No Way Out

He had that feeling again. Like so many of his feelings, he didn’t have a name for it even though he’d experienced it many times before. It was unpleasant. It wrapped itself around his insides like a dark serpent and squeezed at his heart. It made him tense up his muscles and lean forward as his overworked brain tried desperately to squelch the long, drawn-out howl that perched behind his mouth, ready to leap to the outside. His sides ached to let it out…he knew, somehow, that letting that howl out would feel so satisfying. But he had to be quiet and so he pushed it down into his stomach and focused on the task at hand. He leapt up and pushed the flappy thing.

FLAP! The sound pinned his ears back. How long had he been at this? He didn’t really know how to mark the passage of time. Instead, he gauged things by how he felt and he felt pretty tired. There was that serpent feeling again, slithering up from his belly. He forced it back down. He needed to concentrate. He focused his eyes and lunged.

FLAP!

Oh, to get at the contents the flappy thing guarded! Each flap puffed aroma into his nose, announcing all the individual ingredients that went into its delicious construction. He had to have it! But his stomach was heavy with the feeling of the serpent inside. A little squeak escaped past his teeth. He looked around as if the sound had come from somewhere else. Focus! He had to focus. He sprung up, stretched his body into a think line and reached for it again!

FLAP! This time the flappy thing almost got him! But he got close to getting what was inside! He was getting better at this! He’d watched Stacey reach into the flappy thing and pull out the treasure, uninjured, from inside so many times! He must be able to do the same. The serpent feeling was tingling in his belly. His feet couldn't stop stamping and they spun him around in a burst of energy. Before he could steady himself and concentrate, he leapt, lunged and…. slipped! 

CRASH!

There it was on the floor. The treasure. The scrumptious, savoury treasure! It was finally his. He didn’t even notice that he was drooling when he snatched up the tastiness, chewed it into smaller bites and pushed it past his throat and into his stomach. Take that serpent feeling!

He sniffed and looked more closely at where he had taken his treasure. Oh. CRAP!

What was, only a few seconds ago, the treat’s vessel, now appeared as glimmering pieces of dusty pottery on the floor, the sharp edges highlighted by the shaft of sunlight cascading through the window. He snuffled the shards, the greedy gratification he had just felt, vanished. The heavy serpent feeling was back but the snake wasn’t ready to pounce. Instead, it coiled, heavily in his stomach.

What would Stacey say? Would she say that word? That awful word?

“Bad Dog”. Stacey would call him “Bad Dog”. His tail dropped. He hated it when Stacey called him “Bad Dog”. He liked being called “Good Dog”. “Good Dog made him bring in the outside air more quickly; it made him wiggle his entire being from tail to snout.

The serpent feeling overwhelmed him as a rush of snaky movement surged up from his belly and out of his mouth, forcing him to tilt back his head, form an "O" with is lips and release a sustained “ahhhhhhh woooooooooo.” It felt good to let release the snake.

His brain was bombarded with images of Stacey’s angry face, sounds of her words, memories of the crash! He couldn’t stop his legs from running, running, running. He had to get out. He needed to get away but there was no way out. He was trapped! There was nothing he could do! Nothing! He was doomed. Doomed!

The earthly stench of ceramic, something under other circumstances, he would find comforting, only made his legs run faster. 

If only he could clean up that mess. He’d watched Stacey do it in the past. She had those things that jutted out of her sides and gradually shrunk into wriggling sticks at the ends. Those things could pick up his toys when they were lost under sofas and scratch his belly and ears when she called him “Good Dog”. He imagined Stacey picking up all the pieces and tossing them into the other smelly receptacle he wasn’t allowed to touch. 

His ears twitched with the image. If only he could do that, but he didn’t have those sticks attached to him and so instead of removing those pieces of pottery, he allowed his already running legs to carry him into a dark corner.

He curled up and waited for Stacey’s inevitable return. On other days, the scratch of her key in the door, the click as the lock opened, and the clack-clack-clack of her dainty steps allowed him to spit out that serpent feeling and “arf arf” his running legs towards her. He liked those days; they made his tail wag and his body wiggle. And Stacey would call him “Good Boy”.

But today was different. He didn’t want Stacey to return. He hoped she’d never return to see the disaster on the floor. He tensed all his muscles and huddled into the tiniest, tightest ball he could make, wrapping his tail around his snout. Even his serpent passenger seemed distressed as it too coiled up motionless inside his stomach. 

As darkness crept across the house, he kept his ears perked up, listening for Stacey-sign. His eyes darted around the room and even though he caught the sight of a silverfish wriggling along the floor, its antennae almost tickling his snout, but he remained motionless, afraid to defend his territory against the insolently invading insect in fear that his movement could set off some unknown cascade effect that would hasten the “Stacey-bad-dog” encounter.

And then the dreaded scratch, the click, the click-clack-clack. He pulled his head in tighter. The serpent squeezed his heart slowly and moved up into his throat. This was it. The bad dog moment had arrived.