From the Eyes of a Ghost Dog
Chapter Eight: In the Sky
The thrill of flight and touching the sky is like nothing else in the world. Humans fly around in their airplanes (though they look more like tin cans with wings to me), but it is nothing like tasting that sweet night air high up in the clouds and imagining that you can touch those stars just above your head. The wind may chill your bones, but the rush keeps you so warm. As the Halloween sky faded into the clearer, blue sky of the human world, I felt more alive than I had ever felt.
The first house that we hit was something of a landing disaster. Neither Jack or the reindeer had practiced landing very much, so the sleigh landed with a "boom!" and a "crunch!" of wooden beams breaking beneath. Jack didn't care much about it though. He simply jumped down the chimney and delivered the first presents. The young boy that lived there had woken up, and both he and his parents were surprised to find a shrunken head as a gift. Their screams of what we thought were of joy filled our hearts with the Christmas spirit.
"Merry Christmas!" Jack called to that family and the rest of the world.
And so our flight continued. We delivered Christmas from house to house. A sweet old lady who loved gardening received a man-eating wreath. A snake proved to be talented at stuffing itself with holiday gifts. Two children in need of a fun toy found a vampire teddy bear with very sharp fangs and a killer duck with hand-painted bullet holes to be their new companions. A needy family of bats even found a new home as living Christmas tree decorations. There came shrieks of surprise with nearly every new neighborhood, and Jack only grew happier with the joy he was bringing to the unsuspecting humans.
We took to the skies soon again. We had to fly over a couple of cloud banks. A military base was down below, and they cast their searchlights directly at us. I was all too happy to have the officers' attention, but then they fired a missile right at me and I yelped in fear.
Jack simply yelled down to them, "Careful down there, you almost hit us!" then told me that we had nothing to fear and that I should fly higher into the cloud bank. I had an awful feeling about it somewhere in the pit of my ectoplasm, even though I obeyed as any good dog should. Especially being the reindeers' guide.
All too soon, we cleared that cloud bank and yet another searchlight blinded us. Two more shots rang out. One shot took off a reindeer's head and another went straight through our toys,
"They're trying to hit us!" Jack realized. "Zero!" he called out to me.
I feebly whimpered back in my own tongue, I don't know what to do either, master! I knew that we could not fly any higher or faster. We were trapped.
Another blinding light and another "boom!" of the canon came before the impact of the direct hit rattled throughout the sleigh. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them, I could hear no reindeer behind me and I saw no sleigh or my master. It was only when I looked down below me that I saw Jack and many other charred presents plummeting to the ground.
Master! I cried out in fear.
And then Jack had a look of the upmost sadness on his face as he cried out into the sky, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
