The Procedure

She still couldn't shake the previous night's dream. She'd had to perform surgery upon her beloved pet Boston Terrier, using an implement that appeared to be a large pizza cutter to make an incision around the perimeter of his adorable piebald body, beginning at the soft white underside of his throat and then all the way around, along each of his sleek sides, towards the back and under the black stub of tail. She had dreamed two consecutive variations of the same dream. In neither version had the poor dear canine been anesthetized.

Strangely enough, the dog was not squirming or squealing. She was holding him in place as she cut and he was looking at her with a fearful expression, his eyes bulging balefully. Despite his wide-eyed fear, he seemed to trust she knew best and made no effort to escape these ministrations. In the first variation of the dream, she performed the procedure correctly. In the second variation, she botched it, the pizza cutter's serrated circular blade slipping outside of the parameters of the invisible dotted line upon her dog's furry flesh.

Secretly aware that her bungled surgery might cost the dog his life, even as he continued to balefully gaze at her, she failed to react swiftly to her own dire mistake. Even as she watched his black stub waggle pathetically, like some misguided attempt to convince himself that everything would be alright, all her mind did was flashback to her inexplicable failure to open a can of tuna fish correctly the past night.

She had spent at least five minutes and two different handheld can openers in her struggle with this unwieldy can, thinking that each can opener was bent out of shape, then thinking that the can itself was somehow warped, before she had finally solicited the assistance of her husband, who had screamed at her that the can was upside down and she needed a brain scan.

All her mind did was think, 'What will come out of this real live piñata?' Tears pooling ineffectually inside her eyes, she watched the little black stub wag more and more slowly. She watched his bulging eyeballs glaze. She waited.