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Doggem: A Tale of Toy Dogs and Dark Deeds Kindle Edition

by John F Leonard (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
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"Sentience? I’m just a throwaway toy, an inanimate object. How can I have thought and emotion? Opinion and experience? I’d shrug my shoulders if I could. The world is brimful of mystery."

All the kids adore Doggem, the class cuddly toy.
They each get to take him home. Hug him and love him and show him their world outside of school.
All they have to do in return is write his diary.
It’s George Gould’s turn and he’s going to introduce Doggem to a rather unusual family.
Before we go any further, it’s worth pointing out that both the stuffed toy and little boy are far from ordinary.
Doggem is no longer your run-of-the-mill snuggle doggy. Designed to fall apart after a few years. Perfect for squishing and squashing into a comfort blanket.
He’s a million miles from that now. Doggem has just become a living creature. Thinking and reasoning. Trying to make sense of an unexpected existence.
Strange places and scary experiences are in store during this sojourn with his latest custodian. Things no respectable fluffy dog should ever have to witness. It might end up in deadly territory.
Make no mistake, there is magic here. Some of it as black as a starless night.
And George?
Well, George is descended from decidedly dicey stock. There are folk in delightful George’s lineage who have indulged in practices of a somewhat shadowy nature. The ramifications of which aren’t ready to be consigned to history. They want to spill out of the past and have their say in the future.

DOGGEM is a spooky little tale about toy dogs and dark doings. A gently disturbing horror story. But beware, this charming cocktail of witchcraft, imagined folklore and paranormal fantasy might just bewitch you.
Not easy to pin down genre. Without doubt it has a certain heart-breaking beauty to it. Maybe it’s a modern fairytale. A scary one, flavoured with a dash of the occult, written for an adult audience. After all, fairy tales feature the supernatural and have a magical aspect to them.
They often have old cottages and eerie, unnerving woodland settings.
Wickedly enchanting women and innocent children.
Ancient evil and everyday greed.

Doggem is a short story, one in a series of sinister tales from the Dead Boxes Archive.
The Dead Boxes?
Some objects are frightening things and the Dead Boxes definitely fall into that category.
They can be easily overlooked. Ordinary on the surface. At first glance anyway. A mobile phone, a piece of art ...a child’s plaything.
Take a closer look. You’ll see something unique.
You could very easily have one and not know it.
Exercise caution.
They hold miracle and mystery. Horror and salvation.
None are the same. Except in one regard.
You don’t need one.
You might think you do, but you really don’t.
Believe me.

A Short Story.
From the Dead Boxes Archive.
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  1. Print length
    79 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    December 2, 2018
  5. File size
    2317 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  9. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07L318QLJ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amazon Media (December 2, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 2, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2317 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 79 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 32 ratings

About the author

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John F Leonard

John F Leonard

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John messes around with words for a living. He was born in England and grew up in the industrial Midlands. That was where he learned to love scrawny cats, the sound of scrapyard dogs and the rattle and clank of passing trains.

His official education mostly involved English, Art and History. Everything else came later. The employment record is somewhat difficult to summarise. Chequered is probably a good word for it. Shop worker and office boy, sculptor and odd-job man, fraud investigator and thief. It’s all the same, when you boil it down. Pay your way and try to have a good day.

He enjoys apocalyptic stuff, horror, comedy and football (not necessarily together). A family man, John now lives a few miles from the old Victorian house in which he was born. Scribbling scary stories seems to keep him vaguely sane (accurate at time of writing). Current projects include more tales from the Dead Boxes Archive, another everyday cosmic horror novel from the Scaeth Mythos, and new books set in the post-apocalyptic world of Collapse.

Catch up on Twitter: @john_f_leonard

Visit the website: johnfleonard.com

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
32 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Gatordude
5.0 out of 5 stars A Tale that's fresh and dark!
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2019
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Have you ever wondered what the world might look like from the perspective of a teddy bear? This short read chronicles the journey of a stuffed toy dog with a young kindergarten child. It started innocently enough. The toy can think and see and hear, but not move. Humans don't know it is aware and able to think. The tale starts in a meandering state of wonder, but takes an amazing dark turn. You won't get any spoilers from me, but suffice it to say, this short read doesn't take a cliched approach. It's definitely worth reading.
One person found this helpful
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Zombie Inkpot
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and delightful
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2019
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Doggem, a toy dog, gains sapience unexpectedly, and a vocabulary to rival Frankenstein’s monster. Taken home by a little boy, the poor toy is not prepared for what he encounters. Neither was I. A delightfully dark tale. I loved it.
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kimnappi
4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing short story!
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2019
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A plush toy dog that’s part of a school program finds his way into the life of a special boy and becomes witness to a horror. This review is brief because at 60 pages? Any comment is a spoiler. I don’t know if this is an introduction to a longer work ( I hope) and I can get to know more about the adventures of Doggem! Enjoy!
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Travis Mays
5.0 out of 5 stars Very captivating and original.
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2019
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Read this book through without s break. Very original. Unexpected twists. Keeps you wanting more, needing more. Looking forward to reading more titles by John F. Leonard
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Kimberly Wolkens
3.0 out of 5 stars Chilling and Dark
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2019
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Doggem: A Tale of Toy Dogs and Dark Deeds by John F. Leonard takes a school project which is often innocent and fun and paints a much darker side of it. In this short story, Doggem is a beloved stuffed dog that is sent home with school children along with a diary. The child is supposed to have the toy for a weekend or whatever and record what the child and Doggem did during the toy's stay at the child's house. What should be a fun project for the child - and an insight to home life for teachers - becomes something much more to Doggem.

Doggem is a toy with the ability to see and hear what is going on in his surroundings, although is not able to move or make noise. He usually likes going home with the children and for much of his tenure as the take-home toy, it was usually quite pleasant or at least tolerable. Doggem is sent home with a little boy named George for the whole summer. and Doggem becomes witness to a sinister plot devised by the boy's parents. Unable to do anything to prevent the plot's outcome, poor Doggem must be a miserable innocent bystander to the parents' dark deeds.

I love the dark and moody plot of this story. John took a memory from my childhood and added a worst case scenario to it that made me cringe, in a good way. I fondly remember when I was 5 and brought home a Curious George stuffed toy and notebook inside a cute drawstring knapsack. I loved playing with the toy and then crafting a diary entry to take back to school (maybe that's what inspired me to write, haha!). After reading Doggem, I can only imagine what types of scenes these toys must witness and it is a heart-wrenching, chilling feeling.

And I absolutely loved the ending, but I won't spoil it for you.

The only thing that kept me from fully enjoying Doggem was the style in which Doggem's chapters were written. The story oscillated between chapters told by the toy Doggem's point of view and chapters told in third-person narrative. I had a hard time finding a good flow when reading Doggem's chapters because the sentences were so choppy (to me anyway). I know as part of his character he was supposed to have a short and wandering attention, but the distraction was just too much for me. And I felt like a lot of time was spent on Doggem's feelngs and how it feels to be a "real toy" when I personally would have rather liked to be in the thick of the plot. I became more engrossed in the other chapters because I could see more of what was happening.

Overall, I am impressed with the originality and darkness of this story! I plan on reading more of John's work.
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Barb Taub
5.0 out of 5 stars The Velveteen Rabbit meets Rosemary’s Baby.
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2019
John F. Leonard’s little story of Doggem is a sweet tale of a small boy, a favorite toy, murder, horror, and (possibly) the end of the world. Narrated by the toy dog Doggem—whose job is to go home with the five-year-olds in Mrs. Snady’s class and inspire them to practice their fledgling writing skills by writing up Doggem’s diary—we soon realize that the recently sentient toy is an unreliable narrator at best. His vocabulary and observations are far removed from those of his tiny guardians’ abilities, while he himself freely admits to ‘many failings’: "I’m already digressing. I fear that will be one of my many failings. Acquiring a voice when muteness was your original condition tends to engender a certain garrulous quality."

Despite our immediate suspicions, Doggem’s observations and comments convey an intelligence that is both clueless and timelessly jaded. We start to get small hints that George is such an unusual child that he was actually the source of Doggem’s change from toy to sentient being. “Some strange and unknowable energy smeared across the universes and settled behind my glassy eyes.” But almost immediately we realize that something else is going on as the still innocent toy and child overhear troubling adult comments.

If I have any complaint about the story, it’s just that it is too short. The genre demands a slow buildup, and I think the questions raised by the unreliable little narrator would have been even more devastating with a little more description behind them. With such a short story, descriptions of people and settings are necessarily pared back to the minimum, but are nevertheless razor sharp. Describing George’s mother, for example, Doggem observes, “There was a certain sharpness to Cath Gould’s features that meant her face eluded true beauty. As if God had taken his eye off the ball at the last minute and allowed something snappish to creep into the mix. She was a strikingly attractive woman nonetheless, never more so than when she was charming her way through a difficult subject.”

Or as the little family, Doggem in tow, heads for a reluctant and ominous visit to his grandmother, we hear about menace in the surrounding woods. “How heavy the branches sat against the sun. As if they were tears in the fabric of reality rather than vibrant, growing things.”

But as the story swiftly develops into malice, evil, and death, we realize how unreliable Doggem’s observations really are. Is he reporting what actually happened? Is George a strange child or the pivotal result of untold years of plotting with evil? Is Doggem, who owes his awareness and “real” self to George, also part of that growing evil? Or even, is the entire tale something made up by the retired schoolteacher recording the events?

I have my theories, but you’ll have to read this elegantly simple and elaborately confusing little jewel of a cozy horror tale and decide for yourself.

***I received this book from the publisher or author to facilitate an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.***
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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars It’s a hard dogs life
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2020
Verified Purchase
Doggem is just the class toy.
Children take him home, write his adventures in his diary, and send him back to school.
Until George gets him.
And then suddenly Doggem starts to develop sentience...

This was a great little short story and a lot of fun to read. It will certainly encourage me to pick up more by this author, and there is a darkness to this tale that perfectly and almost flawlessly compliments its sweetness.
A real gem of a short story!
Five stars.
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Rebecca Gransden
4.0 out of 5 stars Doggem knows
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 2, 2019
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A unsettling short story centred around a small toy named Doggem. Doggem has been the class educational toy for some time, his purpose to be taken home by a particular child who then in turn is tasked with writing a diary about time with the stuffed animal. Being cuter and more adorable than most toys Doggem easily endears himself to those who come into contact with him. One day it is the turn of a young student named George to take Doggem and complete a diary. Something extraordinary happens to Doggem and the toy begins to experience the world and the family he’s been introduced to in disquieting ways.

Doggem is a tale with a sense of unease. The intentions and motivations of the few characters remain elusive, creating an uncomfortable and intriguing atmosphere. A very enjoyable creepy short story with nods to the occult and ancient ritual.
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bw
5.0 out of 5 stars Classroom toy.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2018
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Really enjoyed this book. Anyone with primary school children will identify with it. Perhaps they will however think twice when their child brings the class stuffed toy home for the holidays. Is this a way for teachers to pry into your life? Grandma is quite a character with a lot of friends in the company to help. That's enough read the rest for yourself.
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ruppie
5.0 out of 5 stars Genius!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2019
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A great little read loved the premise and well written with tantalising glimpses of the wider world linked in to the authors other books. Loved it and would recommend you read it even if haven’t read any of his previous works . They all show a deep and dark imagination that is twisted and tantalising with a healthy dose of irony and humour!
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Telmarine
5.0 out of 5 stars Great short read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2019
Verified Purchase
Worth Reading.

Short stories can be difficult to do right, but I think this just about gets it. The concept of Doggem has great potential, and this really starts showing itself as the story progresses. It took me a couple of pages to get into it, but this is definitely one of the better short stories you’ll find.
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