My Dog Gone Luck

 Martini Mooney dropped dead on her damp front porch after returning home from the store where she purchased a lottery ticket and candy, the candy now half-eaten. The candy and the ticket stuck to the dog’s paw as she fell to her side. 

Mrs. Mooney’s dog, Dandelion, was one warm spot in her life and the only splendor left in her tender heart. He licked the plump, pale skin of his fallen mistress for a long time but sensed her sad demise.  

Dandelion moaned and groaned and continued his vigil until late afternoon. He finally accepted the sad situation and knew he must soon leave her side.  

He studied the paper stuck to the candy bar and decided to eat it as he looked down on it in woe and pain. He sniffed it.  He licked it. He liked the sweet taste. He quivered. He shivered.  Before a minute passed, Dandelion had chopped, chewed, and gnawed the candy and the paper to a clean, digestible, plump clump. Mrs. Mooney always believed her dog was priceless. 

Minutes later, Martini Mooney’s son Damian Mooney rushed home with a three-day-old beard, wrinkled clothes, smelling of gin and cheap perfume, a few hours back from wooing and undoing a barmaid’s dress, removed his house key from his blue denim jeans, then noticed his mother collapsed on the front porch. 

He saw his mother on the floor but did not check for a pulse. He stepped over her, grabbed her purse near the doorway, and, once inside, called 911. The 911 dispatcher answered the phone, and Mrs. Mooney’s son displayed a weary, teary response to the operator. Damian gave the dispatcher his address and quickly hung up the phone.

He frantically searched his mother’s purse when he hung up the phone. Nothing. 

Later, the ambulance attendant arrived and sighed upon seeing Mrs. Mooney. He checked her pulse and pronounced her “deceased.” 

Damian explained his mother’s excitement when she called him earlier on her drive home in explicit exclamations. 

“She told me,” he said, wringing his clammy wrists and fingertips together. She heard on the car radio that all her numbers matched the grand prize of 147 million dollars in the Lottery Power Ball game.” 

The technician studied Damian as he covered Mrs. Mooney, lying on the gurney, with a white sheet. Damian sat down hard in the doorway near the dog. 

"Of course,” Damian said, shifting his buttocks, now roughly clinching the throat of the dog, as he addressed the technician, “Of course, I am distraught and demolished by the death of my mother.”  The dog pulled away, yelped out in pain, and panted toward the edge of the porch. 

The EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) replied, shaking his head from side to side in disgust, “Death is a story of sorrow.  I lament my job but find comfort in knowing the dead do awaken on the other side.  We each are a sliver in a river of souls.  Did you find the ticket?” 

Damian jumped to his feet, “Well, Mother said she would not let it out of her hand, but, well, hell, as soon as I entered the house,” Damian replied, “I’d already checked the glove box in her vehicle, then searched her pocketbook, billfold, checkbook, rolled her over a bit and rummaged through her skirt pockets, then searched through every dresser drawer in her chest of drawers, her jewelry armoire, the lockbox, checked the floorboards of the car and the glove-box again.” 

“It would be a valuable prize,” observed the technician, his eyebrows raised. 

“I have searched everywhere but under the porch.” Shouted Damian as he continued speaking. “I know it must be around here somewhere. I am her loving, only living son and have remained true-blue to her.  I am what you might call a ‘mellow fellow.’  I’d get the whole jackpot.”  He pursed his lips, sighed, licked his tongue across his dry lips, and said, “I’m flabbergasted about the untimely extinction of my mother.” 

The technician looked puzzled as he flexed the gurney wheels, prepared to exit the property with Mrs. Mooney, but paused and asked, “Did you know she was dead?” 

Damian replied, shifting his feet as if he were wiping something from the bottom of his shoe, “I ass-umed she was a goner.” 

“What is to become of her dog?” the EMT asked, biting his bottom lip. 

“I’ll drop Mother’s mutt by the butt off at the local dog pound.” Damian said, shrugging his shoulder, adding, “Upon haphazard reflection, I’ve never had any affection for this mangy pooch. Mother said he had papers, but he looks like a dog to me.” 

“If dogs smile or giggle when they snarl,” thought the technician, as he watched the dog lick brown concoction from his nose, “then I feel sure Dandelion and Mrs. Mooney will rest in peace.”