black lab

You are a mosquito. Squeak, squeak, little mosquito, it’s time to hunt for blood. There’s squishy sacs of it running rampant all over the place, they’re big enough to get away but all they do is lie there and take it. Suck, suck, little mosquito, suck until you’re fat with it, a little blood baby sloshing in your stomach. Escape slowly, the vessel is still sleeping, in the morning they will itch but now, for you, this is pure ecstasy. Now all you have to do is hide somewhere and trip out until the blood becomes your thoughts and when you run out of them you have to hunt again. Maybe you’ll live two weeks, then. Maybe this trip can last forever. Until you decompose. It probably doesn’t take a day, you could get squished into the dirt and no one would be able to discern what was left of you. Mere seconds before you’re worm food. And then, bird food. Cat food. Dog food. Feed the dog.

You are working at the New Canaan Field Club. You take a break from the chair, the sky spreads greys and threatens storms and no children have come to circle the pool, running and screaming until they fall in. In the break room is a computer, but none of your friends are online. You do not care. You make new friends with swirling images, bouncing balls, the sweet sounds of popping balloons, exploding colors, and myspace.com. Behind you the chair is on fire, behind you a bald and angry man calls your name, the chlorinated water begins to overflow onto the tile and pavement as the pool fills with floating infant bodies and and turns pink, like dyeing eggs or cleaning paintbrushes. You do not turn around, you are an island, you are a focused point in the center of your mind. A cryptic message from your glowing master reads: "Shoot the monkey, win an iPod." Your iPod is outside drinking blood and chemicals, your iPod is waterlogged. Focus pocus, little girl. Shoot the monkey. Feed the dog.

You are homeless in Seattle, you are bearded and dirt-ridden and are frequently mistaken for a peace activist. You work for the newspaper people, “Real Change” you sell copies on the streets for coins but in your reflective neon newspaper-seller gear, you are mistaken for a construction worker, someone pulls you onto the back of a truck and you figure you’ll make some money this afternoon. Except this truck is the unlucky truck, this is the Illegals truck, this truck is about to get pulled over, this truck’s driver will be questioned thoroughly by federal police. You are about to be questioned thoroughly by federal police. Let’s be honest. You don’t have ID. You were just trying to make Real Change happen. Put real change in your pocket, you try to tell the boys in blue but they don’t speak Chinese. There’s only two of them, though, and about thirty of you. You’re about to do something crazy. Doing something crazy is all it seems you’re ever doing. Run into the woods, old man, cover yourself in leaves. Get eaten by the forest, it hasn’t had anything to eat all day. Feed the dog.

Stacy’s not getting friendly anymore. She isn’t returning your phone calls. She’s out dancing all night, you know because you go to her clubs but you make like you don’t see her or she doesn’t even see you anyway. Stacy was always a little bitch, but you liked to think it was a game she played, a mask she put on, act cold and act mean until you really melt her heart and then she’s pudding dripping between your fingers. But you’re starting to realize that this isn’t the case. Stacy was never playing hard to get, it seems, but rather she preferred to play out of reach. You watch her in the club and drink twelve dollar whiskies, this Stacy is different, it seems, this Stacy who doesn’t notice you. She’s grinding her ass into every hard dick on the dance floor, Stacy is a little SLUT, Stacy is down to FUCK, Stacy isn’t wearing any underwear and flirts fingers between her legs. Men are smelling her fingers. They lick her fingertips. She laughs, but it’s not like it’s a joke, it’s not like she’s kidding, that’s her fucking pussy juice they’re smelling. Stacy’s the fucking joke, you’re better off without her, you realize there’s no point in pursuing a woman like that. But you go home alone. You masturbate three times before falling asleep, every time it’s Stacy that you picture, pink lips peaking out under a short black dress, her eyes closed in perpetual ecstasy, when you close your eyes you can almost smell her fingers. Then all you can smell is yourself. You’ve made a mess on your stomach, pubic hairs mat together and a sticky pool sits in your belly button. There’s Kleenex on the dresser. Your wastebasket is designed to resemble a mutt with its mouth wide open. Feed the dog.

You are playing a game of chess with God. He seems to know your every move. You ask him if he is reading your mind. He tells you that he is reading your face. You wonder what divinity means - is it a supernatural knowledge or a supernatural understanding? God takes your queen with his own. You take his queen with your knight, and he counters by putting you in checkmate between a bishop and a rook. You are between a hard and a holy place. You ask God what he wins, and he answers, "Your soul." Then he bursts into a fit of laughter, tells you he's just kidding, and pulls a lever on the table. Your seat collapses out from under you and you fall through clouds and earth and land in a new seat, the Hot Seat, brimstone burns your toes and the Devil is a coyote with silver paws. The Devil plays checkers -- it is his move and he has crossed the board. King the dog.

You are burying your dog. She was nine and she was blind but even still she was only nine. Your dog before her, Lucky, the one that she replaced, she lived to be fifteen. Lucky looked like shit for 3 years, every day you saw her you fucking wished death upon her, to put her out of her misery although your parents always insisted she was fine. But Sandy was only nine. She never looked like shit, not even for a second, not even the day you found her in the living room choking on air. There was distress in her eyes, sure, but she was still beautiful. Her coat never thinned, it never lost its shimmer. Even in blindness her eyes maintained a strange sense of focus. Even in blindness her movements were deliberate and thoughtful. Even in sight Lucky ran into things when she was excited, she was a stupid animal, little fucker, you stopped missing her before she was gone, somewhere between when your mother drove her to the vet and when the vet put her down, you stopped missing her. But Sandy. You're burying Sandy but it feels like she's watching you do it, you can still hear her call, she would call and you would come, she would come when you would call. You're burying Sandy but it feels like she's right there in your arms. In your last moment together, you cradled her, she fought for breath surrounded by oxygen and you couldn't think, you couldn't help her, there was everything and then there was nothing. When you walk inside you will leave the shovel in the yard. You could never stand the smell of dog food but now it doesn't matter anymore. There's cereal in the cupboard, there's milk in the fridge. Bowls are in the dishwasher, they are clean and they are empty and so are you. Just fucking eat something.