The Prospect
In a village, a story goes, once lived a dog named Sharptooth.
Sharptooth had two brothers, Notooth and Deadtooth, the latter of which is not alive anymore.
Sharptooth himself has a rather long history of wearing out his owners, which in the end resulted in him having none at all. He received a lot of sympathy exploiting this fact. Of his four last owners, three had killed themselves in a last desperate attempt to get away from him, while the fourth had moved continent and rather conveniently forgot to tell Sharptooth about this.
This was a very hard time for Sharptooth. Having no owner for a dog is like being the son of two gay parents - with all the complex personality problems this leads to.
But although time doesn't have many teeth - in fact only two, eventually it does grind down the sorrow and bitterness you feel. New prospects arrives. And this peculiar prospect was a very big one in more than one sense.
One morning Sharptooth stood outside the door to what was now his home (the fact that it wasn't a door at all, and that his home was nothing more than a hole in the ground, didn't bother Sharptooth at all.) He was in a way enjoying, possibly even admiring, the sun rising queerly above the horizon spreading its love to the world.
A dog has two distict definitions of the word 'world.' Those are: My world, I rule - and, Your world, which is not safe and out of bounds. Privately Sharptooth thought this to be a big bluff, the kind of thing a mom would tell small children to make sure they come home early. Sharptooth knew with the certain certainty that only a dog can know for certain, that there was in fact only one world, which it was his world, and it wasn't big, but it was fairly safe.
This was when a particular prospect arrived.
Sharptooth stared the prospect straight in the face for quite a while.
"Oh dear," he finally said.
The prospect hesitated, surprised. "What?" it asked.
"You haven't had a shower yet this morning, have you?"
The prospect screwed up an approximation of an eye, "No. Why?"
"I can smell it," said Sharptooth knowingly. "You should always shower in the morning."
"Oh. Why?"
"It wakes you up."
"I shiver at the prospect of waking up," said the prospect.
"Ah, hah," Sharptooth said, "anyway, what's your name?"
"I'm a prospect."
"Yes, yes, I know. Your name?"
"Prospects do not have names."
"Oh. How should I address you then?"
"Just as a prospect."
"Ok then, Mr Prospect, why are you here?" asked Sharptooth.
"I am here to show you myself."
"Er. Right. Why?"
"I am a prospect. I show myself to people. Or creatures. And so I do it for you today. You must consider this prospect, me, and make a decision wether or not I am a feasible prospect."
"What? But I don't even know you." Sharptooth did not like where this conversation was heading, most of all because he did not want to consider anything. No, this was not quite right. Most of all because he did not want to make a decision in the first place.
"You don't need to KNOW me. I am this prospect. Consider me."
Sharptooth considered for a brief moment. "Hmm. Not much of a prospect, really,"
"What do you mean, not much of a prospect?"
"Are you in training or something? You are quite an amateurish kind of prospect, really."
"Er.. not quite.. but I just left university."
"And you were hired by a toilet paper company?"
"Well.. yeah.. ?" The prospect wavered and twitched slightly.
"As I said, not much of a prospect."
"Ok, ok, just consider me and make your mind up, and I'll leave you alone!"
"But I don't want to consider you!"
"Hmmm.. " This wasn't exactly going according to plan.
"I don't want you to leave," Sharptooth said. "Can't I keep you, like, forever?"
The prospect panicked and disintegrated, and left Sharptooth alone.