Red

All I had eaten for many days was grass but at the final moment the grass had gone with the heat and what small bitter fruits had fallen from the tree I had eaten and these had ruined my insides. He toed me away from the tree and my eyes were open, the red sky moving over them.

I felt like water indeed watching Him walk up the road. Felt cooler and cooler with his each passing step. But at the touch of his boot the pain flared back into me as though the dust beneath me were knives. The collar of pain where the chain had buried flashed, my eyes turned back on. I snarled, I reared up.

And He smiled.

And when He knelt to cup his hand to my face I was going to bite and tear but He smelled like water and there was water in His palm. I lapped, and there was always water there.

I drank and there was no more pain. With His other hand he pinched the chain and the chain snapped and fell away, and as He drew the chain from out beneath the folded mass of rotten skin and muscle, there was no pain, but fresh blood spilled, and it was my blood. I kept drinking His water hand and as he passed the other hand around the collar my pain went away.

I buried my head into the crook of his arm and I smelled Him.

His teeth and eyes were gold when He stood up, and the fur on his head and around his face was black like mine. The red sky wreathed his head. He growled out long and low and my belly thrilled. Though I was hungry and desperate for meat. My belly thrilled.

When he stepped off the hill and started making his way down to the house was when I realized I could smell and see, better than before. I couldn’t remember much. I needed meat. I stared after him as he went in the house. I stood by the tree, the broken chain at my feet.

I waited. I looked after him.

Then I heard breaking sounds coming from the house, and I heard the shout of the one who had chained me, who had almost killed me, and I tasted again the arm of the boy his son who I’d bitten.

That boy now hung in the tree.

I fired myself down the hill.. I must follow Him.

He was there carrying with him the crying girl with the orange hair. I barked and she cringed and He said to stop so I did. She was fighting Him.

I wondered about his water hand. Then I went in the house. The floor was slick with the blood of the man who’d chained me. He was just barely dead and smelled just like before.
He was barely dead. I left it there.