To be honest I did not see it coming
To be honest I did not see it coming. I mean, yes, there are those who claim to know ‘something bad is going to happen’, or have the prickling of the old sixth sense warning them of danger, but I didn’t. Despite my keen sense of smell and sharper hearing, I just thought it was a day like any other.
Just another day, when I got up with daybreak, yawned, stretched and decided to sniff out some breakfast. After rooting in some trashcans and sniffing hopefully in some street corners I wandered by a road, now I’m not dumb, I listened to my mother when she warned me about busy streets and uncaring cars. So I do not understand how it happened. All I know is that one minute I caught a whiff of the most appealing smell I have ever smelt. I ambled over to explore and then WHAM! I cried out as I felt something hard and fast hit me in the side, there was a whistling in my ears and I felt the wind rushing past me as I flew through the air. I landed with a dull thump. Abruptly I was reminded of the time I had been just a young puppy, it had been a bright sunny day and I had wandered away from my mother. I remembered the group of children playing cricket in a street, one of them called to me and I walked over, I still remember how I had thought they would play with me. As I lay there in the middle of the road I could still recall the sting of those bats as they hit me, I can still hear my shrill cries, and the shouts of those children as they chased me. I can taste the bile that rose in my throat with fear until I finally found my mother. That’s what I need now I think. I want to run away to a safe place and find my mother.
I lay there panting, remembering trying to drown the crushing pain I feel in my back, I try to move and cant, I cannot get up or wriggle away, I cannot even feel my hind legs. And I am too afraid to look. Afraid of what I will find.
At some point I black out, and when I awaken I see a boy leaning over me. I whine and struggle again to move away, but fresh pain lashes through my back. He reaches out a hand and makes some soothing sounds but I am overcome with terror as I recall the boys with the cricket bats. The boy finally gives up trying to come close to me but I watch him as he leaves. A few minutes later he comes back and places a bowl in front of me; carefully I sniff it to find that it has water. Slowly, tentatively I lick some up hoping the pain would go away. It doesn’t.
By nightfall I’m exhausted. Weak with pain, I can barely summon up the energy to breathe. I watch the night sky as the stars blink slowly into existence and remember other warm summer nights. Nights spent with my mother, snuggled up with my littermates. A cold wind whips past and I realize that someone has covered me with a blanket. Tired and broken I close my eyes, hoping for sleep to provide me some relief from the unending pain.
