I am inspired by stavrosthewonderchicken and his stories of pain... Here's one from my childhood.
There are three things you need to know to appreciate this story.
The first is that in the house I grew up in, we used to have a deck on the back of house, just off the kitchen. That is past tense because during a previous winter the snow and freezing rain of connecticut had overwhelmed it, the supports buckled, and it collapsed into the backyard. The debris was removed but the deck was never replaced, leaving us with a back door off the kitchen with an 8 foot drop to the ground below.
The second thing you need to know is that we heated the house with wood stoves. On this evening, nearing the end of winter, the snow was just starting to melt and the humidity was high. Getting the fires started was difficult and the house ended up filling with smoke so we opened the front and back doors to air out the house. After the house had cleared of smoke my mother, who was talking on the phone in the kitchen, paused from her conversation to yell to us to close the front door as the house had cleared of smoke and she was going to close the back door.
The third, and last thing you need to know is that we had a beagle named Tippy.
My mother never saw Tippy sitting in the doorway enjoying the fresh air. My father, on the other hand, was sitting in the living room at just the right angle to see him go. He later explained that it was just like the coyote in the road runner cartoon; Tippy just floated in mid-air for a second, then plummeted out of sight. Of couse, my father couldn't say anything immediately after my mother closed the back door, he was laughing so hard he could barely breath. He fell off the couch and spent several minutes howling, rolling around on the floor, pointing at the back door. "T..t..t... T..t..ti.." was all he could get out.
After he stopped laughing and told us what happened he got a flashlight and went out to look for Tippy. Under the back door he only found four very deep paw prints in the mud. A litte more searching found Tippy on the far side of the yard, muddy, uninjured, and staring up blankly at the back door, as if the door alone had caused him some grave injustice.
Tippy tended to stayed away from the back door after that.