The one-time people

This is my worst nightmare.

Consciousness has come to me for another day. I lift my head up and sigh. I look around, my eyelids heavy, perhaps from sleep, perhaps from the expectations of another long day ahead. I wonder if anything different will happen today. This is how it has been for weeks now, maybe months. I’m not sure.

I don’t know why I am here. No one has tried to explain it to me. I am homesick. What happened to my family? Why was I taken from my house? I miss my family. I miss my toys. I miss the grassy backyard with the swing set and the flower beds. I spent a lot of time out there. It was my favourite place to be, especially in the spring when the days started to warm up.

The one thing I still have with me that gives me comfort is sleep. I sleep a lot. The dreams I have when I close my eyes are wonderful. In them, I return to the place that I know and loved; where I was loved. Fragmented moment s drift past in a kaleidoscope of visions. There is a content feeling in my stomach. I am warm.

I play again with my sister. She is a five years younger than me, my constant shadow, always needing to be involved in whatever it is that I am doing.

Sometimes she gets on my nerves and I outright ignore her, or go lie on my bed and feign sleep. Mostly, we’d goof around and make each other happy.

But then I wake and remember that she is not here with me. Here there is a bed that makes me itch, walls that are unadorned, and the privacy minimal. People come and go, staring at me unabashed, while I hug the corner and refuse to engage.

I do not know them. They speak in a language that makes little sense – if they speak at all. They bring me food, which I chew on without enjoyment or satisfaction. They ensure that I am bathed. They know my name; I hear it in their conversations from time to time. Some faces are the same over and over, but the ones that stare? I only ever see them the once. I call them the one-time people.

What of my mother? Does she wonder where I am, like I wonder about her? I miss cuddling up with her, miss her soft laughter as I teetered precariously on her lap; I never wanted to outgrow it. I’d feel the soft chest yielding as I snuggled in. I’d feel her arms around me, holding me firmly. She smelled like flowers from the garden. Her warmth would make me sleepy. My sister would eventually protest, and I would have to get off to make way for her.

It was just the three of us. That was my world.

Now it is just me.

It was early morning when I was taken from my home. A man lifted me up and carried me out of my home, and then went back for my sister. There was a woman waiting in the car. My legs were trembling. She cooed at me. She knew my name, but I had never seen her before. She had a gentle voice like my mothers, and at first she seemed motherly herself. Then she bought me to this place and handed me off to someone else, who showed me to this room with the scratchy bed and not much to do. I never saw my sister again.

My chest feels tight, so I cough to try to make it go away. The more I think of home, the more I feel it. The strangers took notice at first, they held instruments up to my chest, cold and probing, but they can’t have found anything, as they have stopped. Now when I cough they laugh, I guess they see it as a quirk of mine.

There are others like me here. I usually hear their cries at night, when the blankets they have supplied us do little to hold back the chill. I listen for my sister, but I don’t think she is here. I have never heard her. Occasionally I see the others during the day: they are leaving, they tell me as they walk by. I see big wide smiles full of teeth, and a small spring to their step. Some are carried out in strong arms - not sure where they are going, but knowing it is a place better than here. I hope a one-time person will do that for me one day. This is my dream and my nightmare, because hope is the best thing that exists: but the one-time people walking past me? That is most hopeless feeling in the world.

Many don’t break step as they pass by where I sit this god forsaken place. Some stop and look into my eyes. I look back at theirs. I’ve stopped trying to catch their attention the way I did when I first came here. I don’t bother approaching them. The more I did that, the more their eyes looked away and they would shake their heads. They’d take their children by the hand, and lead them away. The children always looked back, but it was not enough.

Today there are a lot of one-time people, more than usual. There has been extra cleaning, my room is cleaner, I am clean. There are more children, more one-timers visiting. There is a family here. They have been looking at me for some time now. I can’t help but be excited. It’s been so long that the sensation is unfamiliar. The pain in my chest is gone. I am picked up in strong arms, and I cradle in to the soft chest. The children pat me on the head like my mother used to.

I think my nightmare is coming to an end.

It’s been so long I have almost forgotten how to, but in that moment, my tail starts to wag.