SHADOWS IN THE GLASS -- Chapter 33

Friday July 29

Shadow always listened. Even as she napped she mapped the movements around her. On some level she was always alert. Ready to roll to her feet and leap into the breach at any moment. Her training and service experience honed and focused these instincts, to sense danger, to notice anomalies that indicated deceit. It was her duty. Her part to play in the pack.

Familiar sounds and rhythms washed over her and lapped at the edge of her attention. Children chattered by in clusters, chasing each other home from school. The distant growl and clatter of the trash truck, wheezing and hissing like a mechanical dinosaur, rampaging ever closer. A disturbing sound, but familiar. No reason for her to stir. Keeping the perimeter secure was her duty, but the trash truck never entered the yard.

Her days were idyllic. Bounding alongside butterflies in flight. Debating with the blue jay. Freezing to focus her attention on hovering hummingbirds.

Play and duty were almost interchangeable. Both gave her satisfaction. First thing she did every morning was to sniff the perimeter. Ears were useful for collecting information, but smell allowed her to internalize the ephemera. The innate knowledge of her species was unlocked through scent.

The days were peaceful but if they stretched too long Shadow became acutely aware of Lisa's absence. Shadow felt no subservience in her role. The bond with Lisa was a sense of belonging to a greater whole. Their pack of two.

She watched dust motes dance slow pirouettes through the sunbeams streaming in the kitchen window. The day was languid and hot. The floor tiles were warm against her belly.

On this nearly perfect day Shadow was anxious. It manifested as a twinge that developed into an itch. Shadow turned her head to lick it. Her face knocked against the plastic cone.

She let out a high whining sigh. The dreaded cone. It caught at the wind when she ran. It grabbed at her throat. It hid things behind new blind spots. The worst part was the sound. Her hearing was reduced at the sides, increased in the middle, and smeared by constant reverberation. She couldn't tell where sounds came from anymore.

But it wasn't the cone that had her worried.

A black sedan rolled past the window. The rhythm of the motor and lick of rubber on asphalt was drowned out by an insistent 808 kicking a gangster beat. The sub in the car was pumping so much 60 Hertz that every throb of the bass drum seemed to inflate the car like a sheet-metal balloon before it rattled out through the seams.

The sound caught a natural resonance in the cone and bounced around inside like a fun-house mirror made of polished cacophony. Shadow tried to shake her head clear but her nose rang the sides like a flabby bell.

She sighed and laid back down. Focused her eyes on the dust motes again, but they had been stirred by her movement to disarray were spinning into chaos.

Her attention was suddenly drawn to a distant sound. Familiar and drawing nearer.

Pa-pa-patta-patta-pa-pa-patta-pa-pa ...

Her human was coming home. But the daylight was wrong for her return. Shadow's joy was dampened by anxiety. She froze and unfurled an ear towards the sound. The rhythm was wrong. Lisa's engine had developed a hitch. For weeks the engine rhythm had been, Pa-patta-pa-patta-pa-pa-pa-patta ...

Shadows whined. It reverberated in the cone like every other sound. She couldn't trust her own senses. Every sound was jumbled up.

She saw the car approaching through the window. Her tail thumped once on the tile. Hesitating between competing feelings. She froze. Ears up and eyes wide as the car pulled into the driveway. The sound of the automatic garage-door grinding open sent her tail into a flurry.

Unable to contain herself Shadow sprang up. With the cone flapping against her face she bounded around the corner of the kitchen and through the living room. Echoes mixed inside the cone. The garage door rattling. The car door closing. Car keys jingling. Footsteps on concrete.

The door to the garage opened. Shadow's tail stopped. She let out an inquisitive whine.

Her human was holding a transport cage. Shadow had only been inside it once, in a drugged sleep coming home after emergency surgery. Shadow shouldn't know the purpose of the cage but her anxiety returned.

Shadow sniffed. Lisa's scent was her name. Her fragrance carried the chemical thumbprint of her DNA. Her fragrance shined through the scent of any grooming products or savory food she might be carrying. There was something sour and acrid beneath her scent now. As if something else were inside her, oozing from her pores. Like the smell of methamphetamine on some of the sweating suspects Shadow had helped apprehend.

She snatched Shadow by the collar. Lifted her front paws off the ground. Pulled her forward. She held her there. Front paws kicking in search of floor. She put down the cage.

She growled at Shadow. "Mongrel get in the box!"

She opened the cage door and crammed the cone through the opening. Shadow furiously back-peddled but once the cone was squeezed inside, all the momentum was working against her.

Shadow was roughly shoved into the cage. The door latched. Face inside the cone, Shadow was too cramped to turn. The cage lifted. Swinging languidly it went into the kitchen.

She whistled a mournful melody as she walked. Shadow splayed her legs out to the corners of the cage and pressed her back against the top. Her tail protectively curled between her legs. She shuddered.

The human set the cage on the kitchen floor. She straightened, stepped back and eyed it. Then stepped forward to make a minute adjustment. Shadow watched through the wire mesh of the back window.

She took a pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket. She shook one out. Put it in her mouth. The back flap of an open book of matches was tucked into the cellophane. She tore a match free. Struck it to flame. Lit her cigarette.

She inhaled. Tossed the cigarette pack into the silverware drawer. She puffed the cherry into a little glowing ember of hell. Gray tendrils of smoke curled around her face. She smiled at Shadow. A smile of such malevolence that a whine escaped Shadow's throat.

Her words puffed out thick with smoke. "You should have been good. But you made me mad. It's your fault Mongrel. You make me do things. Because you're bad."

Shadow wanted to be a good dog. Always in all ways. Good.

"Bad dog Mongrel. I hate to do this. But you make me. It's the only way you'll learn."

She puffed again. Made the end throb and glow. She gave an evil wink and showed Shadow the smoldering cigarette.

Shadow whimpered and sneezed. With the cone taking up so much room, Shadow could barely move. Her back leg was pressed against the steel mesh door. Sticking her fingers through the three inch gap in the bars, she grabbed Shadow's foot and worked it out through the mesh. She pushed the fur away from the raw spot on Shadow's leg.

Puffing the cigarette brighter, she whistled. Slow and flat and lonesome. Laden with smoke and bitterness. She removed the cigarette from her mouth.

Shadow voided her kibble into the end of the dog carrier.