Dog Bites

We agreed to eat each other’s dogs, as a mercy to the both of us. We traded them as the children slept; and decided to cook them for breakfast. We agreed that it would be easiest to tell the little ones that the dogs had run away. Their full bellies would justify such a sin. That was all the reassurance we could offer each other as we shook hands in the middle of the night, swapping leashes.

“Should I use garlic?” my neighbor called to me as I turned to go silently inside. 

“What?”

“For the…for breakfast. We have a little garlic left. I don’t want the children to comment on the taste. Will garlic make her taste better, do you think?”

A wail of sharp wind tried to answer for me, and it brought with it fresh snow. As I began to shiver, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would have entertained such an idea had it been warmer. The cold, we realized, had made us much hungrier.

“You have garlic?”

He nodded calmly, though he was fixated on the blackness beyond me. “Mary keeps saying we should save it. She says this should all be over soon and then she’ll cook something nice for us. Something with garlic, I guess. I just don’t want the children to know what they’re eating.”

A hush settled between us, during which I tried to figure how best to respond. His eyes slid finally back to me, dark and glassy, and I felt compelled to answer quickly. 

“I don’t have a good canine recipe.”

The joke fell on its face, and my neighbor sighed slowly, his breath twisting into the winter wind. It reminded me of cigarette smoke. We used to smoke together often, when there were cigarettes that we could afford. Night would fall and we would slip into the gap between our homes—I with the concealed pack in my coat, he with the few coins he had scrounged to pay me back. We did this as our wives slept. That had been our one sin then. Lit only by the small embers between our lips, we used to talk of many things, though the conversation usually circled back to the wages. They’d sooner let us starve to death than give us a fatter check, he used to complain. I had thought it was funny, then.

We could not offer each other any further comfort, and we were too cold to spend much time saying our goodbyes. I gave the old girl a firm pat, scratching just behind her ear as she liked. She, much like the rest of the town, had grown quite thin, and the dull gleam of the moonlight revealed her fragile ribs. I wondered if my neighbor would remove them before cooking her, or if he would tell his family to eat around them. 

We allowed each other one pat more, then nodded goodnight. We had to tug on the dogs to get them to follow. They seemed to be confused. I couldn’t bring myself to answer the small whines which trailed behind the man next door. Mercifully, his back door finally slammed, and it was quiet again. I was careful to close mine gently, worried that I would wake the children.

My wife stood in the kitchen, wrapped in the thin blanket we slept under. She had been crying. I could see the streaks beneath her tired eyes. She wouldn’t look at me. Instead, she watched the greying hound as he sniffed around our table. When he finally tired of the kitchen floor, the dog wobbled over to my wife. Her lip trembled as he nudged the fingers clutching our blanket, huffing when she refused to pet him. The dog abandoned her then to inspect our living room. Her eyes were still trained on our visitor when she finally downed the silence hovering between us: “I should have never brought that dog home.”

“You didn’t know.”

“The children will miss her.”

“The children have to eat.”

“I will miss her.”

We grew quiet. We didn’t usually have much to say to one another but I think she truly hated me then. I think I might have hated her too. Why did she bring that dog home? I’d told her another hungry mouth would be no good. I’d tried to tell her. 

“We couldn’t make them eat their own dog, dear. It’s better this way.”

Though we stood across from one another for several minutes more, there wasn’t much left to say. Before she turned from me, she did manage to ask, “When are you going to—”

“After you go to bed. I thought you would already be asleep.”

“I had hoped to say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry.”

My wife wiped her eyes with the blanket, gave one last look to the dog which had curled up beneath the living room window, and went back to bed. 

I spent the night trying to figure out how to kill the neighbor’s dog. But I never did do it. Really, I spent the night crying over the hound, arms wrapped around him in much the same way that my son would hold our dog. I used to fuss at him for that, warning that she couldn’t possibly like it. I understood better why my boy had clung to her. She might not have even minded. The neighbor’s dog didn’t seem to. He was patient with me through the long night, allowing me to confess to him that I couldn’t go through with it. We sat beneath the window that way, weeping and whispering, until the sun opened its eyes.

It wasn’t long after when I could hear the children stirring from down the hall. Knowing that the strange dog would bring with the children questions I had no way of answering, I rose, tied the dog to his leash, and led him through the back door. I heard my daughter call after me through the thin walls. I did not answer her. 

Through the snow drifts we trudged. I had to be patient with him. He was no pup, and his legs moved stiffly. When he realized that he was going home, though, the old boy found some might, and we managed to cross to the backdoor rather quickly. I knocked. He barked. The door opened slowly. My neighbor looked to me, then to his whining dog. I went to explain but I saw his family behind him.

I smelled garlic.

Randi Rogers is excitedly wrapping up her final year as an English student at the University of Southern Mississippi. She has a concentration in Creative Writing, a passion that she discovered at a very young age, and that has remained with her as she grew and began to pursue the craft professionally. She is celebrating her first official publication through Product Magazine, and working toward many more in the future. She has a deep love for art, though storytelling is what truly fuels her, and she hopes to create a space for representation and social critique through her writing. Randi dedicates her success to the support of her incredible partner and loving friends, all of whom deeply inspire and encourage her.