A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw

They left the dog alone. He did not like to be left alone. He barked when they left him, trying to tell them how lonely he was, but they left him anyway.

He always waited for them. There was always a part of him that feared they would not return. But they always did. Sometimes it was a long time before they came back, but eventually they always came back.

After a while the dog stopped barking and went back under his shed. It was cool and dark under the shed and the dog could dig in the dirt, and the dirt was cool and dark too. When the dog was alone he liked it under the shed. Sometimes it would rain and the shed would protect the dog from the rain and keep him dry. The dog liked his spot under the shed. His leash let him crawl far enough back that he could look out at the world without being seen and wait for his people to come home.

He waited a long time. The sun went across the sky and still the people did not come back. It started to get dark and still the people did not come back. The dog left his shelter under the shed to drink the stale water out of the bucket that the rain filled up. He did not have any food under the shed, but that was okay, because when the people came home they would let him come inside and there would be food inside and he would not be alone anymore.

But the people did not come. Night came and still they did not come. He wanted the people to come. He did not want to be alone.

In the night the dog heard strange sounds. There was screaming and yelling, and a kind of loud banging sound like tiny thunder that the dog had never heard before. There was the sound of other dogs barking in the other yards. The other dogs barked very often, but not like this. This was a different kind of bark. This bark sounded afraid. The dog started to be afraid too. If only the people would come home and let him inside and be with him then everything would be okay. But the people did not come.

The shouting sounds and banging sounds went on through the night, and then there was another sound that the dog did not like. It sounded like a person, but not like a person: a kind of low moaning, that made the dog’s hairs prickle and he felt a growl growing in his throat. He could hear the moaning sound getting closer and he got up and went to the end of his leash so that he could bark at the moaning sound and scare it away. But the moaning sound came closer, and then the dog saw it, squeezing through a crack in the fence and the dog did not bark because the dog was afraid of the thing.

It looked like a person, but it did not smell like a person. It smelled old and dead. A scary kind of dead, not the exciting kind of dead like the rabbit that the cat next door had killed once and left on the front porch. Bad dead.

The dog went back and hid under his shed. He hoped that the thing would go away, but the thing did not go away. It squeezed through the fence and came closer to the dog’s place under the shed. The dog barked at the thing, but the thing did not go away.

I tried to reach the dog under the shed, but the thing was too big to fit under the shed. The dog was safe. But the thing did not go away. The morning came and the thing was still in the yard, walking around the shed, trying to find a way to get to the dog. The dog started to get thirsty, but the thing was out there, and the dog knew that if he came out from under the shed to get a drink from his bucket that the thing would get him. So he waited and waited.

The day was very hot, and the dog panted and panted, and he wished he could go and get some water. His stomach wanted food, but he needed water more. But the thing would still not go away. The dog waited and waited, and finally, when the sun was going down, the thing left. The dog thought it might have gone to chase the cat that lived next door, but he thought the thing would not get the cat because he could never get the cat because the cat could climb trees. He climbed out from under the shed and drank from the bucket of stale rainwater for a long time. When he was finally done being thirsty, the dog thought about being hungry again, but he didn’t have any food. Maybe the people would come home soon and let him in and he could eat his food and he would not be alone anymore. But still the people did not come.

When it got dark again, the dog heard more barking from other dogs, but this time there weren’t as many and one time he heard a little dog yelping and crying and then it was quiet.

The dog was worried. He could hear the moaning person-things walking around outside his fence, but no more of them came in. But he could smell them, and he did not like the smell. He could smell other things too. He smelled smoke, and he smelled blood, and he was afraid. Some time in the night he managed to sleep, but he kept waking up because of the sounds and smells outside. He whimpered to himself in the dark under the shed, and wished he did not have to be alone. Sometime in the night he got thirsty again, and got up to drink from the water bucket. He had to stick his head way down in the water bucket to get the water, and then there was no water left, so he went back under the shed and tried to sleep some more.

He did not know how long he had been outside, but he knew it had been a long time. He wondered if he might be being Punished for something. Sometimes when he did something bad like chewing shoes or eating the garbage he got Punished. Sometimes the Punishment was a spanking, and the dog did not like spankings, but he liked the way shoes and garbage tasted so sometimes he ate them anyway. But one time when the people had been really angry they had spanked him and then put him out in the yard all by himself. The dog did not like the spanking, but he did not like being by himself more than he did not like the spanking. After that, he did not chew on shoes or garbage for a whole week just to show how good he could be. But he hadn’t chewed on shoes or garbage lately so he wondered why he was being Punished. He wished there was some garbage to chew on, but there wasn’t. His stomach was hurting and he wanted to eat some food so that it would stop hurting, but there was no food, and he could not go and try to find food because of the leash.

The sun came up and it was hot, and the dog was thirsty, but there was no water in the water bucket. The dog stuck his nose way down in the bucket trying to get even a few drops of water, but the bucket was dry and the sun was hot, and the dog knocked over the bucket with his nose while he was trying to get to the water that wasn’t there.

He had slept that night, but still he was very tired, because it was so hot, and he was so thirsty, and there was no water. He went back under the shed and tried to dig down into the cool dirt, but his paws were too tired. He tried to lick the dirt, but it didn’t taste very good.

He wanted the people to come home. He knew that if they would come home and let him inside, and he could drink out of the toilet bowl for a long time that he would be a good dog and would not chew on shoes or garbage for a very long time. But the people would not come. The dog got hotter, and he was so tired he could barely move. He just lay under the shed panting hard, and thinking about water and inside and food. The moaning sounds didn’t happen so often now, and the bad dead smell wasn’t so bad, but the dog didn’t care about that any more. He was so tired that he fell asleep and when he woke up again it was night-time. The dog was so tired he couldn’t move, could barely open his eyes. He just lay there watching and thinking and wishing.

And then the sun was up again, and the dog could barely manage to breathe and the flies started to land in his nose and on his lips and on his eyes. The dog wanted to chase them away. He had once been a good bug chaser. But now the bugs were chasing him, and he couldn’t even shake himself to make them go away. As he lay there in the darkness, laboring to take slow shallow breaths the dog thought of better times. He thought of the time that the people had taken him in the Ride Machine and he had stuck his head out the window and let the wind flap his ears. And the Ride Machine had taken them to the place with water, but not bad water like bath water, but good water, cold and nice, and with no soap. He remembered how he had delighted in tearing up and down the sandbar with the sand crunching under his paws and carrying a wet stick in his mouth from one end of the sand bar to the other, and he remembered how perfect the water had been when he had jumped in so cool and clear, and how wonderful it had been to swim in the current. He could almost taste the water now, but it wasn’t real and he was so tired.

He wondered if the people would come for him soon. He hoped they would take him in the Ride Machine at least one more time to the place with water, but mostly he just hoped they would come and stay with him forever so that he wouldn’t have to be alone ever again. He kept thinking that for a long time, but the people did not come.

And a little while later, he died.