Young Writers Society

Hey guys! I literally just made an account here- I've been lurking for a while and there's some great writers and an even greater community here! This is the first time I've ever published anything, so I hope you enjoy. It's not very good, but I love to improve, so please tell me what you do and don't like about it! Thanks :)

It broke her hear the first time she saw him. Little Reggie- a tiny, black lab who had a stubby tail from birth. The box he was sitting in was stained with piss and feces from the times he was stuck in there to do his business. They had found him in an old depilated building near the decaying west side, right on 3rd street. A concerned citizen eventually heard Reggie’s cries and decided to call the animal shelter. When they finally got there, poor Reggie wasn’t much more than a poor ball of fur. In the first few weeks of his rehabilitation in the animal shelter, he had whole patches of hair missing and the caretakers learned that one of his eyes didn’t work as well as the other. It was a shame, because he’d had been a beautiful little puppy otherwise. Reggie hadn’t grown at all, until Linda took one look at him and decided to take the dog home. She couldn’t stand the way he shivered or the hope in the non-damaged eye of his.

To Reggie, that day was the best of his life. As she carried him from the pound and into the car, he sniffed in wonder. The world was full of so many different scents they all mixed together to make a steaming pot that smelled vaguely like fast food and grass. The stubby tail of his thumped against the seat when drove home. In his excitement, he had accidently wet the seat. Opps. Linda didn’t seem to mind too much, she just picked him up gently and continued to clean the seat and himself with one of those pamper wet wipes. A slight breeze swept past and he shivered.

“You’ll be okay buddy,” she said into one of his ears, and bounced him in her arms all the way into the house.

To her, the day she took the puppy in, had been one of the worst of her life. It wasn’t him that made it the worst day, but the shit that happened before she went to the animal shelter. Early that morning, she had woken up to a voice message. Her boyfriend, drunk as a skunk, had left a message detailing the wonderful night he had with a Rebecca and how he had finally found another girl that wasn’t a ‘mousy, smelly, earth-loving bitch’ and so on. She knew that their relationship had been rocky for a while now, but she never thought he’d break up with her over a fucking voice message. That hadn’t been the thing that made her day total shit, no, she could deal with a pratsy ex-boyfriend. There were no tears shed over that dickhead. What got her was the one letter she had been waiting for. For 2 months.

Linda Berksmith,

We’re sorry to inform you. . .

And so on.

Two breakups in one day, she thought. Or rather, one physical breakup and another door slammed in her face. Stumbling over the ratty motel-estque carpet of her apartment, Linda dumped the open letter onto the beat up coffee table she had pawned for at a flea market a few weeks ago. She sat slumped over on it for what felt like hours until finally, an idea popped into her mind. Grabbing her keys, the engine roared to life and off she was to get a damn dog. Any dog would have been nice, just one she just take care of in her shithole on an apartment that would keep a young woman company. In the city streets of New York she had grown up in, there was no room for dogs. Barely any room for her, either. Entering the pound, her eyes searched around warily for any pup that looked like it would get along. A roughed up black puppy looked up at her. It was so incredibly small and the cage was so big, she almost missed him.

“Hey,”she called her to the front desk, “Tell me about this one.”

“Oh honey, you don’t want him. We found him practically in a dumpster, half alive- here, we have much better selections over by the—“

“I’ll take him.”

And that’s how the legacy of Reggie and Linda came to be.