Nikki The Wraith:
Ten Years Ago, the Girl on the Bus
Ten Years Ago, the Girl on the Bus
A spit ball hit me on the back of the head and I brushed it away as I had several times before.
"Hey Nikki, wanna come sit with me? I saved you a spot on my lap." Some sharp laughs made me wince inside but I couldn't react and give them the satisfaction.
"I'm busy." I unzipped my bag and pretended to dig through.
"Or just weird. Come on." The boys scoffed under curled brim baseball caps. They squinted in a way that only older boys could to discomfort twelve year old girls. It seemed like they really wanted to be nice but in a hasty need for communication they defaulted back to the cruelty that brought them this far. To them 'girl' was a magnetic counterweight poised to throw the universe off balance. I pulled my hood up and glanced narrowly over my shoulder through dark clumps of hair.
It was late into fall and winter was so close it could be smelled over burning leaves and felt on crisp streams of wind. Swaying overgrown fields reflected on the bus windows. The driver took an unusual route and I had no idea where we were. The light turned red and the bus stopped with such a powerful jerk that I braced my arm on the seat ahead of me.
"Jesus, you want to watch the road?" One of the older boys said. The driver didn't acknowledge. A short wall blocked him from view.
I coughed and my lungs burned like frictioned skin to ice from the recent temperature drops. We overlooked a golden brown clearing near a forest. A Labrador puppy poked his head through the grass and hopped out into the open. His coat was midnight black and reflected bits of light like a moonlit lake. Big round features and a gray circle drawn around his right eye gave him a cuddly monocled look. He rolled around pausing with sideways glances and licked his paws and ran in circles. The girls gathered by the windows and the boys pretended not to care but they watched anyway.
The pup reached out a tentative paw, slowly batting at a dragonfly. He closed his eyes up towards the basking sun and incoming breeze. Across the field a mountain lion emerged from the swaying current of grass and drifted forward. It trotted towards the pup with no special intensity.
"Hey boy! Here! Get out of the way!" A girl shouted practically in my ear.
"Over here!"
I sucked in a heavy breath and crossed my arms. There was no reason it should've mattered. I looked away but an unease gravitated my eyes back to the pup. I tried not to care but I felt like I could taste my heartbeat in the back of my throat. The dog glanced away from the mountain lion and stared curiously at the bus. He must have heard the girls. What stupid instincts! His ears perked in our direction and his stubby tail wagged. His naive glee was a clot in my chest.
He looked at me and no one else but me. I knew it was probably just a stupid coincidence but it made me feel special, like I'd been chosen because of some redeemable quality undetectable to humans.
The mountain lion dipped down and its bony shoulders undulated like hands under a blanket as it crept in. I broke eye contact and looked down at my shoes and waited to hear something horrible. I could feel him still staring at me. Stillness permeated the idling bus as though the entire world had stalled and I took a deep breath.
In the oversized rearview mirror the driver looked up with icy cold eyes. I'd never seen him before. An older woman normally drove us. The abysmal look in his eyes made me sink into my seat.
The others burst into excited cheers and I jumped up. A large adult Labrador ran towards the pup. The cat bolted forward like lightning and it was impossible to tell which one would reach the pup first. Sweat bled from my hands as I rubbed them nervously together.
The mountain lion picked up speed and gained a slight lead. At the critical moment when it looked as though it would take a swipe at the pup it leaped away towards the larger dog. The dog too jumped up and in the collision the two landed halfway on the pup who cried a painful yelp and squeezed his lower half out from under the battling adults. The larger animals flung around in a vicious melee.
The pup limped into the tree line, bleeding from its leg. He turned and looked directly at me again. He howled a tiny howl and I thrust my hand against the frozen glass. I glanced around self consciously and swallowed a lump. The bus pulled away and he disappeared within the tree line. I felt like a sweater with one string attached to the pup, unraveling as the distance between us grew.
There was some elated back and forth chatter amongst the girls and some prideful uncaring faces among the boys.
I really had the feeling that the pup had stared directly at me. I didn't even know if it was possible. Could he see that far? I couldn't break the feeling that his eyes were transfixed on only me. Why couldn't I do something?
Through the following months I couldn't shake the image of the oval eyed pup orphaned and starving. There were rainy days that I sat indoors, staring out at the drenched trees as they sagged and drifted like a wet clothesline in the wind. On occasional fits of guilt I trudged outside and each time it wasn't cold at first but soon I shook and was chilled to my core. And I had the sense that the pup was looking into my eyes and shivering. I was overcome by guilt every time I gave up and retreated back inside.
When I turned thirteen the way in which I thought about the pup became a sort of scar on my memory. Almost every week I visited the woods the he limped off to. I walked around and the first few times I half expected to meet the dying dog who wanted to be held and fed. As the morbidity of truth sank in, I searched for bones or what remained of a sunken carcass.
Just because I found no such thing didn't mean the certain negativity would leave. It must have meant after killing the parent the mountain lion tracked down the pup and devoured it completely, leaving no trace for me to find.
For the next two years the sentimental pain died down and the knowledge that I no longer felt as strongly as I once did made me long for the simpler time.
On my previous birthday, my fifteenth, our unlikely paths met again.
I was in my room wrapped up in a black hoodie. It was a perfect kind of winter with a steady temperature that held everything securely in place under blankets of ice and snow. My window was painted like a snowflake with foggy tendrils framing a crystalline surface. I spent some time transfixed on the snowfall outside.
My parents tried to surprise me every year on my birthday, which was never very surprising. They offered to take me to the Uptown Mall to pick out a few things for myself. They had the rare sense to know they didn't understand my growing taste. I didn't particularly want to go out but I would have felt guilty refusing the gesture.
"Nikki, dress warm. It's really windy out!" My mom shouted from the living room. My dad shuffled in the background. He was undoubtedly calculating travel time and preparing to leave at least five minutes before me or mom would be ready. Jeans and hoodie would be fine, we weren't mounting Everest.
"You mean I can't wear my bathing suit? Get real."
My parents buttoned up in colorful fluffy coats like two extinct birds.
"You two look like parakeets or something." I closed my eyes and sighed in shame.
"Tell us how funny we look when you're the only one that has a cold later." My mom pulled on ridiculous mittens.
I raised an open hand to waist level.
"Mittens? What are you three now? And the cold doesn't give people 'colds' just like the shingles up on the roof won't give you 'shingles.' Take those off, it's embarrassing."
My dad shook with a silent laugh and a repressed smile. My mother returned a stern icy stare and zipped her purse.
"She wastes her brain on getting smart with me. She gets it from you." She slapped his arm.
"I'm just the driver." He held up his hands.
Mom smirked as she couldn't ever keep mad while dad was smiling and he was capable of contagious lame grins when he was in a good mood.
We drove through the snowy and beautifully uneventful landscape and eased into the commercial side of town. As we drove up to the mall there were long stretching tire tracks on the road that revealed asphalt through the icy layer.
It was the kind of day I could have found completely gratifying caterpillaring in bed with a book and maybe a movie and a nice hot meal here and there. No such luck. Once inside, we sped up our walk to avoid being trampled by a livid herd of Christmas shoppers.
"Where do you want to go first?" My dad said with a cursory glance at an electronics store. I looked towards the same store and rolled my eyes.
"Come on." I smiled, taking his arm and leading the way.
Kids waded through uncomfortable fake snow to sit on Santa's lap. About ten different tunes played from as many directions and jumbled into the crowd's murmur. People who I thought were just normal shoppers approached and tried to pawn us useless garbage.
Fat people moving like pairs of sedated blowfish swimming through syrup boxed us into a lethargic and unsettlingly slow pace. The entire scene was the kind of thing that could have been therapeutic to watch from a tower but also a phenomenon that was vampiric and siphoned out the soul on ground level.
I don't know how long we shopped around but it felt like a really long time, a sizeable chunk of the day that wouldn't be coming back. After an unhealthy duration of shopping I ate pizza and my parents sipped coffee. They had barely noticeable smiles at the corners of their mouths and they let out periodic sighs. My father seemed so at peace with his wind-blown gray hair and satisfied grin. My mother looked around and made useless observations about things like what kind of Christmas lights the mall used or what cute outfits people were wearing. I couldn't understand how they relaxed like they did in such a hectic environment.
"Ah!" I yawned with my arms outstretched and then looked at my parents. They stared blankly. "Ahhhhhhhhh!" I stretched in an even more exaggerated display.
My dad scoffed.
"So, ready to go home Nikki?"
"Why yes. Thanks for asking."
"You want to get a movie?" My mom said exclusively to my dad and he nodded. We stood up and I rolled my eyes in this 'finally' way.
It was good that my parents had enough sense to let me pick stuff out on my own, knowing they would foul it up. They just couldn't wrap their heads around the notion that a fifteen year old girl would want to do anything else were she given the opportunity to shop. It was okay but not my choice of a day.
We walked towards the closest exit we could find. I was bogged down by an uncomfortable warmth. The air had a distinct prebreathed and rebreathed mugginess. I fantasized about the snowy oxygen-rich air outside. Maybe it would slap me awake.
I heard the familiar sound of chirping and barking from a pet shop. The smell of factory pellets, assorted foods and cages that needed to be cleaned overpowered the already dull air. It wasn't unpleasant entirely but when mixed with the uncirculated air it felt like a suffocating death chamber.
I walked faster than my parents and weaved through the crowd like an upstream fish. While the outside doors opened and closed from the in-and-out crowd, I could already feel the gusting crisp air like a rotating fan coming and going.
There was a flash of something undeniably familiar and I stopped in my tracks with a sense that I had seen a shooting star for the first time and was now staring at an empty sky. A freefalling paralysis took my breath and I froze.
In the pet shop window there was a grown black Labrador. After a moment it turned and limped slightly in my direction. There was a unique gray circle around its right eye. The monocled look bore through me. He was worn and hardened. I knew it was him more than I'd known anything in my entire life.
I ran towards the pet shop and plowed into a large man shrouded in a hooded black coat and I almost uttered a 'sorry' but the man shot a cold razor smile and I shrunk down with a split-second lifeless chill before looking back to the shop.
The dog stayed transfixed on me as I was on him. He was in a cage and I reached in as far as I could to touch him. He came strait to me and the feeling returned that I was special and chosen because of some other than human trait that no one else could see. And he was my chosen. He licked at my fingers. His face was like a young war veteran's aged beyond his years. All of the horrible things I thought could have happened started to pour out of me.
My dad touched my shoulder.
"Nikki, what are you doing? Let's go."
"This is the dog I used to talk about. The same one." I sniffed in.
My dad's cold expression melted when I looked up at him. I rubbed my eyes and tried to keep a stoic resolve. I hated the disgusting shame of having anyone see me cry. Dad probably didn't understand but I knew I didn't have to ask, he would have given me his wallet if it would have fixed things.
"A dog?" My mom shook her head to my father but I knew there was nothing that would stop me from leaving with him. I would have stolen him and run away if I had to.
I told my parents about the pup frequently when I was twelve and periodically after that. I didn't know what to do.
"That's him." I shook with uneven breaths.
"What?" My mom raised a brow.
"The dog I used to talk about. This is him, I know it."
My dad was already talking to the store keeper.
"That one? It's weird. This guy paid me to hold him but then told me to sell him for no reason. It was a lot of money but something about him really creeped me out. I kept saying I was going to get rid of the thing but I just seemed to forget." He stared off blankly. "Well, the thing limps on one of his back legs so you know he probably runs a little awkwardly." He looked at me crying and touching the grown pup's face through the bars. "Umm okay, we can definitely make a deal."
My mom tapped my dad on the shoulder and shook her head 'no' but it was no use.
I didn't know what to think about all my doubt and morbid fear. It was suddenly clear that before that moment I only grasped the notion of hope as a masochistic setup. Whatever had happened my friend had survived through the woods and through the years to this point and found his way directly to me. The seeming unlikeliness of it caused me to reel back. How could this have possibly happened? He had to have been searching for me too.
Despite his weathered look, he was excited and stayed that way. My attention seemed like a drug to him and the more I gave the more he wanted and the more I couldn't resist giving. I knew I'd never had a friend so close and I would likely never have one such as this again.
Together we watched the snowfall from my room. He laid flat on the bed with his face and paws nestled deeply into a pillow. I had an image of the winters he endured and I held him tightly. His now large body was comforting and perfectly embracing. If I was around he never wandered off somewhere else. I always thought it was gross when I saw people who let their dogs lick their hands or face but this seemed different. His black coat was incredibly deep. I named him Midnight and gave him a leather collar with a silver tag that had his name on it.
He stayed in the house with me most of the time. After a week my parents (mostly my mom) grew irritated with having an indoor dog.
It was 4:30am with still a week of holiday break left from school. Our new pastime was movies in the basement. Midnight was partial to action movies and he always curled up in the far right corner of our ancient lounging couch.
My Mom walked down the hollow wooden stairs of the basement. She woke early for her work at the hospital.
"Careful, don't say anything to put her off." I scratched Midnight's head.
Mom stopped behind the couch where we were loitering. She shot an exaggerated panoramic glance around the room from the end of the couch all the way over to Midnight. I turkey-necked to see what she was seeing. It suppose it was a pretty sorry sight. One empty jar of peanut butter, another opened one, a mostly eaten pizza and soda cans rolling around like a kid's toys.
"What are you doing down here so late again?"
"Well kinda early at this point don't you think? Just hangin' with my doooeeg." I scratched both our stomachs.
"Up again? You're going to have a rough time getting back into the school schedule. I know you're going to clean this up."
"We are! Geez." I bulged my eyes.
"Are you feeding him all this junk? He has food that we buy him."
"Have you tried that stuff? It's gross." Midnight licked a spoonful of peanut butter and then I licked the rest off. Mom gagged and winced.
"And you're making him fat. Look at that belly! You're taking for granted that you've always been so skinny. You may pack on some pounds too if you just stay down here eating pizza and peanut butter. Huh, I seem to remember you running around more when you didn't have a dog."
I patted Midnight's belly with one hand and my belly with the other. He barked low and sleepily.
"He says you're just saying that because he's black." I raised a closed fist.
"Uh huh." Mom kept deadpan.
"Don't worry. We're going to run it off."
"I'll believe that when I see it. You two hardly move."
"Psh, we move all the time." I scooped a spoon full of peanut butter and held it outside of Midnight's reach. He sort of flopped forward on his belly like a sedated seal. He swallowed lazily and scooted forward again. He extended his neck like a turtle and stretched his tongue to lick the spoon.
"See! What did I tell you?" I smiled.
Mom buried her head in her hand.
"Really..." She motioned around the room.
"Really, I'm going to clean it up. And believe what you want woman. We're going for a run."
"Uh huh. We need to talk about moving Midnight outside." She walked back upstairs. "Wouldn't hurt to spend some time with some human friends too. Or to make some." She closed the door behind her, blocking me from any clever retort.
"Sure would have 'killed' you to jump up and do one trick or something." I patted his side. "Ehh, don't worry. It's okay. I get performance anxiety too."
He put his paw on my hand and I dozed off on his rising and falling belly like an inner tube on gentle waves.
We ran in the morning and soon started a 7:00am and 5:00pm running schedule. It seemed to make lazing around more gratifying. Midnight's limp went away when he ran and it seemed noticeable only during the slowest walks.
The 'talk' about moving Midnight outside wasn't much of a talk. My parents forced me to move him outside. My dad built a luxurious dog house (compared with other dog houses). I didn't care because it still wasn't as warm or comfortable as inside.
It was January and the blanket of snow was as thick as ever. I had a clear view of the dog house from my window. It was haunting to think about how cold it was and that the bed he had out there wasn't as soft as my bed. He groaned pathetically like he never did when he was with me. Sometimes I couldn't sleep at all and I snuck him into the basement. Before long, a worn trail between his house and the back door was embedded in the yard.
Neighborhood passersby gave curious looks while I hung around and in the dog house. School was soon to start again and that worried me. I didn't want to think about him being sad or just waiting for me for hours on end.
One day as the sun was just drifting below the horizon a statuesque man stopped to watch us play. Clad in a black leather coat with a hoodie underneath and jeans, he stood with one leg propped up on the back yard fence and both arms draped over the top. He was maybe fifty feet away. His long hood shielded his eyes so that only his mouth and flaring nostrils were visible.
He raised a cigarette to his lips and drew from it until the embers glowed like a burning field. His bulky arm lowered to the sound of stretching leather. Even through the winter clothing his muscularity was evident. Periodically clouds of bull smoke shot from his nose and dispersed into the crystalline air. His breaths were impressively slow and far between.
I crawled back, ducking down with a slightly open mouth. I didn't know what to say and I rationalized that maybe he was just a fascinated neighbor.
"Weird guy huh, Midnight? You'll protect me right?"
He barked.
I saw the man a few more times wandering the neighborhood. No one noticed. It was strange to see him blend in because he was hardly inconspicuous.
The days counting down to school passed in a quick and a sinister way. I wanted Midnight and I to play forever and remain free of senseless obligation.
Then came the final free night before school. It grew cold and dark early on and I was especially worried about Midnight freezing. He moaned into the night and his cry was like an instrument strung directly through my heart and every sound reverberated deep in my chest. I fought the urge to run outside and console him because I knew we would both have to get used to it.
I looked at the clock and it was just 10:01pm. I stared at the ceiling for a while but my eyes wouldn't close. I put my jeans and hoodie on to warm up under the covers. I turned over a few times and resituated myself in all the known comfortable ways but still had the feeling of trying to sleep in a cramped car, unable to find any position that would work.
I forced my eyes shut but they just sprung back open. I decided I would lay there until I fell asleep or it was morning.
The clock struck 12:01.
Midnight cried out a desperate yelp and when I heard it I leaped up. I ran to the backdoor and flung it open. The freezing air stung my face. Snow mostly filled in the path to the house that I had walked so often. I stepped out and my naked feet dug deep in the snow and quickly froze. It was a throbbing numb pain. The door drifted shut behind me and every bit of inside light was cut off in a triangular, razor-thin glow and vanished.
Everything seemed absolutely vacant. There was no distant breeze or sound. I stopped for a moment, my breath suspended in the starless darkness. It was a darkness so embedded I felt I could reach out and touch it. I stumbled forward, losing the sense of up and down like I was about to accidentally step off a cliff. I stopped and reached out for any guiding cue. The blindness made a foreign land of my back yard.
The chain rattled inside Midnight's house. I took an awkward step forward and scanned back and forth with my wide useless eyes. I gathered my breath and rubbed my hands together.
"Don't be such a baby. It's just a little dark out." The sound seemed to echo off distant walls. I waited several seconds and only a moan returned. Normally he would run out no matter what.
"Midnight?"
A hand clasped over my mouth from behind. An arm wrapped tightly around my waist, lifting me off the ground and squeezing the breath from my lungs like a steel winch that reeled mercilessly in. My heart pounded as I tried to scream. I struggled to swing and hit him. His layered black coat and hoodie sleeve clung to me. I think I was hit in the head as the next thing I knew my head hurt and I was on the ground with his heavy body on top of me. The weight was immense like a horse mounting its rider. I tasted blood and felt a metallic sting in the back of my nose.
The darkness was so thick that it seemed to have a surface like a sightless stage curtain. The curtain grew close and then far, over and over and pounded in me like a powerful drum that was in sync with my heartbeat and resounded deep in the back of my soul. His palm covered my nose and mouth as his fingers gripped my face. I reached wildly convulsing for air.
In the distance a high pitched sound rushed forward. It was a monstrous cry, a horrible harpy shrill like a swarm of prehistoric bats and screeching metal on metal. I frantically tried to push his hand away but it was like welded steel.
A wet pain shot down through my lower back and poured into my lungs. The harpy shrill blocked out everything. My own body thrashing in the snow made no sound. There was a glimmer of metallic light like a lone celestial body in the void. He reached across my neck and sliced a crescent pain that stung like a thousand wasps from ear to ear.
It was as though he cut a hole through the curtain that allowed a slim lone ray of light to shine through. I began to see with a dilated numbness. Midnight was at the end of his chain barking and snapping his jaw furiously, just out of our reach. He looked like a possessed hell-hound about to drag the dog house away to save me but the secured mass simply wouldn't budge.
My limbs gave out as though I had been held underwater too long. I was turned over and I strained but couldn't move. The man's unshaven face was partially clear. He had retracted features despite thick muscularity. I saw into his eyes and it was a glassy abysmal stare.
A light flashed on from my house and the attacker glanced up with a stoic indifference. He vanished into the tree line.
My eyes wouldn't move. In my locked forward gaze there was a world very removed from the back yard. The harpy shrill screamed on and on, swirling around.
The door of my parent's house opened. My mother and father gathered over me. Their frantic mouths gesticulated silently. I tried to breathe but it was like my lungs were full of murky swamp water. I grasped out for Midnight but his chain held him beyond the possibility of reach. The world blackened from the outside in like driving through a tunnel on a one way road.
"Hey Nikki, wanna come sit with me? I saved you a spot on my lap." Some sharp laughs made me wince inside but I couldn't react and give them the satisfaction.
"I'm busy." I unzipped my bag and pretended to dig through.
"Or just weird. Come on." The boys scoffed under curled brim baseball caps. They squinted in a way that only older boys could to discomfort twelve year old girls. It seemed like they really wanted to be nice but in a hasty need for communication they defaulted back to the cruelty that brought them this far. To them 'girl' was a magnetic counterweight poised to throw the universe off balance. I pulled my hood up and glanced narrowly over my shoulder through dark clumps of hair.
It was late into fall and winter was so close it could be smelled over burning leaves and felt on crisp streams of wind. Swaying overgrown fields reflected on the bus windows. The driver took an unusual route and I had no idea where we were. The light turned red and the bus stopped with such a powerful jerk that I braced my arm on the seat ahead of me.
"Jesus, you want to watch the road?" One of the older boys said. The driver didn't acknowledge. A short wall blocked him from view.
I coughed and my lungs burned like frictioned skin to ice from the recent temperature drops. We overlooked a golden brown clearing near a forest. A Labrador puppy poked his head through the grass and hopped out into the open. His coat was midnight black and reflected bits of light like a moonlit lake. Big round features and a gray circle drawn around his right eye gave him a cuddly monocled look. He rolled around pausing with sideways glances and licked his paws and ran in circles. The girls gathered by the windows and the boys pretended not to care but they watched anyway.
The pup reached out a tentative paw, slowly batting at a dragonfly. He closed his eyes up towards the basking sun and incoming breeze. Across the field a mountain lion emerged from the swaying current of grass and drifted forward. It trotted towards the pup with no special intensity.
"Hey boy! Here! Get out of the way!" A girl shouted practically in my ear.
"Over here!"
I sucked in a heavy breath and crossed my arms. There was no reason it should've mattered. I looked away but an unease gravitated my eyes back to the pup. I tried not to care but I felt like I could taste my heartbeat in the back of my throat. The dog glanced away from the mountain lion and stared curiously at the bus. He must have heard the girls. What stupid instincts! His ears perked in our direction and his stubby tail wagged. His naive glee was a clot in my chest.
He looked at me and no one else but me. I knew it was probably just a stupid coincidence but it made me feel special, like I'd been chosen because of some redeemable quality undetectable to humans.
The mountain lion dipped down and its bony shoulders undulated like hands under a blanket as it crept in. I broke eye contact and looked down at my shoes and waited to hear something horrible. I could feel him still staring at me. Stillness permeated the idling bus as though the entire world had stalled and I took a deep breath.
In the oversized rearview mirror the driver looked up with icy cold eyes. I'd never seen him before. An older woman normally drove us. The abysmal look in his eyes made me sink into my seat.
The others burst into excited cheers and I jumped up. A large adult Labrador ran towards the pup. The cat bolted forward like lightning and it was impossible to tell which one would reach the pup first. Sweat bled from my hands as I rubbed them nervously together.
The mountain lion picked up speed and gained a slight lead. At the critical moment when it looked as though it would take a swipe at the pup it leaped away towards the larger dog. The dog too jumped up and in the collision the two landed halfway on the pup who cried a painful yelp and squeezed his lower half out from under the battling adults. The larger animals flung around in a vicious melee.
The pup limped into the tree line, bleeding from its leg. He turned and looked directly at me again. He howled a tiny howl and I thrust my hand against the frozen glass. I glanced around self consciously and swallowed a lump. The bus pulled away and he disappeared within the tree line. I felt like a sweater with one string attached to the pup, unraveling as the distance between us grew.
There was some elated back and forth chatter amongst the girls and some prideful uncaring faces among the boys.
I really had the feeling that the pup had stared directly at me. I didn't even know if it was possible. Could he see that far? I couldn't break the feeling that his eyes were transfixed on only me. Why couldn't I do something?
Through the following months I couldn't shake the image of the oval eyed pup orphaned and starving. There were rainy days that I sat indoors, staring out at the drenched trees as they sagged and drifted like a wet clothesline in the wind. On occasional fits of guilt I trudged outside and each time it wasn't cold at first but soon I shook and was chilled to my core. And I had the sense that the pup was looking into my eyes and shivering. I was overcome by guilt every time I gave up and retreated back inside.
When I turned thirteen the way in which I thought about the pup became a sort of scar on my memory. Almost every week I visited the woods the he limped off to. I walked around and the first few times I half expected to meet the dying dog who wanted to be held and fed. As the morbidity of truth sank in, I searched for bones or what remained of a sunken carcass.
Just because I found no such thing didn't mean the certain negativity would leave. It must have meant after killing the parent the mountain lion tracked down the pup and devoured it completely, leaving no trace for me to find.
For the next two years the sentimental pain died down and the knowledge that I no longer felt as strongly as I once did made me long for the simpler time.
On my previous birthday, my fifteenth, our unlikely paths met again.
I was in my room wrapped up in a black hoodie. It was a perfect kind of winter with a steady temperature that held everything securely in place under blankets of ice and snow. My window was painted like a snowflake with foggy tendrils framing a crystalline surface. I spent some time transfixed on the snowfall outside.
My parents tried to surprise me every year on my birthday, which was never very surprising. They offered to take me to the Uptown Mall to pick out a few things for myself. They had the rare sense to know they didn't understand my growing taste. I didn't particularly want to go out but I would have felt guilty refusing the gesture.
"Nikki, dress warm. It's really windy out!" My mom shouted from the living room. My dad shuffled in the background. He was undoubtedly calculating travel time and preparing to leave at least five minutes before me or mom would be ready. Jeans and hoodie would be fine, we weren't mounting Everest.
"You mean I can't wear my bathing suit? Get real."
My parents buttoned up in colorful fluffy coats like two extinct birds.
"You two look like parakeets or something." I closed my eyes and sighed in shame.
"Tell us how funny we look when you're the only one that has a cold later." My mom pulled on ridiculous mittens.
I raised an open hand to waist level.
"Mittens? What are you three now? And the cold doesn't give people 'colds' just like the shingles up on the roof won't give you 'shingles.' Take those off, it's embarrassing."
My dad shook with a silent laugh and a repressed smile. My mother returned a stern icy stare and zipped her purse.
"She wastes her brain on getting smart with me. She gets it from you." She slapped his arm.
"I'm just the driver." He held up his hands.
Mom smirked as she couldn't ever keep mad while dad was smiling and he was capable of contagious lame grins when he was in a good mood.
We drove through the snowy and beautifully uneventful landscape and eased into the commercial side of town. As we drove up to the mall there were long stretching tire tracks on the road that revealed asphalt through the icy layer.
It was the kind of day I could have found completely gratifying caterpillaring in bed with a book and maybe a movie and a nice hot meal here and there. No such luck. Once inside, we sped up our walk to avoid being trampled by a livid herd of Christmas shoppers.
"Where do you want to go first?" My dad said with a cursory glance at an electronics store. I looked towards the same store and rolled my eyes.
"Come on." I smiled, taking his arm and leading the way.
Kids waded through uncomfortable fake snow to sit on Santa's lap. About ten different tunes played from as many directions and jumbled into the crowd's murmur. People who I thought were just normal shoppers approached and tried to pawn us useless garbage.
Fat people moving like pairs of sedated blowfish swimming through syrup boxed us into a lethargic and unsettlingly slow pace. The entire scene was the kind of thing that could have been therapeutic to watch from a tower but also a phenomenon that was vampiric and siphoned out the soul on ground level.
I don't know how long we shopped around but it felt like a really long time, a sizeable chunk of the day that wouldn't be coming back. After an unhealthy duration of shopping I ate pizza and my parents sipped coffee. They had barely noticeable smiles at the corners of their mouths and they let out periodic sighs. My father seemed so at peace with his wind-blown gray hair and satisfied grin. My mother looked around and made useless observations about things like what kind of Christmas lights the mall used or what cute outfits people were wearing. I couldn't understand how they relaxed like they did in such a hectic environment.
"Ah!" I yawned with my arms outstretched and then looked at my parents. They stared blankly. "Ahhhhhhhhh!" I stretched in an even more exaggerated display.
My dad scoffed.
"So, ready to go home Nikki?"
"Why yes. Thanks for asking."
"You want to get a movie?" My mom said exclusively to my dad and he nodded. We stood up and I rolled my eyes in this 'finally' way.
It was good that my parents had enough sense to let me pick stuff out on my own, knowing they would foul it up. They just couldn't wrap their heads around the notion that a fifteen year old girl would want to do anything else were she given the opportunity to shop. It was okay but not my choice of a day.
We walked towards the closest exit we could find. I was bogged down by an uncomfortable warmth. The air had a distinct prebreathed and rebreathed mugginess. I fantasized about the snowy oxygen-rich air outside. Maybe it would slap me awake.
I heard the familiar sound of chirping and barking from a pet shop. The smell of factory pellets, assorted foods and cages that needed to be cleaned overpowered the already dull air. It wasn't unpleasant entirely but when mixed with the uncirculated air it felt like a suffocating death chamber.
I walked faster than my parents and weaved through the crowd like an upstream fish. While the outside doors opened and closed from the in-and-out crowd, I could already feel the gusting crisp air like a rotating fan coming and going.
There was a flash of something undeniably familiar and I stopped in my tracks with a sense that I had seen a shooting star for the first time and was now staring at an empty sky. A freefalling paralysis took my breath and I froze.
In the pet shop window there was a grown black Labrador. After a moment it turned and limped slightly in my direction. There was a unique gray circle around its right eye. The monocled look bore through me. He was worn and hardened. I knew it was him more than I'd known anything in my entire life.
I ran towards the pet shop and plowed into a large man shrouded in a hooded black coat and I almost uttered a 'sorry' but the man shot a cold razor smile and I shrunk down with a split-second lifeless chill before looking back to the shop.
The dog stayed transfixed on me as I was on him. He was in a cage and I reached in as far as I could to touch him. He came strait to me and the feeling returned that I was special and chosen because of some other than human trait that no one else could see. And he was my chosen. He licked at my fingers. His face was like a young war veteran's aged beyond his years. All of the horrible things I thought could have happened started to pour out of me.
My dad touched my shoulder.
"Nikki, what are you doing? Let's go."
"This is the dog I used to talk about. The same one." I sniffed in.
My dad's cold expression melted when I looked up at him. I rubbed my eyes and tried to keep a stoic resolve. I hated the disgusting shame of having anyone see me cry. Dad probably didn't understand but I knew I didn't have to ask, he would have given me his wallet if it would have fixed things.
"A dog?" My mom shook her head to my father but I knew there was nothing that would stop me from leaving with him. I would have stolen him and run away if I had to.
I told my parents about the pup frequently when I was twelve and periodically after that. I didn't know what to do.
"That's him." I shook with uneven breaths.
"What?" My mom raised a brow.
"The dog I used to talk about. This is him, I know it."
My dad was already talking to the store keeper.
"That one? It's weird. This guy paid me to hold him but then told me to sell him for no reason. It was a lot of money but something about him really creeped me out. I kept saying I was going to get rid of the thing but I just seemed to forget." He stared off blankly. "Well, the thing limps on one of his back legs so you know he probably runs a little awkwardly." He looked at me crying and touching the grown pup's face through the bars. "Umm okay, we can definitely make a deal."
My mom tapped my dad on the shoulder and shook her head 'no' but it was no use.
I didn't know what to think about all my doubt and morbid fear. It was suddenly clear that before that moment I only grasped the notion of hope as a masochistic setup. Whatever had happened my friend had survived through the woods and through the years to this point and found his way directly to me. The seeming unlikeliness of it caused me to reel back. How could this have possibly happened? He had to have been searching for me too.
Despite his weathered look, he was excited and stayed that way. My attention seemed like a drug to him and the more I gave the more he wanted and the more I couldn't resist giving. I knew I'd never had a friend so close and I would likely never have one such as this again.
Together we watched the snowfall from my room. He laid flat on the bed with his face and paws nestled deeply into a pillow. I had an image of the winters he endured and I held him tightly. His now large body was comforting and perfectly embracing. If I was around he never wandered off somewhere else. I always thought it was gross when I saw people who let their dogs lick their hands or face but this seemed different. His black coat was incredibly deep. I named him Midnight and gave him a leather collar with a silver tag that had his name on it.
He stayed in the house with me most of the time. After a week my parents (mostly my mom) grew irritated with having an indoor dog.
It was 4:30am with still a week of holiday break left from school. Our new pastime was movies in the basement. Midnight was partial to action movies and he always curled up in the far right corner of our ancient lounging couch.
My Mom walked down the hollow wooden stairs of the basement. She woke early for her work at the hospital.
"Careful, don't say anything to put her off." I scratched Midnight's head.
Mom stopped behind the couch where we were loitering. She shot an exaggerated panoramic glance around the room from the end of the couch all the way over to Midnight. I turkey-necked to see what she was seeing. It suppose it was a pretty sorry sight. One empty jar of peanut butter, another opened one, a mostly eaten pizza and soda cans rolling around like a kid's toys.
"What are you doing down here so late again?"
"Well kinda early at this point don't you think? Just hangin' with my doooeeg." I scratched both our stomachs.
"Up again? You're going to have a rough time getting back into the school schedule. I know you're going to clean this up."
"We are! Geez." I bulged my eyes.
"Are you feeding him all this junk? He has food that we buy him."
"Have you tried that stuff? It's gross." Midnight licked a spoonful of peanut butter and then I licked the rest off. Mom gagged and winced.
"And you're making him fat. Look at that belly! You're taking for granted that you've always been so skinny. You may pack on some pounds too if you just stay down here eating pizza and peanut butter. Huh, I seem to remember you running around more when you didn't have a dog."
I patted Midnight's belly with one hand and my belly with the other. He barked low and sleepily.
"He says you're just saying that because he's black." I raised a closed fist.
"Uh huh." Mom kept deadpan.
"Don't worry. We're going to run it off."
"I'll believe that when I see it. You two hardly move."
"Psh, we move all the time." I scooped a spoon full of peanut butter and held it outside of Midnight's reach. He sort of flopped forward on his belly like a sedated seal. He swallowed lazily and scooted forward again. He extended his neck like a turtle and stretched his tongue to lick the spoon.
"See! What did I tell you?" I smiled.
Mom buried her head in her hand.
"Really..." She motioned around the room.
"Really, I'm going to clean it up. And believe what you want woman. We're going for a run."
"Uh huh. We need to talk about moving Midnight outside." She walked back upstairs. "Wouldn't hurt to spend some time with some human friends too. Or to make some." She closed the door behind her, blocking me from any clever retort.
"Sure would have 'killed' you to jump up and do one trick or something." I patted his side. "Ehh, don't worry. It's okay. I get performance anxiety too."
He put his paw on my hand and I dozed off on his rising and falling belly like an inner tube on gentle waves.
We ran in the morning and soon started a 7:00am and 5:00pm running schedule. It seemed to make lazing around more gratifying. Midnight's limp went away when he ran and it seemed noticeable only during the slowest walks.
The 'talk' about moving Midnight outside wasn't much of a talk. My parents forced me to move him outside. My dad built a luxurious dog house (compared with other dog houses). I didn't care because it still wasn't as warm or comfortable as inside.
It was January and the blanket of snow was as thick as ever. I had a clear view of the dog house from my window. It was haunting to think about how cold it was and that the bed he had out there wasn't as soft as my bed. He groaned pathetically like he never did when he was with me. Sometimes I couldn't sleep at all and I snuck him into the basement. Before long, a worn trail between his house and the back door was embedded in the yard.
Neighborhood passersby gave curious looks while I hung around and in the dog house. School was soon to start again and that worried me. I didn't want to think about him being sad or just waiting for me for hours on end.
One day as the sun was just drifting below the horizon a statuesque man stopped to watch us play. Clad in a black leather coat with a hoodie underneath and jeans, he stood with one leg propped up on the back yard fence and both arms draped over the top. He was maybe fifty feet away. His long hood shielded his eyes so that only his mouth and flaring nostrils were visible.
He raised a cigarette to his lips and drew from it until the embers glowed like a burning field. His bulky arm lowered to the sound of stretching leather. Even through the winter clothing his muscularity was evident. Periodically clouds of bull smoke shot from his nose and dispersed into the crystalline air. His breaths were impressively slow and far between.
I crawled back, ducking down with a slightly open mouth. I didn't know what to say and I rationalized that maybe he was just a fascinated neighbor.
"Weird guy huh, Midnight? You'll protect me right?"
He barked.
I saw the man a few more times wandering the neighborhood. No one noticed. It was strange to see him blend in because he was hardly inconspicuous.
The days counting down to school passed in a quick and a sinister way. I wanted Midnight and I to play forever and remain free of senseless obligation.
Then came the final free night before school. It grew cold and dark early on and I was especially worried about Midnight freezing. He moaned into the night and his cry was like an instrument strung directly through my heart and every sound reverberated deep in my chest. I fought the urge to run outside and console him because I knew we would both have to get used to it.
I looked at the clock and it was just 10:01pm. I stared at the ceiling for a while but my eyes wouldn't close. I put my jeans and hoodie on to warm up under the covers. I turned over a few times and resituated myself in all the known comfortable ways but still had the feeling of trying to sleep in a cramped car, unable to find any position that would work.
I forced my eyes shut but they just sprung back open. I decided I would lay there until I fell asleep or it was morning.
The clock struck 12:01.
Midnight cried out a desperate yelp and when I heard it I leaped up. I ran to the backdoor and flung it open. The freezing air stung my face. Snow mostly filled in the path to the house that I had walked so often. I stepped out and my naked feet dug deep in the snow and quickly froze. It was a throbbing numb pain. The door drifted shut behind me and every bit of inside light was cut off in a triangular, razor-thin glow and vanished.
Everything seemed absolutely vacant. There was no distant breeze or sound. I stopped for a moment, my breath suspended in the starless darkness. It was a darkness so embedded I felt I could reach out and touch it. I stumbled forward, losing the sense of up and down like I was about to accidentally step off a cliff. I stopped and reached out for any guiding cue. The blindness made a foreign land of my back yard.
The chain rattled inside Midnight's house. I took an awkward step forward and scanned back and forth with my wide useless eyes. I gathered my breath and rubbed my hands together.
"Don't be such a baby. It's just a little dark out." The sound seemed to echo off distant walls. I waited several seconds and only a moan returned. Normally he would run out no matter what.
"Midnight?"
A hand clasped over my mouth from behind. An arm wrapped tightly around my waist, lifting me off the ground and squeezing the breath from my lungs like a steel winch that reeled mercilessly in. My heart pounded as I tried to scream. I struggled to swing and hit him. His layered black coat and hoodie sleeve clung to me. I think I was hit in the head as the next thing I knew my head hurt and I was on the ground with his heavy body on top of me. The weight was immense like a horse mounting its rider. I tasted blood and felt a metallic sting in the back of my nose.
The darkness was so thick that it seemed to have a surface like a sightless stage curtain. The curtain grew close and then far, over and over and pounded in me like a powerful drum that was in sync with my heartbeat and resounded deep in the back of my soul. His palm covered my nose and mouth as his fingers gripped my face. I reached wildly convulsing for air.
In the distance a high pitched sound rushed forward. It was a monstrous cry, a horrible harpy shrill like a swarm of prehistoric bats and screeching metal on metal. I frantically tried to push his hand away but it was like welded steel.
A wet pain shot down through my lower back and poured into my lungs. The harpy shrill blocked out everything. My own body thrashing in the snow made no sound. There was a glimmer of metallic light like a lone celestial body in the void. He reached across my neck and sliced a crescent pain that stung like a thousand wasps from ear to ear.
It was as though he cut a hole through the curtain that allowed a slim lone ray of light to shine through. I began to see with a dilated numbness. Midnight was at the end of his chain barking and snapping his jaw furiously, just out of our reach. He looked like a possessed hell-hound about to drag the dog house away to save me but the secured mass simply wouldn't budge.
My limbs gave out as though I had been held underwater too long. I was turned over and I strained but couldn't move. The man's unshaven face was partially clear. He had retracted features despite thick muscularity. I saw into his eyes and it was a glassy abysmal stare.
A light flashed on from my house and the attacker glanced up with a stoic indifference. He vanished into the tree line.
My eyes wouldn't move. In my locked forward gaze there was a world very removed from the back yard. The harpy shrill screamed on and on, swirling around.
The door of my parent's house opened. My mother and father gathered over me. Their frantic mouths gesticulated silently. I tried to breathe but it was like my lungs were full of murky swamp water. I grasped out for Midnight but his chain held him beyond the possibility of reach. The world blackened from the outside in like driving through a tunnel on a one way road.
© R.J. Vickers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.