As old dogs go, there won’t be many – if any - who are older
than me. The name’s Cerberus, and I’ve been the guard dog of Hades for
eternity. I have my den on the bank of the River Styx, right next to where Charon
the boatman lands the shades of the departed. I am well aware that there has
been much speculation up top about exactly what I look like, namely how many
heads I’ve got and whether or not I’ve got serpents coiled round my neck, but I
know what I am and you lot can just carry on guessing – until such time as you
meet me for real, that is.
I really enjoy my work, which is basically letting the
departed know what they’re in for down here. If you’ve led a decent sort of
life, you just get a growl or two, but the real nasties are in for a somewhat
less pleasant experience. The word “shade” should not be taken too literally –
when my jaws are fastened round your ankle the pain is far from imaginary! I
just love hearing the screams when my teeth crunch on bone, and I’ve crunched
some real beauties in my time.
Let me see, there was Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam
Hussein, Donald Trump – oh no, that last one’s not dead yet, is he? Don’t
worry, I’ll be ready for him when he is. And the same goes for Nigel Farage.
I really love it when an American tele-evangelist comes my
way. Do you know the type I mean? These are the guys who con vast numbers of
people into parting with their cash so that the evangelist can live a life of
luxury and buy a fleet of private jets, by promising their “flock” that they
will have their diseases cured and take a short-cut to Heaven when they pop
their clogs. You should see the expression on the face of the average
tele-evangelist when Charon deposits one at my side of the River Styx – you
might almost think they had other ideas about where they would end up.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing this note is to tell you that
I’m about to take my annual leave. Charon decided some time ago that letting me
nip upstairs to your world every now and then was in his best interest.
Although, as I said, I love my work, the diet of nasty people’s ankles is
ever-so-slightly monotonous and I can get a touch crabby without a bit of
variety. It was when he found me chewing a hole in his boat that he suggested I
take a break every now and then. So this is fair warning that Cerberus, the dog
from Hades, is about to get some fresh air.
I will confess that I tend to gorge myself when I’m on my
hols. I apologise to the world’s foxes for the blame they get for raiding hen
houses and slaughtering the inmates – half the time that’s me having an
extended chicken supper.
And all that extra food produces masses of extremely sticky
and smelly dog poo. I tend to perform wherever I can guarantee the presence of
a human foot within the next half hour.
But my chief delight on being free to charge all over the
place is to make the acquaintance of as many lady dogs as I can and leave them
in the family way. I tend to choose partners that look a bit like me to start
with, so my genetic material stands a good chance of producing pups with a
similar attitude to mine. All those dogs that people describe as “hell hounds”
are usually exactly that - their daddy was the original hound from hell.
Did you ever wonder how Arthur Conan Doyle got the idea for
the Hound of the Baskervilles? One of my offspring gave him a nasty shock one night
down a back alley in Edinburgh, that’s how!
I try not to make these trips into a busman’s holiday –
scaring people to death is an occupational hazard, and I’m sorry to say that
one look at me quite often has that effect. That is why I try to stay out of
sight as much as possible, and I always prefer it if people get their first view
of me when I’m on duty down below. On the other hand, I have been known to deliberately
seek out the occasional tele-evangelist for the sole purpose of hastening the
inevitable.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a deputy in Hades, so my holiday
absence means that the work tends to pile up and I have a really busy time of
it when I get back. That is why these breaks, necessary though they are, have
to be on the short side. No matter – there’s still plenty of life in the old
dog, as many a lady rottweiler can testify!
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