Hey, just a quick pawdate: I’m basically the Sherlock Bones of Spencerville now. Turns out, that spooky Squeaker business at the Deli was just a robo-toy gone rogue. Disarmed it with my charm (and teeth). All’s calm in the ‘ville again. Tell the others, treats and cuddles are on me. 🦴🕵️‍♂️🐾

– Rookie Detective

The air in Spencerville’s mirrored the hum of an early autumn breeze, tinged with a whiff of smoke and the fabled aroma from The Doggy Bagel Deli. It’s idyllic, almost too idyllic. The quietness sat heavy on my fluffy shoulders. Since the Event, that cataclysmic romp through what we once knew as normal, things had changed; even in the sanctuary of pets, there’s a feeling, a scratch behind the ear type of feeling, that things were…

“off.”

The hustle and bustle? Replaced by calculated trots, barks turning into murmurs. We weren’t just waiting anymore, waiting for the proverbial Man in the Moon or the Lady of the Lake; we were surviving, acclimating to the new Spencerville, a nearly perfect place marred by the unknown.

A stick snaps behind me – I turn. Corgi Castle looms in the distance, the once-glorious spires now a shadow of former decadence. It’s Mallomars, the Saint Bernard from by Maltese Meadow, his eyes are heavy, drool thicker than before.

“Rookie,” he pants. “You heard about the Doggy Bagel Deli?”

I nod. “Heard it’s been ransacked, that right?”

Mallomars heaves. “Worse. Haunted, they say. Toys finding their way to the middle of the room, uneaten treats turning up half eaten. Like ghosts were playing.”

“Or something else,” I muse, my tail betraying a nervous twitch. We don’t believe in ghosts in Spencerville, we believe in each other, and in… “The Squeaker.”

Silence. The Squeaker was the legend, the epitome of pet nightmares, an unclaimed toy that squeaked in the heart of Spencerville, calling to the darkest parts of our animal instincts.

Mallomars exhales, his breath condensing in a low growl. “You aren’t thinking of going there, are you?”

“We need to know, Mallomars. We can’t just wait for our humans with this… this tension. The unease, the snacks left uneaten, it’s un-Spencerville.”

Tentatively, we make for the Deli, my four paws leading the charge, my central force guiding us – it’s my pursuit for joy, for understanding; I know toys, especially The Squeaker, they hold power.

The Deli looms, a beacon of questions with every light dimmed. Inside, the temptation of freshly baked bagels intertwines with the smell of danger. Something is amiss. A sound. A squeak.

There, at the center of it all, sits a lone plush bone, The Squeaker, surrounded by an array of doggy delicacies. An inviting, unsettling tableau.

Mallomars hesitates at the threshold. This gentle giant, once full of slobber and smiles, is now… unsure. I step closer, my brave whisper fueling our odyssey, the narrative to be told in playful barks and worried whines.

Someone – no, something – is disrupting our paradise; utilizing our toys, unsettling our souls. I look back to Mallomars, his once powerful stance unsettled by trepidation.

“It’s just a toy,” I tell him, and myself. But even as I speak, the bagels roll, tumbling, as if pushed by invisible paws.

Toys aren’t just toys when they become the center of your post-apocalyptic world. They’re totems.

Streamers of saliva fly from Mallomars’ jaws as he barks, “Rookie, look out!”

I pivot on my petite paws, the hero in a fluff of tan and wisdom, face to face with The Squeaker – our post-apocalyptic symbol of… hope? Despair?

Snouts forward, we approach. The suspense is a dull squeak under a moonless sky. And there, with a paw outstretched, I uncover the truth; behind The Squeaker, in shadows, lies a mechanized toy, a harbinger of complexity amidst our canine simplicity.

A simple malfunction, or a metaphor for our changing reality?

“We dismantle this, we dismantle the fear,” I tell Mallomars. “And we wait, with wagging tails and high spirits, for the return of our humans.”

With that, Spencerville breathes a collective sigh, a dog whistle through the silence, and I, Rookie, the dog of stories untold, wag our tale of unity into the wind of a hopeful tomorrow.

The End.