The Smell of Evil
If he moves any closer, I’ll show him my teeth. If he takes just one more step, I’ll add a growl.
Maybe I should bite. I have never bitten anyone, but I want to bite him so badly.
He smells like evil.
“Come on, you stupid dog”, he says, reaching under the garden bench where I’ve been hiding. A cocktail of foul scents oozes out of every one of his pores. I feel like throwing up.
I hate my collar. It gives him something to grab onto, and I am too tired to fight. All I wanted to do was hide out here until he was done screaming at her inside. She was crying when I ran out. I don’t like it when she cries. I tried to chase him away from her once before, but he kicked me. My ribs hurt with every step for a week. I have been avoiding him, since.
He stormed outside a while ago, paced back and forth at first, and now he is reaching for me, hooking my collar to a leash, pulling me out. What?!? No, no, no, I don’t want to run alongside the bike! I have never done this before! I am too old for this. I want to go back to her! I need to make sure she is ok!
The pedals squeak a little as he pushes his anger into them. The collar is cutting into my neck and I can’t do anything but run. Just a few blocks away from home, I am out of breath. I can’t keep up, I can’t breathe, I can’t…
My legs give out. It feels like all four of them decided to stop moving all at once. I stumble and he nearly falls off the bike. I collapse and lay in the dirt, my chest heaving. At least I am now in the crosshairs of his anger, instead of her.
“You idiot, lazy dog! I’ve had it with you”, he says as he disconnects the leash from my collar.
“Get lost!”
My heart is beating inside my head so fast and so loud, that I cannot think. He kicks up the dirt on the side of the road into my face and growls. I did not know humans could growl. I muster all that’s left in me and bolt.
I run between honking cars and, somehow, end up on the narrow strip of grass in the middle of a highway. He follows me from a distance but through the blur of the passing cars, I can see him turning away. He yells something over his shoulder about finally getting rid of me before he gets back on the bike and disappears.
I sit down, disoriented. I don’t know what to do, so I just sit and wait. I think that is what she would want me to do. It seems like a long time but then I see her. She parks on the other side of the road, yells “stay, Fido!”, and runs across the two-lane highway to me. I get up on my shaky legs and wag my tail to greet her. She kneels down in the dirty grass, her knee falling on a flattened soda can. She throws her arms around me, and cries.
Inside, I cry with her. I try to tell her I love her. That I wanted to protect her and be strong for her. I tell her that I was too afraid. My words come out as a sloppy lick on her face. I taste her salty tears and lick her face some more.
She picks me up and carries me across the highway, back to the car.
I don’t care where we are going as long as I am with her but feel relieved that we go to the park instead of back home. She sits under the biggest tree, and I lay down beside her, my chin on her thigh. We sit there together, her and I, two souls having a quiet moment in the eye of a storm. Both of us thinking about not going home, ever.
“You have always known, haven’t you?”, she asks me as her eyes find mine.
Yes, I have. I have always known that he is all kinds of wrong. I wish I could have warned you.
Do you not know what evil smells like?
Marie H. Anne, Mom, Twin Soul, Entrepreneur, Writer. Full of Gratitude. Boldly walking toward my dreams. I write memoirs, short stories, and auto-fiction about surviving violence and abuse and how amazing life has become despite and because of it.
