A Word from the Costa Rican Artist’s Dog
I stare. I can see the bowls. The man in white dumps out yesterday’s water. I am disappointed. A fly drowned in the bowl yesterday. The fly promised that if I could get there, I would get a drink and a tasty morsel. He pours in fresh water. I watch to see if anything spills. My tongue is so dry. He puts fresh chunks of meat into the other bowl. I can smell it. Blood, life, fresh flesh. Need. My jaws need to snap the meat in pieces. My tongue needs to slide the meat into my mouth down my throat into my belly.
My nails dig into the hardwood floor. My feet slip, but I keep scrambling. Splinters in my paws. A nose, a nose! If I could get a nose closer, I could taste the moist chunks of meat. I can taste it, juicy salty filling the gnawing hurt. I can taste it in my mind, and I snap, I snap at the meat.
But my neck hurts. If I pull too hard against the chain it hurts more. I stretch, I stretch. I know I can get my neck closer by a nose. I stretch, my neck is choking and pain. And then my nose hits a smooth cold barrier. My breath whuffs out, and frosty fog blocks out the meat.
I fall back. Neck hurts less. Legs are trembling. I sit. I spend too much time standing and pacing. Sitting is easier. Floor is cold on my legs. Used to be cold on my belly. Fog fades, and I see food again. I stare.
Buzzing perks my ears. A pack of men are staring at me. They are pointing. Their fingers are too far away to eat. They don’t look as juicy as the meat, but I would take them from their hands, with my sharp teeth. I look up at them and try to curl my paws in the air.
They used to throw me food sometimes, when they sat at tables outside, eating starchy bits and meat wrapped in bread. I need food. A bite? Forget the meat behind the fog, I would take the bits of bread. If they chewed it but didn’t like the taste and spit it out, I would take it. My paws are too heavy for begging, and I flop down again. I whine. I had the energy to bark a little yesterday. Today I whine. Long and low. I can feel their discomfort rolling off them in waves. Pity. Feed me?
A little human holds hands with a bigger one, and chews on a dark brown rectangle. I can smell it from here. I stare and smell the sweet salty food. My stomach is pain and hurt. I whimper. They don’t want to look at me anymore or listen. The legs move on, buzzing to each other. They move farther away to look at a flat square on the wall.
They pay too much attention to the square. The little human slips her paw from her dam’s. She pads toward me, and the rest don’t notice. She stares and takes the rectangle away from her mouth, sucking on a finger instead. Food is smeared on her face. I would lick it off, bite. She puts the rectangle on the floor. I lunge for it, but it too is out of reach. She jumps back. I start whimpering, sit. Trust me, feed me. Please. Move it closer please come closer yourself I could eat so well. She kicks the rectangle, and I am on it, biting tasting salty sweet silky rich. I’m eating the skin on the food. Paper. Not tasty. But the food hits my stomach so fast and good and my blood starts pounding and I’m sweating. The pain is back but different, my belly, o my belly—
The brown food is at my feet again, mixed with bits of paper. The little two-legs starts crying and runs back to her pack. I whimper, and I stare at the puddle. It is a mess, thicker than afterbirth. But I have not had pups in my belly for a while. If I had them now, my body would eat them. My belly is full of teeth, and they are worrying me, gnawing and shaking me inside out.
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Perhaps you remember this 2007 controversy?
Tags: Fiction, short short story