The man is large, but he speaks softly. The dog is wary of a kick, but the smell of bacon fat on the outstretched handkerchief is too tempting, and it has been too long since her last meal. He strokes her and speaks in thick but kindly tones as she gobbles up her meal. Soon the dog is licking his face eagerly. The man has no trouble in persuading her to follow him.
The dog has lived on the streets her whole life, begging. The building that the man takes her to is not like other places she has been close to. It smells of chemicals and has a cleanliness which is alien. She is wary, but the man has been friendly, and she suspects he has more food for her inside.
As she steps across the threshold, she pauses, one paw in the air. She casts a last look back towards the cold streets around the square, then enters. As she pads beside him, corridors give way to other corridors, grey and stretching, always with the same uniform smell that has obliterated all others. There are no other dog or animal smells here.
But the room she is led to does house two other dogs, each in their own cage. She has seen one of them before, around the streets. She sniffs and greets them through the bars. They seem well-fed, but wary and somehow unhappy.
She is fed, and kept in a small cage in the large room. She can smell the other dogs nearby in their cages, sometimes hear them, but she cannot see them. Sometimes she sees the man who brought her here, sometimes other men. It was mostly women who fed her on the streets, women with cotton-wool in their eyes where the men had only flint, but there are no women here.
Soon she forgets about her old life. They start to take her along more corridors, to other rooms. All look and smell the same. Wires are attached to her, sometimes. Other times, she is spun until she is dizzy. She is kept in dark boxes, each one smaller than the last, for hours, or days. The temperature rises, or it falls. It is very dark, or bright.
At first she panics when she is left, but she grows used to it. Somebody always comes back for her, and when they do, she goes back to her room. She doesn’t understand why the kind people put her in these uncomfortable places. They must be kind; they feed her, and sometimes stroke her, and they always come back for her. Sometimes some of them look at her with a sadness that seems familiar, from days when people passed her in the street.
One day, the first man comes to her. He gives her some meat, a few scraps. Then he puts her into a small cage and carries her outside.
In the streets, her senses explode. She can smell so many things; the other dogs, rubbish, fires—the world. She can see the sky above her, through the bars in the top of the cage. The stars spread out across the blackness of the evening. The man takes her to a house, and lets her out of the cage. There are children, and a woman, and all kinds of smells. She runs around in excitement and the children are delighted. They play with her, throwing balls across the living room and wrestling with her good-naturedly. She is given the freshest food she has ever tasted, and she sleeps in a soft pile of blankets in front of the fireplace.
The next day, the man puts her back in the cage. The children plead with the man, pointing to her; the girl is crying. Their eyes remind the dog of the look she perfected while she was on the streets. The man’s eyes soften, but he shakes his head. He looks sad, and he hugs the children and lets them stroke her again, before she is taken back, through the morning streets, through the grey corridors, to the room and her cage.
A short while later she is taken to another place, full of people and bustle. She is placed in a harness which restricts her movement, and then into a small black compartment inside a larger silver box. More wires are attached to her, and one of the food tubes she has seen before is placed within her reach. Then the box is closed, and it is dark.
She feels the box being moved around. She is sad that she is being left alone again, but she has learned to take it as a part of her new life. Someone will come for her when it is done.
The movement stops, and there is silence, for a time. Then, there is a shaking which grows and grows, soon accompanied by a noise louder than a thunderstorm. A hundred dustbin lids are being crashed against each other, a thousand angry men are shouting, all inches from her ears. Her silence breaks, she yelps and whines. She urinates, and it is washed away by a funnel in the harness. The shaking becomes more intense still, and then the box is moving in a way it has never moved before. She is being lifted, and lifted. She does not know what is happening to her, and her whines become whimpers. She is shivering and cowering as low to the floor as the harness will let her. The darkness blinds her.
Shortly, though, the shaking subsides, and the noise lessens. She is still moving, still being lifted, but her fear eases a little. She eats a little from the tube, and waits.
After a long and fretful time, she realises the box is getting warmer. She does not worry unduly; it has gotten warm before when she’s been shut away. It has always subsided, just before they came to get her out and feed her.
As it continues to get warm, she experiences something for which she has no frame of reference. She floats up from the floor of the box. She cannot float far, because of the harness, but her feet do not touch the floor, and the floor seems like just another wall, without the particular connection it has held for her whole life. She begins to panic, scrabbling at the walls, but to no avail. She is sweating now, profusely. It has never gotten this hot before. She barks and yelps as loudly as she can, scrabbling for a way out, barking so that they will come and get her. She wants out, she wants to be outside, under the stars. If only she could see those stars again, stretching out above her; that space, not the closeness of the box and the blistering heat.
She barks until she is hoarse and struggles until her fight leaves her. The heat is unbearable; her coat is matted and the harness sticks to her. She can smell her own fear. She slumps against the harness, would collapse in a heap if the harness would allow it. Slowly, her eyes close and her body goes limp as the heat continues to rise.
And then, suddenly, everything feels cold, so very cold. That must mean that they are coming to get her. It always gets cold before they come, with their food.
The little coffin flies around the Earth two thousand times, passing over oblivious streets and houses where life continues as it always has. Eventually it re-enters the stratosphere and a glow begins to suffuse the edges, growing in intensity until flames lick at it. A few moments later, it is gone, cremated along with the remains of its occupant.
Terry Pearce is an educator and trainer living and working in London. He is also studying towards an MSc in Environmental Decision Making. His work has surfaced in journals such as the Legendary, the Foundling Review, and Grey Sparrow Journal. He is a moderator, regular participant, and occasional winner in a weekly flash fiction competition at Show Me Your Lits. He keeps something resembling a blog, and occasionally even updates it.
Permanently archived: http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/short/123-0110-tp-place & shortlinked: http://frsh.in/5a
