I Bought a Dog on the Dark Web. Turns out I should have gone to a pet store like a normal person...
Some people are terrified of going on the dark web. Most people wouldn’t even know where to begin.
But me? I’ve gotten way too comfortable searching the bowels of the deep web and its darkest corners of depravity.
I work as a fence, of sorts. Taking advantage of most people’s technical ineptitude, I make a profit from selling illicit items to folks in my hometown. Once upon a time I got these things from other sources, but nowadays you can get anything, and I mean anything, delivered to your door with the click of a mouse. It’s cheap and surprisingly reliable.
There’s no such thing as morals when you have a job like I do, selling all manner of questionable items.
I guess because of that you could argue I deserved what happened to me.
I was sitting in my home office, feeling bored and lonely. Having a two storey, four bedroom house with a giant back yard is kind of pointless when you have nobody to share it with, and the thought occurred to me again that I should get a dog.
People on Instagram and Facebook had dogs, and they all looked content and happy with their lives – out in the sun playing Frisbee and rolling around on blankets in the grass. Why couldn’t that be me?
It had been a while since I had a real girlfriend too, so the thought of using the pooch as an icebreaker for talking to women also crossed my mind.
I got up the courage to finally do it. Then and there deciding to get a puppy that I could raise up to be a loyal and faithful companion, to share my big house which felt so empty.
Without really thinking about it, I did what I always did when I wanted to buy something. I opened the Tor browser on my laptop and went to my favourite illicit site. For some reason the idea of going to a normal website or to a breeder or pet store didn’t cross my mind until later. In retrospect that would have made a lot more sense.
I typed in “Dog” in the search bar but only one ad came up. I clicked on it.
Puppy for sale – purebred Southern Wolf Hound. $500 USD. Will deliver.
There was a picture of a very cute little black dog.
I had never heard of a Southern Wolf Hound Before. It didn’t look like one I had ever seen. Then again, I didn’t know much about dogs.
Not being one for shopping around, I punched in my credit card info and clicked the “buy” button.
A few days later a wide-eyed and nervous-looking delivery man knocked on my door. At his feet sat an oversized dog crate that was pitch-black inside. Nothing could be seen within it. His trembling hands passed me a tablet and I signed for the delivery and brought the heavy crate into my house.
The dog was a lively one, I thought to myself. When I picked up the crate it started moving restlessly inside, feeling more like a giant python than a puppy. Its weight didn’t seem to match what I had seen in the picture. I wondered briefly if there had been some sort of shipping mistake and almost ran back after the delivery guy.
But when I opened it up there it was – an adorable black puppy wandered out hesitantly and then ran over to me.
My fears were instantly assuaged as the little scamp began to lick my face and I fell on my back, laughing. I let it jump up on me and we rolled around and played on the floor for a while. A smile stretched wide across my face and I felt truly happy as I played with the little dog.
I took the puppy around the house for a tour. Showing him the upstairs first, my bedroom and the office. He sniffed around the guest room I never used and another that was for storage. I showed him the basement and the little bed I had bought for him – he didn’t seem particularly interested in it.
The strangest thing about the puppy, was his weight. He was a hefty little guy. When I tried to pick him up he weighed a ton! And it didn’t make sense. The more I thought about it the more it made me feel uncomfortable and jittery, like the dog was a hole in the universe leading to unreality. A black hole leading to some other dark place that I didn’t want to see.
Trying not to dwell too much on that (mostly because it made my brain feel like it was going to turn into scrambled eggs if I did) I decided to take my new puppy out for a walk at the park.
I tried to put the leash on him that I had recently bought, but it never seemed to fasten quite right. It was like the collar was too small for him – but it wasn’t. I could see that clearly. My mind felt fragmented and wrong as I struggled with it, seeing two realities for a split second.
In one reality I could see my puppy. The other image was like a piece of rogue glass in a shattered mirror, revealing a tremendous wolf-like hound. Its fur was missing in places, bone and exposed muscle peeking out from between its haunches and ribs. The beast’s ancient, knowing face was full of sharp teeth, bared and snarling at me. Wise, experienced eyes stared through my soul, milky-white with cataracts. Dirt was all over the hound and old blood like it had been digging in a graveyard.
Soon we were walking down the street to the park despite the fact I had no memory of leaving my house. The puppy was back to being a puppy and he was off leash, I noticed. Still, he seemed to be managing well enough. He was staying close by me and was quick to respond when I called to him. It was as if he was already well-trained despite his young age.
So I decided to just continue on and kept walking towards the park with him. It was a Tuesday afternoon and it was quiet outside. I didn’t see anyone until we got there.
Once we got to the park I saw a few other people were out walking with their dogs in the large open space. It was a huge grassy field and people would often let their dogs off leash despite the official rules to the contrary. So I didn’t feel as out of place with the pup roaming free there as I had been walking down the street with him.
At first nobody noticed us. But then the dogs picked up the puppy’s scent one by one.
They perked up their ears and stood stock-still, staring at us. They appeared terrified.
My little pup (who I hadn’t even had time to name yet) began to run towards them. I saw the stunned faces of the dogs’ owners. Their jaws dropped and they looked suddenly horrified for some reason. I didn’t understand it, my dog was just a little puppy. They turned and began to flee. What were they so afraid of? I wondered, chasing after the little guy.
And that’s when it happened again. A little piece of my life went missing.
One second I was there in the park, running after the dog, the next we were back home again. It was as if I had just lost the last little bit of my life.
It seemed like just a second before we had been in the park and I had been calling after my puppy as he ran away from me, chasing after him. But now we were back in my living room watching television. An old re-run of “The Office” on Netflix.
Pulling out my cell phone, I checked the time. It was 4:30PM. More than two hours had passed.
I looked down to see the puppy was at my feet, sleeping soundly. At least he was safe, but that didn’t make the black-out I had just experienced feel any better.
“What happened, boy?” I asked the dog, as if he would be able to tell me. He just kept snoring and I noticed there was blood on his paws and on his face.
Feeling more scared than I had been in a long time, I tried to recall what had happened. Nothing came back to me, no matter how hard I searched my memories. This had never happened before and it really frightened me.
I hoped my memories would come back to me but they never did.
Worse yet, over the following weeks it happened again and again. The blackouts.
Every time I left the house with the dog, my life would seem to disappear. Time would disappear. I would step out the door, then find myself immediately back inside with hours missing from my day. The blank periods would get longer and longer, and after a couple weeks I was up to missing eight hour chunks from my life which I could remember no details from.
It seemed to always be when I left the house, so I started doing that less and less, hiding indoors and never leaving my home. I ordered my groceries delivery and became a hermit.
The puppy seemed content, though. And he was growing at a rapid pace. Despite the fact that we spent all hours together, even I could notice the changes. Overnight he seemed to sprout up a couple inches and every morning I would see he was bigger than before.
When I looked at the dog, every worry I had about the missing fragments of my life disappeared. Only the puppy mattered. He was what was important. The warmth I felt when I was holding him and how he looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered to him as well.
Eventually my friends started to get concerned about me. My old buddy Tom called, saying he hadn’t seen me in a while. I told him I was fine, I just didn’t want to leave the house because I had a new puppy. Telling him the truth didn’t occur to me, but maybe I should have. Maybe I could have prevented what happened next.
I didn’t ask Tom to come over. He just stopped by one evening a day or two after our phone call.
We were such good friends that he didn’t even wait for me to answer after knocking on the door. He just walked in.
The dog had grown considerably by that point. He stood up at attention when Tom walked in and the wolf hound immediately bolted for the front door.
My old friend was halfway through saying, “Hello,” before he began to scream.
Again, the world fragmented and split and I saw two versions of my dog. One of them was the cute little guy I knew and loved, the other was the decaying graveyard hell hound I had glimpsed before. Massive and mangy, missing bits of flesh and fur and eager to attack.
Before Tom had a chance to run, my dog was on him. The hell hound was on him.
He jumped up on him, knocking him to the ground. Quickly, he was on his neck with his paws and ripped the flesh from his face while he screamed and clawed at the door, trying to escape.
I ran over to pull the dog off my old friend. When I reached out to grab him, to try to stop him as he tore muscle from bone and gouged out Tom’s eyes with his teeth, he snapped at me. The sharp teeth scraped off my fingers and I looked down horrified to see a glimpse of my own shiny white phalanges staring back at me, hair-covered knuckle flesh dangling limply from the exposed bone.
I recoiled from him, screaming, and ran. Tom was already dead by the time I got upstairs, his screams cut short as the evil wolf ripped out his larynx.
Slamming the door to my office shut behind me, I locked the door.
I’m back in my office where all this started. I’m terrified to go back out that door. Now that the hell hound has a taste of my flesh, I doubt that he’ll be able to resist. I can hear him sniffing and scratching outside already, hungry again after consuming every last bit of my oldest and best friend.
There wasn’t much to do other than wait for my inevitable demise, so I decided to browse the dark web again. I wanted to see something.
I went back to the same hidden site again, navigating through a series of back doors to get there. Clicking secret icons hidden in obscure websites.
Once I arrived there, I typed the word “dog” into the search bar again.
The same exact ad came up – identical.
Puppy for sale – purebred Southern Wolf Hound. $500 USD. Will deliver.
This time I decided to send a direct message to the seller. Someone named “Lycan.”
User53: Hey. I bought one of your dogs and it just killed my friend. I’m pretty sure it’s eating my memories, too.
Lycan: The creature you have purchased is no dog. It is a Vrykolakas. An undead creature which sustains itself on flesh and blood. Like a werewolf-zombie, kinda.
User53: Sounds more like a zombie-werewolf to me. Can I please have a refund?
Lycan: No. All sales are final.
Lycan has exited the chat
With that he disappeared back into the ether and left me with the beast scratching at my door, trying to get in. It won’t be long before he gets through the door, I’m sure.
And when he gets in I’m not sure what he’ll do.
Posted May 31, 2021, 12:14 PM UTC