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Bismarck

mlhess

Updated: Aug 3, 2019

Holy shit just let me die.


I used to have a shit life. Now it’s even shittier. My owners haven’t really been taking me out much, and ever since the kids went off the college, nobody gives me any attention.

But I’ll be damned if they don’t take great care of me.

I eat only the most vet-recommended pet food, and boy has it kept my fur’s shine. I have a recurring bout of Valley fever (since maybe dogs WEREN’T made to live in the Arizonan suburbs), and occasionally, my left eye will catch an infection. But my owners will lickety-split take me to Dr. Rai, our family friend who loved animals so much she decided to become a vet. Now she gets to watch me and my fellow domesticated brothers and sisters meet our deaths. Sometimes she’ll save one of us for six hundred bucks, and prolong our death for a bit longer (maybe I’ll make it to 14!), but I gotta hand it to her: she always makes me feel wanted. She’ll speak to me sweetly in whatever that human tongue of her is and always scratch me in just the right way.


After I come home from the vet’s, my owners will begrudgingly and almost angrily force feed me pills. Then it’s back to pacing around the house.

Always pacing. Not much to do, yeah? Can’t go out, can’t do nothing. So I’ll pace. At least I used to have carpeting so I could walk. Yeah, then I could even go up the stairs! But then they redid the floors. Hard wood. I shudder. Even if it weren’t impossible to get solid fucking footing on that imported from Southeast Fuckistan bullshit, my owner constantly yells me for clanging my nails while I walk.


I’m a dog, you cunt. You don’t like it? Cut my nails. Fuck you.

Yeah, I used to shit on the floor and piss on their rugs since I had nothing to do. Also since I can’t go outside to shit anyway. They want me to just hold it in until it’s convenient for them? But I think that one backfired, I don’t know. Now they make me sleep in the kennel overnight and wait in there throughout the day so I won’t exact my revenge of a corn based diet. But whatever, it’s not like I had anything else to do or hang out anyway. I did have one couch by the window where I could watch cars go and dream of smelling that bush with the gray flowers and keep an eye on that neighbor mutt, but then they remodeled the downstairs (again, more hardwood!) and I officially only have my kennel and a decade-old doggy bed.


At least I’m not some mangy mutt.


You know recently, I’ve been wondering if that might be better. I don’t know. I don’t care. And so I repeat, holy shit just let me die.


But a few weeks ago something, dare I say, exciting happened. One of the kids came home recently! Normally I wouldn’t care, but he was so nice to me! We went on so long walks and I met all these other dogs and one of them even attacked me that bastard, but my kid totally fucking saved me! And then he pet me and we went into the woods and I thought I saw a lizard—and I swear there was a goddamn lizard—but when I went for it, some cactus had gotten there, and I had it in my paw. Now, I’m not proud or anything, and I don’t like asking this fucking family for help, but he wouldn’t just let me limp on there or anything, so he took me and scolded me when I squirmed and took the thorns out and then rubbed my ears and I felt loved. I swear I got so bouncy. I think I might have actually been hopping around the house the other day. And when he saw me bounce or pace around the house he actually walked me! And not just til I’d shit! He’d let me sniff the grey flowers until I wanted to sniff the gray leaves, and I could smell all the sidewalk dookie I wanted to. Man, I actually started to like that son of a bitch, I think. He pulled out a comfy chair by the window and I could see again, and I didn’t have to sleep in my cage.


I thought we were tight. We spent time at the park, and he left me off my leash (is nothing sacred?) But then he left. And I figured he’d come back, since he’d left before. But everything went back to normal. Same shitty crate, same shitty boring-ass days, same shitty shit. Except now I can’t even piss on the new rug, since it looks like it has piss stains on it already! Everything has gone back to the shit it was before. Well not everything. Now I have hope. Now I remember what it’s like to not live this fucking life. Now even though I can’t see out the window to check if he’ll come home, I have nothing better to do than wait on this fuck who’s not returning any time soon. He couldn’t have just let my spirit die before my fleshy prison? He had to make me conscious of all the shit I’d normalized for the rest of my shit days. Fuck, I bet I’d convinced myself this ratty old “dog bed” (What? Dog bed? Why not just a motherfucking bed bed?) was pretty comfortable too. But now I wait.


Wait until I can die.



Written by Connor Davis; Art by Shannon Zheng

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