The Miami sun and smog made the air heavy, pressing down on my bones as I stood outside the brown stucco house with bars in the windows. I could smell the suburban summer all around me and I was scared. To my left was a rose garden. More, the skeleton of what was once a modest plot of six bushes in a rectangle, long neglected yet still beautiful in its thorny austerity. To my right sat a dog. Black, muscles gleaming in the sun, myopic in the way its eyes looked right through me to an unknown point in the distance. Everything was still and calm. There was no breeze, no sound from the mocking birds or cars speeding down the boulevard a block away.

A door opened in the house, causing the dog's head to pivot towards the noise. My grandfather suddenly appeared on the porch. He's gotten fat and I'm terrified. I want to run but I hear a voice that seems to come from deep within my blood, "Don't run or the dog will eat him." I stay still, despite the fact that I know if he were in my position, he would feed me piece by piece to whatever beast sat before or within him. Seconds posing as years passed as he descended the stairs and made his way towards me. To my surprise, he smiles and asks how I am doing. I choose each word carefully as I answer his questions about my well-being, school, and the weather. There is still a certain madness in his eyes that no amount of small talk or innocuous smiles could veil. My stomach sank as his eyes traveled to the mosaic of cuts on my arm. The reasons behind the cutting were vague, yet whatever it had been influenced me to carve 'For if I could, I'd fly away' into my forearm. I hoped he would focus on my interest in Dylan Thomas instead of the macabre way I had of expressing it.

"Why did you do this?" he asked, running a rough hand across the cuts. I tried to make light of the situation by brushing it off as a stupid teenage indiscretion, hoping my dry laughter would appeal to him and he'd continue treating me like a human.

The next few moments are hazy and it is probably for the better that I've forgotten or repressed it, since the next thing I can recall is I'm pinned to the dirt, the weeds scratching my back and arms as his fat belly crushes me, pinning me to the ground. He is stabbing me, the knife a blur, the pain real. I can hear the dog barking and him yelling over and over again, 'You like pain? You like pain?'

Blackness.

(this was a dream that i had several months ago. i turned it into a...story? call it what you will. i just didn't want the last entry to be the first thing people see when they access this page.)

<<< TOP >>>