doberman pinscher

In the middle of the Congo you are in a boxing match with Muhammad Ali. Ali is a very good fighter, he is not only stronger but smarter than you had given him credit, he seems to know your every move and you start to think he might be cheating with mind control devices. You call out to the crowd but no one listens. They’re too busy listening to your bones splinter and ducking their heads away from projectile teeth. After you lose the match your body is bruised and broken, you limp out the back door and in the limo with Muhammad Ali is a greyhound, that’s right a greyhound, he’s wearing your teeth in a necklace. They are still dotted with your blood you weak pussy. Feed the dog.

When your parents find you you will be hiding in a cave. You will be sympathizing with extremists and bears, you will be writing death threats on muddy walls with the discharge from your period. The cave will smell like the nuclear holocaust but you will smell roses and snow petals, your parents will lift you in their arms and carry you home and your dog wants to start a fight, he thinks you’re a bear, he thinks you’re an extremist, he thinks you’re danger, danger, danger, don’t let the dog down, you’ve been letting that dog down it’s whole fucking life and it’s sick of you. Feed it. Feed the dog.

At your sister’s wedding there will be a problem. You will forget the rings at home. Everybody will groan and hate you, you will drive back but it’s an hour and a half round trip and the look on your sister’s face when you come back will make it all not worth it, no “thank you”, none of that shit, ungrateful way-to-go-sis bullshit. Your sister’s new husband’s sister will catch the bouquet, you will have five drinks, three Vicodin, and half an E-bomb in your system, soon it will be time to dance but now it is time to kick ass, to rip that bitch’s scalp off. Your father and your little brother will have to pull you away, you will be carried off with two fistfuls of hair and a piece of skin between your teeth. When your sister moves to Minnesota you will not be invited and no one will tell you the address, you know they’re getting a new dog, it’s a sweet dog, the kind that follows you around the house, if you could get your guns out of Charlie’s basement you’d feed that fucking dog until it couldn’t eat another bite. You don’t know where to go in Minnesota but Charlie’s basement door is unlocked, so you’ll feed that dog one day. Today, try to feel better. Tomorrow, though, feed the dog.

When you will have almost given up, you will get that new job at the hospital. You will not really consider how the job will affect your life, new paychecks, more eight-balls, yeah, but you don’t really think about the environment. You assume it’ll just be handling bodily fluids in bedpans, a glorified custodian, but you start to learn things, you learn from the doctors and the nurses and you start to know things about medicine, health, and treatment. You start to think you might have found an area of interest for yourself. You start to think maybe you’ll go back to school because now you have a reason to. You call your parents and they tell you they don’t think you have it in you and you owe it to the human race to play no part in their fight against mortality but you don’t listen, you laugh and you chew your gum and you will prove them all wrong. You will get fired in two weeks when they find you doing lines off of the defibrillator in the equipment closet. In two weeks ZDogg will put rocks in a brown paper bag and find you on the stoop but you don’t have any money. He points towards his crotch and calls you a bitch. Yesterday you went to Charlie’s basement when he was at work or picking up sluts at the Food Emporium and found the door unlocked. Feed ZDogg.

You will spend seven years in and out of rehab but one day you will be clean. You will find a good man. He will work hard and he will make ends meet. When he gets you pregnant he will marry you. When you have two kids he will love them and he will not touch a hair on their heads. You will go on family vacations together, he will take you places you have never been, he will show you canyons, he will show you fields, he will show you roller coasters. Your kids will be named Brian and Jason and he will call them Bry-Bry and Slugger. You will have a new job at a new hospital and one day they will let you go home early for your anniversary but when you open the door your husband has forgotten and he is banging his receptionist on the kitchen floor. She is on her hands and knees, she freezes when she sees you, she does not un-arc her ass, your husbands eyes are closed and he continues to groan loudly and slap against her back obliviously but she can see that look in your eyes. You have been clean for almost a decade but you have not forgotten the streets that you came from and you still carry ZDogg’s switchblade in your pocket night and day so you will never forget. Your husband will open his eyes when he hears the knife open, he will move and he will call your name but it will be too late, his jugular will begin to spray all over his little bitch’s back. She will be in shock. She is on all fours and she cannot move. Feed the dog.

You watch television every day but one day you will see a commercial that will make you want to buy something. It will take two weeks to ship to you even though the shipping cost will be $6.95, every day you will pace back and forth trying to get through your life without it. Before you knew it existed you didn’t even know you needed it. But then there it was. The solution to all your problems. You will not be able to sleep at night, it will scratch at your walls and all you hear is scratching scratching until the day finally comes – the UPS guy in his little shorts and aviator sunglasses, who the hell does he think he is, he waltzes right up to you and hands it to you like it was Buzz Ballads or Bowflex, you sign for it and when you walk inside you can’t tear it open fast enough. There is a box. Inside that box is a box. There is also a silver revolver. The box holds six silver bullets. You load them one by one. In your freezer there is a werewolf. Feed the dog.

Reading a book about birdhouses, you decide to build one. It will be a complete disaster, you will not finish and you will cut open your finger. It will really put a funk on your whole day. But what can you do? Put a band-aid on it, it’s almost six o’clock, it’s time to feed the dog. Feed the dog.

When you die you will float on a cloud. The cloud will be large and endless, you will walk and you will run in every direction and you will never fall. The cloud is covered with dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, mutts and purebreeds, short-haired and long-haired, from pugs to dobermans. It’s all you want to do to feed all these dogs, there’s so many of them. They start to follow you, first one, then a few, until you’re Peter fucking Piper, you bark loudly to the melody of “Jingle Bells” and they march proudly behind you, echoing your cries. You walk around the cloud but you cannot find kibble. You cannot find wet food. There is no steak, there is no left over burger. There is no saucepan to lick. When you have walked as far as you could possibly walk, you will collapse, and a white ball will roll towards your knees. It will be a human skull. You will look up. There is a pile of human bones. They are licked clean. You don’t want to feed the dogs, but you are in no position to argue. Dogs can’t speak English and bones are dead, you’re dead, feed the dog, bitch. Feed the dog.

You will be bleeding in the balcony of the cathedral. Rats will crawl across narrow beams this way and that, some will approach you with hungry eyes but you will frighten them away with bloodcurdling screams. You wait for help but no one comes. You wait until the sun comes up and help never comes but you start to wonder if they’re still outside anyway, maybe the help is dead, maybe they are satisfied. When sunbeams shine through the open windows, a pigeon flies in from the brightness and lands on your shoulder. You tell it your story. You tell it where you came from, you tell it who you are and what you’ve built and why they’re after you. You tell it about your cousin in Stalingrad. You tell it about your brother-in-law in Helsinki. You send it to get help, it promises you it will find help, it looks you in the eye and you trust in it. The pigeon sits on the ledge of the windowsill, and looks out at the shattered village. The village burns beyond the hill, the cathedral sits upon the hill. The hill is covered with grass but the hill is grey, sitting on the hill gazing into the cathedral window are 3,600 wolves. The pigeon takes flight. You had forgotten a crucial detail though. The wolves have laser beams strapped to their backs. The pack leader takes careful aim and fires. You just fed the dog, bitch. And maybe you didn’t forget about those laser beams, maybe that immense and crucial detail did not slip your mind, maybe you’re bleeding in the balcony of the cathedral but you couldn’t help it. Even just a snack it’s a voice in your head, it keeps calling and it won’t shut up. Feed the dog. Feed the dog. Feed the dog.

You will be cross country skiing representing Finland in the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. You watch around you as your competitors lose strength and will, you watch them sweat and tire, their movements become less deliberate, more sluggish, you move gently and swiftly ahead of the pack. You are on 2 mg of adrenaline and your arms are robot arms, constructed out of steel and bolt. You are Skiibot 3000, you are the future of the Olympics, the new dramatically shifted spirit of athleticism. When you go home you will hang your coat in the closet and Dogbot 3500 is yipping at your ankles to the tune of “Jingle Bells”. Dogbot 3500 eats only the finest metals, you have a gold medallion hanging from your neck. Feed the Dogbot.

When you spend all day gluing eyes to keyboards, your cat will die. Feed the dog.