The German Shepherd: A Short Story by Alex D’Rozario
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For Sale: German Shepherd;
Fluent in German
Jet black hair
Her teeth could probably tear the flesh off your neck
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The sun is barely up when I am awoken by the sound of a dog barking. It is a deep bellowing bark and it is as though it is coming from a dog that is very hungry. There is desperation in it. Without thinking I remove my old clothes and start to unpack the boxes that are scattered around the room. A stack of CDs by the door holds it open as I remove a large record player from its case, under which I find my sound-cancelling headphones. I place them over my ears. The pure silence is bliss. I remember the number in the bin.
I reach into the bin and pull out the scrap of newspaper, flatten it out, and call the number on it.
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“Hey, how can I help you.”
“I’m looking for a dog that was for sale a while back…”
“Dog’s dead.”
The dog is what.
“Okay, no problem.”
I hang up the phone.
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I suppose the curtness of his responses convey nothing more than the explicit honesty which was present in the original advertisement. But never the less I am left with a sense of irresolution. What do you mean? I want to say.
This interaction brings to my mind the absurdity of dogs, the very paradox. On one hand dogs are not alive, not possessing any interior life not capable of exercising free will, so their death means nothing at all. Either way all dogs go to the indeterminant void that greets all creatures, sentient and non-sentient alike.
On the other hand, one could say that dogs are the perfect creatures, alive fully in a way we as humans could never be and thus their deaths are conceptually worse and more grievous than human deaths, blood of the innocent etc., which is why people hate it more when dogs are killed in movies compared with people. As such dogs should go to an unimaginably idyllic afterlife made for dogs and only dogs.
I shelve these ideas for now.
The truth is I do not have the financial capacity or desire to care for a dog but this does not deter me from feeling sad at the loss of my potential dog.
I memorialize her image, rest in peace German Shepherd. Her hair was long and flowing, she will be missed, etc. I venerate the idea of our future together, the bond we would have had and the struggles we would have faced together. The years that would have passed. The reunion we would have had in the great beyond at the end of time.
These ephemeral visions occupy the space of a fraction of second, are the condition of my madness, and spell out the nature of my isolation and despondency.
At this point it is safe to say the regular barking of the neighbour’s dogs at meal times is now haunting me, a living reflection of my interior life. What am I but a hungry dog barking to be fed, reduced to a receptacle of food, led into the dark, by ignorant hands, to my shallow grave.
I am a worm, a cockatoo with no vocal cords, a household cat in cardboard box. A toothpick. A Sunday afternoon before work.
“Oh God.”
I stare intently at my own reflection in the mirror wondering if such an existential spiral could be caused by the abstract death of the something so distant from my life, and yet it makes sense that that is the case. Again, I decide to go for a walk. This time the pace is much quicker and I walk thirty laps of the nearby oval in what seems like the blink of an eye.
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Once more I am awoken. This time by the sound of birds. I look outside, not a thing to disturb the pristine stillness aside from the feint twirping. I step outside and feel the cold smart on my skin. Sitting in a chair craning my head back to see the stars, I feel at peace. Like the night and the day are both beyond me. That I exist in a liminal space between them. They think that I am not the type of person to care but I am. I am the type of person.
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The shop owner is reluctant, this particular dog is a terror. She refuses to play with the other pups and no-one has even considered adopting her. She is a deal smaller than the other dogs. I am undeterred and complete the purchase. The door rattles as I make my way out of the store. I know what this feels like, freedom.
The wheels below me rotate, propelling me forward. Into that ethereal zone known as the future. Known as the unknown. Feelings like these are now mine to own, to keep and treasure. I glance down at the seat where she is lying down, back at the road. All the lights are green. I am making record time.
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She is an obscure mix of breeds. Her name is Freedom. Soft paws paddle uselessly as I lower her into a bath. Drawn blinds are subject to the teeth of the pup. Little rodents and other pests are nowhere to be seen, and vacuuming becomes a lot easier. The hands of time mould a taller, stronger dog. Out of the littleness comes bulk. Like the tree sapling advancing to the oak. Yet eternal light has a cost and I must work, leaving behind an empty chair and a hungry, hulking, dog.
Milky red chew toys litter the floors, a minute left before I get up, she isn’t the way the others are, she is different, she is mine. Her nose is right next to my face and I can feel the dampness. She breathes violet streams of pure air into the morning dust as I get up and pour a glass of water. Like a timid, crouching mouse or a frightened child, she waits to be addressed, then jumps down from her spot onto the cold ground. Water and food, then off to the park. Today will mark four years since I got her.
It’s not that she helps me meet people per say but that her unabashed joy pulls people into my orbit. I exchange platitudes and she sniffs the other dog, then we walk away, this ritual becomes second nature.
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Cartons of milk line my fridge. Empty and used, crumpled at the tops, nearly but not entirely discarded in the rough interior of the side shelf. I wonder when the war will start. Any day now surely.
Tensions are rising they say. But they are always saying that. Tell me something new. All that tension has finally completed its purpose and left us. Or the tensions have all fused together to form one big tension. More news at six.
However, they never do. The news is always new, and the new cannot be old.
The rise of mainstream media coincides with rise of the existence of global problems, unsolved, insoluble in the human psyche, drenched in human suffering, soaked to the bleeding core. Blood of the innocent.
Half useful streams of consciousness are subverted by just as petulant streams of grey T.V. into homes and hearts and minds, primed and ready for the next great motion.
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She has the smallest, purest eyes. She looks at things with perfect clarity, I am sure. Even in her adulthood she retains the aura of a pup, wearing it like a crystalline armour that supplants any futility or frustration. How can I be angry, when I am with you, when I am in the light. Those small, humorous, green eyes see me.
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This day is unlike the others, it has a strangely odd feel to it. The air is different, the ground is different, the back of my head is different. My brain buzzes with anticipation of something that never is not going to happen. Not yet.
Like the winds of change I imagine my dog escaping, freedom for Freedom, and running off into the distance. Unchaining her from the power of my leash, emancipating her from her own genetics. Bred for servitude what does a dog have other than human friendship and a mess of interfered with raw instincts. Am I in the wrong to place on her the burden of “love.” In my head I think that this species was designed by us, morphing into our own genetic code, and becoming inseparable. If tomorrow we lost all knowledge of dogs and had our relationships reset, they would form again in no time. Rent out of dust and particles while the real thing coalesced, organised, eventually took over. Besides this, I think humans and dogs differ in purpose, we as rulers of the earth, caretakers of the other kingdoms (here man has his own strata separate from animal and plant kingdoms), they as dogs.
I have dreams where I am an animal tamer, whip in hand, commanding a legion of fleas in a performing circus, making them jump in unison. Up. Down. Sit. Play dead. I wake up from these dreams filled with laughter I cannot explain or contain. Right down to my bleeding core.
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I look into her eyes, right into them, seeing something, seeing nothing, I wonder what you see, Freedom. What you think. How many times have you seen yourself and thought there I am, that’s me. You are a walking creature. You are bound to the earth. You are bound to this plane where all you know is Up. Down. Play dead. I cringe at the thought that you are trapped, that you want me to set you down and leave you be. To never say sit! Roll over! What else would I do with my time?
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Up:
Up.
Up. Down.
Roll over.
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The subjugated implies that there is a man with a whip. The subjugated innately have no voice. Subjugate: To bring under dominion, especially by conquest. Thanks Google.
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Subject:
Subject and object,
Object and abject,
Abject and subject.
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I take a close look at the words (abject/subject/object) as I write them on the semi-torn and crumpled page, they appear blurred by the meaning they contain (do not contain) and I pity my inability to express them. I was surely saying or thinking something important, something that mattered:
“Specificity breeds (breathes?) contempt. Specificity shall rule the earth and contempt reign for a thousand years. Long hair dies out and short hair rules the savannah. Sharp teeth die out and round teeth rule the mud swamps. Being loved dies out.
The very idea that humans exist is beholden to the idea that we do exist. Something contained within or obtained by us is impossible to reduce. Has the fact that we are apes escaped us? Is it mist (mystery), is it forever ago (ego), should we balance our chequebooks regardless of the time of day, month, year? Regardless, this is all for nought:
“Send me to the principal if you must Sir, for I have achieved the essence of being and am no longer subject to notions of the self.”
Statement of Intent:
This story poses the question of the validity of the domestication of animals, specifically dogs. It outlines the relationship between a dog and a man that develops off a failed interaction, whereby the man tries to purchase a dog only to discover that it is dead. The man then suffers with bouts of overthinking and rumination, which even after he buys his own dog does not abate. In terms of mode, it employs a realist lens and has surrealist elements which are transferred through the “jolts” present with the changes in structure. The many influences of this work include Karen Russel’s short story “St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (Russell) which decentralises the anthropocentric tendencies of perceiving animals. My work also speaks to these themes of animal-human relations and challenges in part the notions of human ownership over dogs. The main character’s anxiety can be seen as stemming from this ownership guilt as he believes he is in the moral wrong for even wanting a dog to begin with. This gains expression in his paranoid thoughts and his bleak but frenetic world view.
References:
Russell, Karen. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Vintage, 2006.
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.