Cold climbs out of the metal table I lie upon and I feel like one of the raw slabs of meat you never let me eat. Suspiciously, you cooked me one last night though, I sat by the pan for what felt like days as it sizzled loudly, as if in protest. I should have listened really, I should have known something was up. How foolish of me to look past it; I was hunger, hopeless, foolish hunger, hanging at every wisp of smell rising form the kitchen stove. And whilst I could have been running that evening, sleep and food weighed me down instead. It was as thick and heavy in my stomach as the darkness outside that night, so I relinquished myself to it.
I awoke on the metal table, greeted by visions which grace the edge of sleep: Rabbits mostly.
My body felt heavy. My paws dangled in front of my over-turned belly, pawing at the air as I tried to sprint. Was there something in that steak? Was I drugged? Everything was blurred like watercolour but I could make out the white robe: a colour so pure compared to the room it was as if it was superimposed. Air breathed up those sleeves as they widened below the elbow, dark trumpets they were from which his arms emerged, like music.
He smelt of two things, one on top of the other: the first was bleach. The second was death. There was no doubt, this was The Fixer. It was the same smell described to me from the others in the park, the same white jacket which questioned the authority of everything else in the room. This was the same man that took Chugs away.
I tried to growl, but all that came was a cough, a coarse splutter like a broken machine. Then I felt your hand resting on my side. It was warm against the unfurred skin there, like a heating pad. There were thick rips beneath your eyes. They gnarled down the cheeks in an ark. You were speaking in breaths to me, careful of the volume, as though the words were powder you were emptying into my ear.
“There there boy,” you sobbed. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
As I looked at you, your wrinkled face creased like folded cardboard. I wished for The Fixer to grant me the ability to speak. If he is the scale between life and death then surly he could grant me that? Never have I wanted anything more than to communicate with you, to talk with my master. There’s so many things I’ve wanted to say over the years, so much you don’t understand about me and that I don’t understand about you, so much to learn. But really, there’s only one thing that I want to say to you, more important than anything other… I’ve never liked you.
When I licked your face I thought of biting off your nose. I just wanted the salt on your skin really, anything to take away the taste plastered to my tongue from the cans of gelatine pig fat you fed me… And then you have the audacity to complain when I get ringworm. For shame on you. For shame. But I guess you wouldn’t understand. You’ve outgrown your fellow inhabitants of Earth. I resent it all; the way you move, your lack of animal grace as your feet gangle above us all when you sit in a chair to eat, napkin on your lap and knife in your hand. Whenever I watched you towel yourself dry after a wash, I wanted to leap and unclip your manhood with a snap.
If I could speak I’d ask you to remember when I was a little young and you were a little less fat: You would always say how excited I got whenever I saw the leash, and I admit that its presence would ignite some aspect of me which would have otherwise be lying dormant, just barley smouldering, but only because it meant I was about to smell things that you had never touched!
When I was just a pup I slipped through the choke of the itchy stubble of that fabric and ran, ran through roads poking from streets as though they were liquorice tongues, passing building after building all jammed together like boxes of candied fruits, sniffing manically for wide spaces of nature interspersed with daffodils and primroses and thickets! Anything offering a free life I could live amongst. Instead another owner just like yourself ‘rescued’ me and brought me back with her until you came to collect me. And that’s how I met Chubs; you know him as the old, worn out pug whose skin hung off him as if it were a rumpled dress, but to me he was a teacher. He knew how the world worked, that dogs would never be free under human reign, but it couldn’t stop us from enjoying life if we used our noses; we left message for each other everywhere we went. So yes, I did get excited for ‘walkies’, as it meant I got to converse with an intelligent who didn’t communicate to me in only baby drivel.
The thought of trying to escape again always crossed my mind, but after years of living with you I was too weak and worn to ever consider taking an opportunity. All those days spent teaching me to sit and fetch and play dead… And the greatest of insults; shaking hands without a hand. Oh the indignity of it all, I still curse myself daily for giving in and taking the treat, but at those moments becoming domesticated was honestly a more compelling option than watching your supposed better embarrass themselves by imitating the act of defecating outside as a teaching tool.
I just want you to know my pain. Is that so difficult Fixer? I have lists of everything I hate. I do, written in scents over the grid of estates I call my life: I hated the car, the rubber toy, your friends and even more your relatives. I hated how they were smothered in perfume and aftershave, don’t they know the sensitivity of a dog’s nose! If they did they would wash their hands after using the bathroom, and then I had to just sit there and take it when they wiped themselves clean with my fur. I had to roll in so much fox manure just to mask that human stink haunting me.
The jingling of my tags drove me mad. You always scratched me in the wrong place. And as you slept I would watch the moon rise and lodge itself in the top right hand corner of the window. It would take all of my strength not to raise my head and howl. Instead, we all as a species felt the suppression bleed out of us as we slept on the floor below our supposed best friend.
As much as I’d love to tell you all that it doesn’t matter, I know my time is coming, and just from having my life flash before me like this I’m starting to think that maybe being fixed by The Fixer isn’t such a bad thing. I’ll be free of the collar, the rain coat, those Christmas sweaters will stop me dreading the end of the year. They’ll be fields that aren’t neat and obscurely short and revealing, instead they’ll be space to sprint and smell something exciting in every direction. But most importantly, I won’t have to urinate on every passing lamppost just to say hello. I’ll be free to talk to all my friends without being tugged away.
Goodbye Master. Have fun fetching your own newspaper from now on.
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