Hey Mom,

Had a spooky night here in Pawsburgh where it seemed our town turned into a ghost town filled with doggy nightmares—think vacuums and bottomless pools! Turns out, it was a Howlloween prank by the gang, and boy did they get me good! 😱🐾 But all’s well that ends with a wag, and a reminder that friends (and a good scare) are the heart of any tale. Home safe, with stories to dig up!

Licks and tail wags,
Little Fish 🐟✨

Listen to the story here

The moment the moon took its high seat in the inky velvet sky, with not a single star to usurp its dominance, I knew it was time to skedaddle to Pawsburgh. There’s something about nightfall that unhitches the soul of dogs, lets us trot our clandestine paths to a town brimming with escapades, a town where humans’ rules are as irrelevant as cats in a spelling bee.

So let me elucidate, my name—Mattie. I’m no ordinary Chihuahua; I’m the living pawprint of legends whispered on the wailing winds that scour Saluki Sands. With my stuffed bear as my squire and the appetite of a wolf in Arby’s trench coat, I adventure, I love, and heck, I even crave those rogue lemon cookies. But that night, that spine-tingling, fur-bristling night, I sauntered into a Pawsburgh twisted into an untold horror.

Creeping down the usually festive Pearl Papillon Promenade, all was shrouded in an eerie mist, the kind that cloaks and chokes, smacks of clandestine whispers. The buzz of my friends was muted—vanished without a yip into the ether—save for a solitary, shadowy figure pacing outside Paw Pad Thai.

“Gizmo?” I barked, my voice more mouse than mastiff. No response. The figure shifted, melted into the miasma. I swallowed a gulp of cold fear, remembering mother’s yarns about the Hound of Hound Heights that gulped down dogs in single, soundless swoops.

Marching onward, my four paws found themselves before the culinary calamity that is Husky’s Hotcakes, past Corgi’s Crêpes, famed for its delicate folds and ambrosial fillings. Here, instead of sizzling batter and sweet fragrances was silence. A void as vacuous as my bowl on Vet’s Day.

I darted past the lifeless haunts to Canine Couture Clothing, where the silhouettes of the latest fashion usually danced in the window. Now, shabby cobwebs hugged the mannequins like spectral shrouds. No one crooned about their new beret or yodeled over jaunty jackets—no bustle, no hustle, just an orchestra of my quickening heartbeat.

And then it happened. At The Furry Friends Art Gallery, where masterpieces by paws usually grace the walls, was a sight that could make the fur on a werewolf stand on end. Art so disturbing, so anomalously alive, that my scream came out as a strangled yap.

There, on coarse canvas, a monstrous vacuum cleaner surged into etches and strokes of bestial form, its roar a silent cacophony—a horror only a dog could comprehend. Next to it, a swimming pool abyss that pulled at my soul with watery talons. An excruciating gallery tailor-made for my dread, plucked from the darkest kennels of my psyche.

I turned to flee, to forego the heroic feats of stuffed bear wrestling for my safe nook at home. That’s when the laughs echoed, that diabolical cacophony of canines cackling from the opaque abyss. Gizmo stepped from the shadows, his werewolfish grin so incongruously nonthreatening.

“Gotcha, Mattie!” he barked.

The absurdity of the ruse, the art, the stalking, it was all a setup for Howlloween—the one night we indulged in terror for tail-wags and treats. The dogs of Pawsburgh revealed themselves, their eyes alight with mischief akin to mine. They knew the fears of their fellow fur-friends, and what’s a good scare among pals?

“Gizmo, you mongrel,” I managed, the heartbeat in my throat rolling into a chuckle. “That was a masterpiece of macabre.”

So in a Pawsburgh spun into a whirl of horror, friendship finds its true bite. I, Mattie, the Chihuahua with more courage than coat, learned that the only thing more terrifying than a vacuum is a town without your friends to share in the spook. And, for the record, scare me like that again and I’ll bury your squeak toys in Saluki Sands—no kidding.

The End.

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