Haha I have not heard of the Shaggy Dog trope! (Or it’s only very vaguely familiar)

I agree with you that the ending is a bit rushed, which I think can come off as forced. I’d like to blame the word count for the competition I submitted this into… :D

I’d been thinking about the idea for this story for a couple of weeks before I actually started writing it, from which I had quite a visceral idea for the ending. So I guess in some ways I could have tried to weave it in more, but I also did kind of want it to be a shocker / surprise!