Stories one

Watch out! The door almost caught the mangy dog’s tail.

Street dogs are smart dogs they never get caught. This dog Metzo, an overweight Doberman the size of a miniature pony with a shopping bag held in his muzzle. Does Metzo dream about chasing balls? Would she like to chase her own tail? 

This is what I was thinking as we got to the spot. In a dog’s world would I be the human dreaming about balls, chasing my own tail? Would my life be any different if I were a human in a dog’s life or a human in a human’s life? Does this even make sense?

The rough sleeper next to me won’t stop talking, I sleep with my dog she says, my life is definitely better with the dogs with me. I feel their warmth, their fur the protection. I use to sleep with a knife next under my head now I sleep with a tiger! I used to afraid all the time. Now, I am afraid of nothing!

You know we’ve been bringing wild animals home since the beginning, they are comfort animals without the labels. Now we grow them in the labs, we change their DNA make wild animals’ tame turn a cobra to a mouse.

We are equal under the law, doesn’t stop people crossing the road to avoid us though. Some people come over and want to touch her or me? I guess it is still weird seeing a human Doberman hybrid and those animal rights nutters are not shy in letting us know verbally or psychically. Metzo’s lets them know if they get too close. The probably don’t like animals after she does so.

Without us these animals would be extinct the rough sleeper next to me continues. It is because of us these animals are extinct I want to should out at her. She is stressing me out.

The human animal hybrid is saving the animal population of the world. I wonder if Metzo thinks the same. Did anyone ask her if she would like to be linked to a human or face extinction?

They say it is easy to lose a child but not on purpose. The child is clutching at the woman’s thighs while she walks as if the child does not exist. Her body language screams disappear, child, you are not linked to me.

The child belongs to her lover, the child is a large heavy object holding them down. Surely that is reason enough for a child to disappear but no one snatches an ugly child. Her lover’s child was not not ugly.

Her lover was as well, she made lipsticks of every shade and source. Her lover told once of a magic power it gave her depending on the phase of the moon. Once when she was seven she made a clear lipstick with Vaseline, her mother found her pet hamster dead. When she was fourteen a teacher looked at her and was found dead, heart failure with pink lipstick marks on his neck. When she was 17 and her mother boyfriend crashed his bike with red lipstick trace on his lips. At her grandma’s funeral a lady it was overhead there were black lipstick stains on the back of her hand.

She likes snakes and they liked her. Quick flicking tongues, colour coded from bright to dull, patterned or mute. The landlord let himself in and stood by the radiator he felt the bite before he saw them.

The child said to her new best friend my mother says I can’t play with you anymore. She says you are dirty and never clean. The best friend looked at her dirty nails and spat a slimy clear thin spit at the child and said: “So?”

They both went off to play in the dirt.