Forbidden Pleasures of Pei

The first thing that happened was there was a dog.

It was the most beautiful dog I had ever seen. It had long white fur and it was running towards me with its tongue out. It had a long warm bushy tail and it was wagging it at me like a greeting.

I ran to meet the dog, too. I had never seen a dog before and this was my first experience seeing one up close. I reached down to pet the dog's back and it licked my hand, which tickled and made me laugh. The dog responded to my laughter by jumping up on his hind legs and putting his front paws on my shoulders, licking my face happily. He nuzzled me happily and I started laughing again.

There was a voice behind me saying, "What have we here?" A man came over to us, dressed in all black with an odd looking mask over his eyes that seemed to have some sort of lens in it that reflected light from where he stood into three shining dots on each of our faces. Behind him, a woman also dressed in black came over, following the man. She looked like she could be his sister since they both had dark hair but she wore a scarf over her nose and mouth like a bandit. "I found this boy wandering around outside," the man said in an accent that sounded like he was trying to sound American but only knew how because of movies he'd watched growing up. He knelt next to us as the dog still sat on top of me, wagging its tail happily, licking my face every time it got too far away from me to reach anymore.

The woman walked past us slowly until she stood next to her companion, looking down at us curiously as she adjusted her scarf from under her mask so it covered her mouth more efficiently. Her eyes were wide open at what she saw and then she looked between the man who had found me and the dog who seemed very happy about finding a new friend to play with. Then she pointed and said something in Chinese that neither of them seemed to understand because they just kept staring at her dumbfoundedly for a few seconds until finally the man said something like, "What? What did you say?" And then she repeated herself in English for them. "Is *that* what you call a dog?" She pointed at the animal still sitting on top of me now licking the side of my face enthusiastically while I laughed with delight at his attention.

The two of them looked astonished at what they saw before them; watching this strange little boy laughing as this dog licked him adoringly while they spoke no language he understood or they understood any language he spoke themselves. The man counted off several things under his breath as he took out some sort of device from one pocket on his coat (which didn't seem all that different than modern day cell phones except maybe more bulky) before pressing a button on it and holding it towards us with his finger gently touching something on its surface about halfway down from the top that caused it to make some sort of loud noise before gurgling out some weird message sounding like static before finally spitting out one word: "Abduction." The woman scowled even further when she heard what he said, staring at him angrily for a few seconds before pulling out her own device - which looked identical to his but with several differences such as colors or symbols - putting her fingers on its surface where it made another loud noise before spitting out two words: "Child abduction." Then added three more words after that: "You idiot!"