Charlie

It’s been two years.

Two years since I saw him from the windowsill, coming through those gates.

Two years since I greeted him at the front door as he dropped his bags and, if it was a blustery chilly day, removed his hat, his scarf and his coat and hung them up to dry.

Two years since I sat on the old leather sofa with him watching rubbish telly as the night drew in.

Two years since I stared into his old smiley eyes and smiled back.

It’s been two months.

Two months since I escaped and came back to his home. Two months since I ran away from my new family and back to where I am meant to be. Two months of relying on scarce supplies in order to wait for his return. 

I am hungry and thirsty but I know Charlie will come back, and he will come through that gate with his three shopping bags and his walking stick and lean it against the doorframe and get out a treat especially for me, saying “don’t eat it all at once,” and with a smile, handing it to me. And it will be the best treat I’ll ever have because it will be two years overdue.

The house is different now. The windows are mucky with rainwater and stains – some of them are broken; the walls are peeling slightly and cracks are appearing in various places as water seeps through the roof during the storms. The kettle is full of limescale and the taps are clogged with it too. The rugs smell damp and mouldy, and as I lay down to sleep I can hear the scurrying of mice and rats over the floorboards. The heating stopped working a long time ago and the garden is very overgrown. I’m sure Charlie will be annoyed to see how much of state his house has been left in when he returns. There’s not much I can do though. Nobody knows I am here. 

And I want it to remain that way. I only want Charlie to take care of me, not any of these other strangers trying to take over his duty – not well for that matter. They don’t bother listening to me, they just tell me to do things and get angry at times when I do something wrong. I feel they expect too much of me. I don’t hate them, they care for me clearly and want the best for me but they aren’t Charlie. Charlie never got angry and Charlie always listened.

So I stay here, waiting. Each day a new dawn breaks and the blackbirds begin to chirp and the wrens begin to twitter, I will get up from my bed and hurry to the door to eagerly see if he comes through the open gate and I will greet him with eagerness and everything will be okay again. 

And at night, I sleep with one eye open, listening for any noise of life – Charlie would sometimes not be able to sleep and I would wake up and go downstairs to join him so he didn’t feel alone, and he’d chat to me until we dozed off or he went for a shower.

I wonder where Charlie is. I know he will come home because I know his love was never fake. There is no way he’d leave without me. 

I have heard people do leave though. But people leave if they don’t love somebody enough to stay. Charlie used to tell me stories of a few people in his life that left him, but they didn’t love him enough unlike I do. He loved me enough, and he told me that. He loved that woman too – the one he talked to me often about.

I am tired. I haven’t slept properly in weeks. But it is going to be worth it. I know it. He will come home.

***************************************************************************

I wake to the noise of the front door slamming repeatedly on its broken catch. The ceiling is shaking and I hear the whooshing of wind through the smashed windows. I listen carefully, my senses on high alert, and listen to the rain beating down from every direction, splattering onto the kitchen floor as it finds its way into the house. It is still quite dark and I feel disorientated. Straining to my feet, I ignore the pain shooting through my stiff joints and head to the landing.

Making my way down the stairs, I see the rainwater running into the living room. It is cold and unpleasant and I know Charlie would hate to see this happening. I quickly shuffle through the violent front door – before it slams on me again – and out into the overgrown garden, a gust of wind nearly knocking me off my feet. Thickets of brambles and nettles line the sides of the house, being tossed and turned in the storm like ragdoll hair. The trees are alight in a dance with the tumultuous gale and the sky is rolling in an angry blue-grey sea.

My vision is hazy not just from the dark of the early morning nor from the rain sheeting into my eyes and nose but from the pain shooting through my body with a vengeance. I feel my pulse in my ears. I should go back to bed, it was a false alarm, there is no Charlie at the front door. But something tells me to stay out here, to search. It’s my last hope.

I walk out of the front gate, a path to the left – one that Charlie walked often – leading to the village, and a path to the right leading deep into the woods. Despite knowing that Charlie rarely went into the woods without me, I decide to take the forest path. 

Every step is an effort for my old, weak legs, but I move through the bushes, following my intuition. Something tells me he has been here, something inside feels unsettled, moreso than usual.

I continue through the bushes, shortcutting the path to search deeper into the forest. At least the thick canopy here is protecting me somewhat from the rain, yet the wind still penetrates my skin with icy chill. 

My feet carry me to an open patch of grass, where the full force of the gale is pummelling my frail form. Squinting, I look up as a small patch of cloud opens up to reveal a strangely bright shaft of light in contrast with the blackness of the menacing sky. I let it reach out and touch me and warm my face amongst the chill taking over my body. It was a salvation, the first sunlight I’ve felt in months. 

Suddenly I am walking again, this time it feels I am walking up a steep hill, yet I do not understand quite what is happening – my vision is distorting. I cannot see properly yet I feel myself still plodding, continuing upwards with the strange pull encouraging me to do so. I feel hail in my face, beating me to submission with icy shards yet I persevere, fighting against the storm. It won’t take me now, not yet. For all I know, I have run into a hailstorm so severe that I am blinded – yet I can see familiar outlines of the dark clouds continuing to trek sluggishly over the treetops therefore I must have at least some sight remaining. 

My legs guide me, pushing on, but the exertion is beginning to take its toll. I haven’t walked this far in years let alone the last two months. I see no shelter from the forest, just clouds, feel no soft sweeps of bracken brushing my sides, just the constant tugging of the wind from every direction, threatening to pull me over. My whole body feels incredibly feeble, pain shooting out from every sinew as I carry on taking each step. My heart is beating slowly, too slowly for the amount of effort I am using, and my vision is dimming around the edges with each pulse. It dawns on me that I haven’t eaten properly in weeks, I have been surviving off rainwater collected in the bucket outside the house, and I have not felt warm for what feels a lifetime. My body is not prepared for this but I must continue if it’s the last thing I do. 

I look upwards, and I realise I am walking up a staircase. I see no trees anymore. I don’t hazard to look down, and even if I did I don’t think I’d have much option to go back. It feels colder up here, higher up here. I am scared, and I call into the wind.

Charlie, I am scared. Charlie, please come rescue me.

A powerful sense of loneliness washes over me. And regret. My new family was good to me. They would not allow me to get into this mess. But they were and never will be Charlie. If they were to rescue me right now, I would be grateful, but the truth is I wouldn’t be happy. 

My body is slowing with every little movement now. The storm roars around me, open arms, waiting to catch me and swallow me as I fall. The sky moves dizzyingly in a dance around my helpless form, a predator simply teasing its hapless victim. The hail starts again, each crystal feeling like a bullet against my protruding bones. My hearts starts to hammer in my ears, and my vision slowly begins to fade with each pulse. Exhaustion begins to take over my body, pulling it down like a heavy weight.

Each step is like wading through thick tar. Another step, my muscles are trembling, shooting with pain unlike any I have felt before. Again, another. My breath comes out in strained, wheezing huffs. It is so dark, I should be scared but I am past the point of caring. I should stop, take a proper breath, but I continue. My tongue is numb, my lungs are burning, my heart is hammering. I cannot stop now. I cannot stop now. 

I reach to take another step, but the darkness envelopes my form and drags me under.

***************************************************************************

My eyes open lazily to the sunlight, which blinds me momentarily as if I’ve just escaped from being trapped within a cave. I let them adjust, taking in the scents from my surroundings. The air smells clean and fresh, like geraniums. The ground feels soft and bouncy, as if I am on a thick mattress covered in fresh duvet. All around I can hear whistling of the remnants of the storm, yet it doesn’t sound threatening. I dare a stretch, and wince, anticipating pain as usual to shoot throughout my joints, yet to my disbelief I feel nothing but relief, akin to ridding the stiffness of a good night’s sleep.

Yawning, I slowly get to my feet.

I see outlines of puffy white clouds, yet my vision is still bleached from the contrast to the darkness of the stormy night before so I cannot be sure what I am seeing is real. Nothing feels entirely real, realness would be waking to the cold damp of the house I have lived in for the past few months without a soul knowing. Realness would be staring out of green-tinted smashed windows, realness would be nudging the heavy broken door to stare out into an unkempt garden, realness would be walking painfully over splintered floorboards and smelling the ripeness of fresh rat droppings. Realness would be waking up at dawn each day to rush to the door and wait, cold and damp, in the frail hope that he would come home, that I would just pick up a slight trace of a smell of his leather jacket or any remnants of his scent. 

His scent. I sniff the air again. Among the geraniums, I can smell something faint, something musty in the wind. Something triggering a memory within.

I am suddenly running, frantically tracing the smell. This isn’t his house. But yet I continue to follow it, wisps of snow-white rolling between my legs and over my body as I frantically search. 

I catch sight of something in the distance, and in an instant I recognise it. The gate. 

I am suddenly in front of it. I see the house now, yet it’s not the same house I have lived in for the last few difficult months. The lawn has been freshly mown, the brambles cleared, and vivid geraniums are dotting the flowerbeds against the pleasant newly painted walls. The windows have been repaired, and are cracked open to let in the gentle breeze. I hear the clinking of china dishes and low voices.

My heart is in my mouth. The smell suddenly hits me like a freight train, and electricity begins to course through my veins. I call out, scrabbling to open the gate but rather just jumping up and down in desperation – to my bewilderment; something my old joints haven’t been able to do in years – in hopes somebody can see me, somebody would come to the window. 

I hear a higher-pitched voice, followed by a low muttering, and a dish smash against the hard floor. And then I see it. I see his face, hands pressed firmly against the window and his breath condensing on the glass. Just for an instant, and then he is gone. My stomach somersaults and my heart hammers as I continue to call out.

With a quick distortion in the corner of my vision, somehow I am now looking back and I am seeing the other side of the gate. Before confusion could spark within, I hear the click of the latch and whip round. 

And there he is again, yet he looks starkly different. His face is clean-shaven, his once heavily wrinkled eyes are brighter and wider than before, his crooked glasses gone and his hair a darker shade of brown rather than the snowy grey-white I last saw him as. But it is still him. He looks like the day he picked me up from the shelter all those years ago. He lets out a cry and from behind him I see a woman, who lets go of his hand as he crouches down. She smiles warmly at me, with kind eyes – and a faint hint of recognition sparks within me. I hear his old voice in my head and the flash of a picture on the hearth – “the one that never left until the end”.

I am bounding now, my tongue lolling lazily out of my mouth, yelping with each step not out of pain but with the sheer euphoria coursing through my veins, something so powerful it is almost holy. I feel the icy breeze surround me but it is not uncomfortable. It feels like it is meant to be here. Wisps of cloud line my path through the garden and I have a finish line.

I let the smell envelope me and I leap into his open arms, feeling them wrap around me in the tightest embrace. I bury my head into his shoulder as he buries his head into mine. I feel wetness as he lets out gasping sobs into my fur, and I whine in elation, breathing his scent until my lungs are full. This is the moment I have been waiting for. All the cold, damp nights, the rumbling empty stomach, the parched mouth, the pain my body went through – it was all worth it. I knew it would be. 

“Sammy, my boy,” he sobs into my shoulder, holding me as if he would never let me go. I hope he doesn’t ever again. “I thought you’d never come home. I have waited for so long to see your goofy little face again.”

I affectionately lick the crease of his elbow.

Dad, I never left. I waited for you like I always would.

And with that, I feel the golden gate close behind me. 

Finally, I am home.