Charlie

Ivan collapses to his knees and wipes the sweat off his forehead. The shovel drops onto the dirt, landing beside his blistered fingers. His shirt is coated in blood that wasn't his.

Rumor had it, Charlie had no family. And if he did, no one loved him, which is probably why his family deserted him and never came for him since Ivan moved into the neighbourhood seven years ago. Charlie wasn't all right up there. People maintained their distance. So if anything were to happen to Charlie, would anyone even notice he was gone?

Ivan met the love of his life, Linda in college. They dated for five years until he popped her the question. Three years after they were married, they had their "second" child, a boy; Dylan. Linda already had a daughter; Masie from a previous relationship. Blood did not matter to Ivan. He loved both his children equally.

Things were great until one night he came back to an empty home. The car keys were missing, the house was a mess and a lot money and jewellery were missing.

Ivan recalled hearing about armed robbers in the news. Linda wouldn't answer her phone. He dialled twelve more times as he searched the house.There was so sign of forced entry not that it helped relax his nerves. He did however notice other oddities. Missing clothes, toys, food. All gone.

He then called up her closest friends, they didn't know about her whereabouts and she didn't have parents in the picture to check in with either.

Panic filled his veins. He grabbed his coat from the coat hanger to rush to the police station, when a note fell out of his pocket and landed on the floor.

Ivan collapsed to his knees as he read:

Ivan,

I told you to do the dishes last night and you didn't. I told you to do the laundry two days ago and you didn't. I told you to drop by the pharmacy to pick up Dylan's allergy medicine, but you didn't. I told you to come pick me up for our sonography appointment this evening and you put it off like you always do. You never do anything I ask of you. I'm tired of being taken for granted. I cannot live under the same roof as you. I am leaving and I'm taking the kids since you do not care about anyone but yourself. Please do not look for us."

But he did look. And a week later Ivan got called in by the police to identify the belongings of three people whose car went turtle and sank into a creek some ten miles from their home.

Ivan recognized the beanie. He had knitted it for Masie for her tenth birthday. Ivan recognized the branded hoodie he got his son from his favourite youtuber when he couldn't go to a meet and greet on account of being down with chickenpox. Ivan recognized the ring he gave his wife on their wedding day, with the day they shared their first kiss engraved on the inside.

He wailed, bringing tears to the rookie cops' eyes. He visualized the image of his children gasping for breath in their final moments. Masie, daddy's little girl must have been so terrified, calling for him to save her. But he failed her. He failed all of them. He wasn't allowed to see the bodies. They had rotted beyond recognition.

Ivan was angry with himself. While the rest of the world moved on, he remained transfixed in that moment. The scent of pancakes, his kids' favourite food in the whole world made him vomit. So did the smell of coffee which his wife couldn't start her day without. He couldn't eat many other foods he enjoyed in the past since their passing. He never left dishes dirty and he never left laundry unwashed. Some nights he'd wake up from dreams relieved he dreamt the whole fiasco until he was wide awake and reality hit. They weren't coming back.

And that was when he began to frequent bars. He'd drink and wake up in unfamiliar places. He'd drink and get into brawls. He'd drink, throw up and pass out in his bathroom and sometimes he couldn't get up in the mornings to go to work. His irregularality among many other things eventually got him fired.

Everyone knew about what happened to Ivan's family. Everybody ostracised him because of it. There were days when he drank and collapsed right outside his house. People saw him passed out in the chilly nights, but kept their distance.

Wild animals making their way into the city or dangerous people moving about in the streets at night wasn't very uncommon.

Ivan always considered Charlie a nuisance. He wasn't the friendliest fella on the block and he was loud and unpredictable. He remembered a time when Charlie chased Dylan away from his house after his soccer ball accidentally flew into his lawn.

When Ivan woke up with a nasty hangover,

Charlie was always sitting beside him watching over him silently, and when he was content Ivan was okay, Charlie went back home without a word.

After constant nights like these, they began to develop something of a friendship. Ivan would invite him into his house and make him food and Charlie ate everything without a complaint. Ivan teared up. It had been a while since he felt needed or appreciated.

Charlie started spending a great amount of time at Ivan's. They had quite a bit in common. They were both alone it the world but now they had each other. When Charlie took ill one day, Ivan wasted no time driving him to the doctor.

One day Ivan woke up to the sound of something shattering; glass. Ivan rushed downstairs with a bat and found the only photo he had left of his family, destroyed. Ivan flipped. That wasn't all. Most of the house was thrashed. The culprit, Charlie. The mess brought back memories.

Ivan exploded at him, said a lot of things, and everything that happened after that was a blur.

--

Ivan wakes up the next morning to sirens wailing in the distance. He jumps out of bed and looks out the window from the second floor. His eyes widen. He quickly rushes downstairs.

Ivan pushes himself through a crowd of people. There he saw a neighbour, dead, being loaded into an ambulance. He overhears two cops talking about a thief shooting a person a few houses away. The body they were taking away seemed dead for at least ten hours.

Ivan rushes to Charlie's home. He was nowhere to be seen. Ivan looks everywhere for him, he calls out his name. But no answer.

He widens his search area and after two hours, he finds Charlie's lifeless body in the grass about two hundred meters away from home. He had a bullet in his head.

Ivan breaks down. Charlie was only trying to protect him. Had he assessed the situation better and not thrown him out of the house, Charlie would've probably still been here.

He picks up his body and after apologizing to him numerous times, and giving him a decent burial in his favourite woods, he gets up to go home.

The hurt he feels weighs heavily in his chest. When he reaches his door, he takes a final look at Charlie's home. Memories of the good times flash through his mind. He turns around and twists the doorknob.

Then he hears it.

A familiar bark.

His mind did play tricks on him. He would hallucinate his children's voices quiet often too.

Ivan raises his head, and turns around.

"C...Charlie?"

Ivan thought he was dead, but there he was, right in front of him on the street smiling at him. His tail wags several kilometers per second. His paw was injured, but he was otherwise okay.

Ivan sinks to his knees. He is alive.

He spreads his arms wide open, and tears and snot run down his face. An embrace. Charlie is alive.