engine noises. "Right, Sam?

"Yeah!" said Sam. What did the girls want to play, anyway? It almost looked like the point was to sit around and pretend to be grown up, but nobody would be that dull, would they? Not even a girl.

"No it's not!" said Jennie. "We're just a normal family. Right, Pelanie, Melanie?"

Pelanie shrugged, and Melanie said "Sounds kind of interesting to me."

"Shut up, Melanie!" yelled Jennie.

"Are we car chasing or not?" said Max.


Once Jennie had stormed away in a huff, Sam said "Did you see that, Max? I was assertive.'

"You stood up to a bunch of girls," said Max. "Big deal."

He was right, but Sam just shrugged. "It's a start."