Young Writers Society

I felt another emotion yesterday while I was out searching for some shoes. A boy shot at me but missed so I shot him back. I described the things I felt to Christopher when I held that rifle. He called it “ire”. He says it’s a lot like anger, which I remember experiencing as a dog when someone else tried to steal my food. But for dogs, Chris says, emotions are like primary colors. For humans they come in tints and shades.

Chris is the old man who’s been taking care of me since my transformation. I sweep the main floor and carry the heavy boxes for him. In return he gives me food and lets me sleep in a cot on the roof of his office in the machine shop. I enjoy the way food tastes as a human, the tints and shades of bitter, sour, salty and sweet that I never noticed as a dog. But there’s so little of it now. It makes me think about my life as a dog when food’s only purpose was to fill our bellies and I just ate whatever I found in the street. I never wanted for food in those days. The clothes Chris gave me fit well enough, but the shoes fell apart in just a few weeks. There were holes in the bottom of them. One was so wide that my big toe slipped out two days ago while I was carrying a box of loader teeth up from the factory floor. I jammed my foot in the metal grating on the platform and split my toenail in half. Chris was mending it for me when I told him I needed new shoes.

Chris said, “You put some more cardboard in the bottom, they’ll be as good as new.”

The bandage made the wound in my toe start to itch, but I didn’t say anything. I hate how fragile my body has become. As a dog I needed no clothes and no shoes. I could walk barefoot across concrete like it was grass. If I caught a thorn between my toes I chewed it out. Chris says that sort of behavior is unbecoming a human.

I said, “Well, let me get some new shoes.”

He said, “These shoes were good enough for my son, they’re good enough for you.”

Chris’ son was an officer in the army. I’m not sure but I think he is the one who helped Chris get a military contract for his machine shop. He makes good enough money while most of the people in this city are out of work. There is a picture of Chris’ son as a young man above his bed in his office. In the photo he is in uniform. There is a woman in the picture with two human children and a house behind them. The edges of the picture are burned. The humans looked happy. Their shoes were clean.

I told Chris that the shoes were too old. They weren’t even work boots. They were “dress shoes.” I don’t remember being taught those words by anyone but I know that’s what they’re called. Christopher isn’t worried about the shoes, it’s getting them that’s the problem. We had enough money to buy whatever we wanted but there are no stores left open in the city. The military supplies food, medicine and some clothes for the human children. Everything else you have to find yourself. I always tell Chris I’m not afraid to go outside, but he doesn’t allow it because he’s afraid I might cause trouble, that people will find out I used to be an animal. But Chris is old. His back is curved and his eyes are always half closed like he’s in pain. He knows he can’t stop me.

The night before I went out I had this dream, the same one I dreamt the day I transformed into a human. In the dream I’m still a dog. It’s winter and I’m in the street. There are men with guns chasing me. I run to the forest to find the rest of my pack. They are in a clearing, asleep in the shadow of a tall black tree. I bark at them but they don’t wake up. I whine, nudge them with my nose and even bite them a little, but they don’t move. I know they’re not dead, but no matter what I do they will not wake up.

I hear the leaves crunching beneath the boots of the humans approaching and I start to whimper. As a dog I don’t really understand what guns are, but I know that those things they’re holding make frightening noises. This is when a black bird lands on the lowest tree branch in front of me. I thought it was a crow but Chris says they’re called “ravens”. There is a spider in the bird’s beak, but it doesn’t seem to be trying to eat it. The bird tilts its head and looks at me with one crystal dark eye. I whine at the bird as if she and the spider are my mother and father. It leaves the branch and flies to the top of the hill. I follow its scent until I am outside the tree line once more. There is a road here, scattered with bones. At the end of the road is a tunnel so dark I can’t see the other end. Even though I can’t see them I know the bird is in there, the spider is too, and when I go inside we’ll all be together and I’ll never be alone.

This is when I wake up.

The next day I got up early to clean myself. I brushed my teeth for the second time in my life and even trimmed my beard with the clippers Chris had left me. I swept the metal shavings from the factory floor and serviced the generator, working double hard so I could get finished early. Chris said that if I left at least three hours before sunset the streets should still be pretty safe. There were sounds of gunfire coming from the east all day. On the TV you could see humans, children and old people alike, carrying assault rifles and shooting at the tower in the center of the city; the sky-scraper where the top five floors are always empty.

Before I left Chris gave me two rolls of money, American dollars, one for each pocket. There are a lot of thugs in the city, he says. If someone should try to rob me I was to take out one of the rolls, throw it on the sidewalk and run away while the thugs picked up the money. I told him he worries too much. Outside the streets were mostly empty. There were always a few rats and some birds eating carrion in the alleyway. A few cars with no wheels here or there. No shoes.

Sometimes I wonder about joining the thugs. It would be a lot like my life as a dog—in principle anyway. Chris says that this is a bad idea, life for thugs is just as dangerous if not more so than their victims. The army and police shoot them on site. And just the other day I heard a thief got his eye gouged out when he tried to rob a woman walking home from the factory.

I walked for a long time before I realized I was heading in the direction from which the gunfire had come. I turned down a street that ran parallel with the factory. There I saw more people than I’d ever seen before, at least with human eyes. All but a few of them were lying scattered about the street and sidewalks. A couple of them were moving, but most weren’t. A woman was lying beside an overturned police car. Her shirt had been torn and her breasts were exposed. A little boy was standing next to her, naked and crying with his fists pressed to his eyes. He was probably about two or three years old. As a dog I might have eaten him, but as a human there was nothing I could do.

Towards the intersection the bodies were fewer and more spread apart. A truck was idling by the side of the road, it looked empty. Propped up against a lamp-post was a soldier with his rifle still at his side. His face was ruined. His shirt and jacket were lousy with blood. His boots were clean. I sat down next to him, lifted one of his feet and pressed it against my own. They were the same size. I’m still not used to the way my fingers work so I had a tough time undoing the laces. As I pulled the first one off I heard the sound of glass crunching behind me. I turned around and there was a teenage boy standing in front of the truck. His eyes were the color of the sky when the wind carries the clouds away. As far away as he was I could still smell the smoke on him, not cigarette smoke like Chris and the other workers. This was the smell of my home, of trees turning to ash in the woods.

The boy smiled at me and raised his arm. He was holding a revolver. He shot at me five times and I swear I could feel the wind of the last bullet flying past my neck. For a moment I thought I was dead, but he did not hit me. We stared at each other for a moment until I remembered the soldier’s rifle. He must have remembered it too because he dropped the gun and ran to the idling truck. I picked up the rifle as he dived inside. He didn’t even bother closing the door. It is strange; I haven’t been a human for more than eight weeks, but somehow the gun in my hand felt like it belonged there.

I was so mystified by the weapon in my hands that I didn’t notice the truck driving away. He managed to get down the street a ways from me before I shouldered the rifle, took aim at the rear window and squeezed the trigger. The truck veered right for a second then swerved hard to the left and crashed into the awning of someone’s house. I ran across the street with the rifle at my side. Looking in through the open door I saw the boy, his head was leaning against the steering wheel. His hand was over his shoulder and there was blood seeping between his fingers. I stood there for a moment, thinking, I did this, I did this.

The boy looked up at me as if he was the dog now. There were tears cutting through the dirt on his face. I raised the rifle again but when I tried to pull back the bolt to reload it would not budge. I forced the lever back over and over. The boy threw the car in reverse and slammed on the pedal. The open door caught me by the side.I hooked my arm through the window and held on as best I could. The truck dragged me into the middle of the street until the heel of my mangled shoe got snagged on one of the bodies and I fell to the ground. The boy put the truck in gear and took off.

My head smacked the concrete so it took me a moment to climb to my feet. When I stood up I found that the jammed shell casing had been knocked out of the chamber. I cocked the rifle again and fired at the truck once more. This time I only hit the tailgate. I cocked the bolt and fired again, this time hitting one of the mirrors. I cocked it a third time but the magazine was empty. The truck disappeared around a corner. Alone and filled with ire, I shouted as loud as my human lungs would let me. I can’t even howl like a real dog anymore.

I told Chris about the boy that evening while he was bandaging the back of my head. I told him I wanted to bury my teeth in the boy’s eyes, to tear out the throats every member of his family. Chris just closed his eyes like he was in pain again.

“Ire” he said, “malice, revenge. You’re on the darker side of the red spectrum, my son.”

“I don’t like being human,” I told him, “There’s no such thing as ire for dogs.”

Chris says dogs feel just as humans do, we just can’t speak its name.