“Oh man . . . you’ve got Madame Mutt . . .”
Confused, I looked down at the name, phone number, and address I’d scribbled down on the back of an envelope: Clarissa Sinclair, 465-4329, 263 Pentecost Street.  Putting my elbow on the bar, I turned to face my friend Elvin.
“Whaddaya mean?  Who is she?”
“You don’t know Madame Mutt?  Jeez, you really are new here.  Still unbelievable, you’ve been here over a year and you still don’t know about her . . .”
“No, I don’t!  What the hell’d she do?”
“She’s psycho.  I can’t get over the fact that you don’t know the story.  I thought everyone here knew it.”
“I guess everyone assumed I knew it, so they never bothered to actually tell me; now’s your chance.  What’s this story you’re going on about?”
Elvin grinned, drained his beer, and set the empty bottle on the bar top.  He motioned to the bartender, indicating he’d like another, and pulled his stool closer to mine.  Wary but smiling, he began the tale:

“Alright.  Madame Mutt or Ms. Sinclair or whatever you want to call her, she’s not that much older than us.  Early thirties, I’d say, about thirty three.  But the whole deal took place ten or eleven . . . yeah, eleven years ago, because I was fifteen.  It was a big deal, even back then, but now it’s like legend.  Kids are afraid to go by the house . . . they do the knock on the door and run for it dare with her all the time.”
“What’d she do to deserve all that?” I interjected. “She didn’t seem bad at all on the phone.”
“Nah, she seems real nice.  Real pretty, too, especially back then.  She was married to Mr. Sinclair, who owned the used car dealership in Kraemer.  Suppose she kept the name after the divorce.”
“They divorced?”
“Yeah, but I’m getting there.  Anyway, she was real nice looking and had a good husband, right?  Well apparently he couldn’t satisfy her or something.  One day she decided to do the peanut butter trick with her husband’s rottweiler.  You know about that thing, don’t you?”
“Of course.  Spread it on down there, and-?”
“Exactly.  Something went wrong, though.  She twitched or screamed during an orgasm.  It surprised the dog and I think I mentioned it was a rottweiler . . .”
“Oh, Christ.”
He nodded solemnly. “Tore her apart, all that area.  Practically ripped her uterus out, they say; mutilated her womanhood completely.  Her husband got home about half an hour later with her bleeding to death on the living room floor, naked.  She’d passed out from blood loss, I think.  Soon as he could he called an ambulance and they took her off.”
“But she lived.”
“Yes.  Her husband found out what happened soon enough, and he filed for a divorce while she was still being treated at the hospital.  She’s been single since then, not even a boyfriend.” He took a sip from his bottle. “A shame, really.  Probably had something to do with her being so bad off, down here.  At first it did, anyway.  No one would have her even if she wanted, after her revenge.”
“Revenge, eh?  Got back at her husband?”
He chuckled humorlessly.  “No, not directly anyway.  She went for the source of the problem, her canine lover, the morning of the day her husband was going to take it away.”
I leaned forward, interested. “What did she do?”
“She went wild.  Tricked the poor mutt into thinkin’ it was going on a walk with a really long leash, had a choke chain around its neck.  She threw her end over a big oak tree branch and hoisted him right up . . . tied some sort of knot around the trunk or something, can’t quite remember, but it held him there, hanging a few feet above the ground.  Didn’t strangle the dog, though; heard somethin’ about choke chains being designed to keep the dog alive if it got snagged like that somehow.  Anyway, he was fighting for breath, that’s for sure, but not dying.  She watched him for a second and she pulls out some sort of metal cord, almost like a whip.  Want to know what she did with it?”
“Sure.”
“She flayed the dog alive right in front of the entire street.  Beat it with her metal whip till there was hardly flesh left on its bones.  Even after it gave up yelping and was long dead she hit it, until her ex drove up and screamed at her.  I was there, because the school bus let off a few minutes after she had started.  One of the creepiest things I ever seen, after she was done . . . there was that mutilated dog hanging from the branch, the tongue that’s started it all flopped out big and red, and she was just standing next to it, on a circle of blood stained grass, covered in blood herself, holding that cord tight and breathin’ hard . . .” He trailed off, looking away distractedly.  After taking another long gulp of beer he focused his attention toward me again.
“Probably some lawsuits, that type of thing, but that’s where the legend ends, her standing in the ring of blood there.  Now she just lives alone, without a soul willing to face her; still beautiful, but crazy like Satan with rabies.” He seemed thoughtful for a while and suddenly appeared to have remembered something:
“The oak tree is called the Child’s Gallows now.  And no one walked over where the blood fell.”
“Child’s Gallows?  It was a dog, though.”
“Yeah, but while she whipped that dog’s life away she was screamin’ something about it killed her baby, killed her child.  She screamed it until her husband come scream at her.  I think she was still muttering after the deed was done, too.”
“That so?  Was she pregnant?”
Elvin shrugged and sipped at his bottle, finishing it off. “Maybe . . . don’t know.  Nowadays there’s crazy stories about werewolves and shit, but no one really believes ‘em.” He paused a moment. “You be careful, okay?  Tomorrow, I mean.”
I gave him a serious look. “I’m going over there to fix a leaky faucet and get paid.  I ain’t going to do any peanut butter bullshit or nothin’.”
He laughed at that, but it lacked the mirth his laughter usually held. “Still, man, watch yourself and be safe.  Madame Mutt maybe got plans for you.”

The car door closed softly behind me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk.  A sprinkler reached the end of its semicircle and rapidly clicked back to its original position.  I listened to the faint sounds of children playing their yard, several houses down the road.  Taking a deep breath, I walked leisurely down the pavement, toward house 263.
Her house stood out on the clean, quaint street with its dark windows and mildewed wood, but even more forebodingly prominent was the Child’s Gallows, a sickly, twisted oak jutting up from an empty field.  Weeds and grass grew tall around it with no one willing to approach the dread to tree to cut it.  Steadily, eyes focused intently on the poorly kept house, careful not to look away, I stepped toward the gallows.  It loomed there, visible through the corner of my eye.  The laughter of the children down the street was eerily clear, the only audible sound I could perceive.  Hurrying past the cursed, wooden landmark, I quickly made my way to my destination.
I cut across the lush, green lawn, which was surprisingly well kept compared to the poor condition the building was in.  Halfway across the yard I made my way to the walkway and followed the cement up to the door, feeling bad about treading on the healthy grass.  I knocked on the heavy wooden door four times, holding my metal toolkit tightly with my other hand.  A few seconds later a blurry figure appeared in the hallway, hardly visible through the smoky glass, and approached, opening the old door.
My first thought, upon seeing her, was that Elvin was right: a damn shame.  Her large, blue eyes stared into mine, and moved about slowly, as if they were searching.  She had a pale complexion and a soft face framed in light brown, curling hair that fell near her hips, around which a red sash was tied.  The dress she wore was purple and loose fitting, but the makeshift belt showed her figure.  I noticed all of this and had put on the façade of professional apathy before she even opened the door completely.
Her bright, round eyes dropped and wandered to my toolbox.
“Mr. Maxwell?” she asked, without looking up.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please come in.”
Nodding slightly, I stepped into the simple, dimly lit room.  The furniture and scant decorations were nicely arranged, but some sections of the wall were in disrepair and looked as bad as the exterior.  She followed my gaze up to a water stain on the ceiling.
“Sorry about how bad the house looks.  I can’t afford to fix it up, and I’m no good at doing it myself.”
I tried to appear interested in a picture on the wall. “Your yard is real pretty, though.”
She smiled, white and beautiful, and lowered her eyes shyly. “Yes, I spend lots of time working out in the garden.  Of course I wish the neighborhood kids would come over and play sometime.” She looked toward the screen door at the end of the hallway and fell silent.  I feigned interest in another portrait, inching away a bit, when she asked: “Have you ever heard of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?”
I turned around stiffly. “I think so.  Isn’t that one of the eight wonders of the world?”
“Seven”, she smiled. “But it is, yes.  Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like, all those plants and the birds and the sun shining through the wide, stone windows.  I’m not a gardening fanatic, really, but the memory of that monument . . . I don’t know, but I keep a garden, because of the beauty that once was.  If it hadn’t been destroyed I’d give it all to go there.”
“Maybe someone will build it again,” I said carefully, after a brief silence.
“No,” she replied shortly.  She stared at me intently, her blue eyes fierce, their innocence and dreaminess abruptly gone. “It could never, never be as beautiful.”
Another silence followed, and I could hear the children playing outside, very far away from me.
“The faucet, ma’am?”
Her tense muscles relaxed. “Of course . . . sorry to keep you waiting, me and my Babylon nonsense.  Follow me, it’s in the kitchen.”
I did as she advised, staying a few steps behind, stepping lightly on the tarnished floorboards.  Moments later we were in the tiny kitchen, and I glanced doubtfully at the yellow stains on the linoleum and on the ceiling.  A leaky faucet was hardly a problem compared to the horrible condition her house lay in.  Yet I drew myself away from my thoughts and plastered a large, false smile on my face as the turned toward me.
“So . . . here it is,” she said anxiously. “I’ll leave you alone while you work, but I’ll be in the next room if you need me for something.”
I avoided a response, but approached the dripping sink as she stepped out of the way, but stopped suddenly and went rigid.  A jar of peanut butter rested near the back of the uncluttered countertop, standing out among a few cookbooks and some utensils with its red cap and colorful label.  She followed my gaze to the disgusting beacon.
We stood in utter silence together.  I could not hear the children laughing.
“You know, too?” she asked quietly.
I remained motionless.
“I . . . I don’t really know why I did it in the first place,” she sighed, gesturing at the peanut butter. “Of course, that’s the reason it all started, but it’s not why everyone is scared of me.” She paused here and looked at me, but I merely stared straight forward until she continued. “It’s the dog.  What I did to it that day.  But I had to . . . it killed my children.  My fucking children!” she muttered in suppressed rage.
“Were you . . . pregnant?” I inquired cautiously, after building up enough courage.
She uttered a quick, humorless laugh and started watching the linoleum floor as she spoke. “No.  I wasn’t pregnant.”
Neither of us spoke a word for nearly a minute.  I wiped sweat from my forehead; it seemed very hot in her small kitchen.
“I do not regret killing him,” she began suddenly.  She gently placed a hand over her dress, where her torn womanhood lay beneath. “He destroyed me . . . I just wish . . . maybe if I hadn’t punished him in front of everyone . . . maybe the children would come and play in my yard sometimes.  I keep it so nice for them . . .”
She was standing there, in the dimly lit kitchen, the suggestion of tears in her eyes, unmoving for a long time.  I set my toolbox down on the floor, wincing out the loud metallic clank it made, and tried to fix the faucet.  It was difficult, trembling and sweating under the sink among liquid cleaner and rat poison, but it was a simple job.  I closed my toolbox with a small sigh, and as I stood she regained her senses, handing me a prewritten check she’d been holding the entire time.
“Thank you so much for fixing that up for me, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, smiling blankly.  I made my way to her front door and she followed, closely but timidly.  Stepping ahead, she opened it for me and I stepped outside and into her green, abandoned lawn.  She leaned in the doorway, hugging herself and watching me as I reached the sidewalk.  Before she closed her door, she waved a slow, halfhearted farewell, one that I pretended not to notice.  After I heard the door latch and was sure she’d withdrawn to her lonely quarters I began running, away from the laughter and the nice lawn and Madame Mutt, past the Child’s Gallows and my car, and I didn’t stop running until I’d reached the end of Pentecost Street.