A remote curiosity to those that knew of him, the dog, unkempt
and domesticated but unclaimed, is still yet to emit a sound in his fifteen
years of living. Coal black and panting, he becomes caught by a fire built by a
tired man in a semi remote forest of the diminishing northwest. He paces and
sways unseen in the shadows, growling soundlessly in mourning for his vision
and olfaction impaired. The crackling of foraged and felled wood is his
hearing. From his parted lips, asymmetrical barred teeth shed a stranded bead,
salivated, which itself undulates as a metronome might for some oddly conjured
and silent symphony. His cage
incommunicable, he has no sense but to feel. He feels and so he feels smoke and
ash. And the ash, a billowing carbonic nuisance in his nostrils and eyes, is
blinding. He feels the dirt uneven beneath him and the bead finally
departing drifts down to the sprouting ground, greens springing through thawed
earth in search of the touch of sunlight. A food unknown to him and not his
own. The new mucilage evaporates and he feels the heat of the fire growing.
Seeing the flame, he sways and lays down and feels himself lighter. The earth
cold and the fire hot. In silence he pleads for relief. He is hungry and can
taste smoke and gagging he gnashes his teeth, writhing and dizzy. From his dangling jaw his ephemeral saliva slides, first fumigated
then vanishing by the thirsty flame. He is hungry and from his flesh emerge
smoldering boils and he feels them.
The
man, unmoving through these minutes, stirs and regards the dog with distracted indifference.
In a moment he stands and produces a piece of meat, cooked by the fire and
without ceremony or speech he slices with a knife a portion and casts it aside.
The dog is hungry. With his blemished sense the discarded flesh is detected
faintly yet with the imperative of living. From the earth he seeks his ration,
all writhing and fury. As his hunger guides him he can only feel. Nearly
senseless he feels. His jaws finds earth and embers. He encases in his teeth anything
near enough to touch and the fire is hot. His teeth find flesh and he feeds and he eats.
Indiscriminately he eats and he feels the burning of his own flesh in the fire
as he feasts. And there is flesh in his teeth and the man no longer moves. And
the dog eats and he feels as he burns finally with the fire. He bears himself up
and he feels as he descends to the earth and as he falls he howls.
