Never The Light Of Day

The memory would never leave her. For all of the rest of her days, between her dreams and ambitions, and the darkness that sometimes surrounded her like a black hole, this moment stained itself into her soul as a constant reminder. His body lay motionless. She knew at once he was dead. Running, she reached him in seconds; watched, as the perpetrator sped away without a second look back. How could he die while feeling so warm? How could a face so peaceful, so full of life, be just a blank mask of death? It could not be true, and she would not accept the obvious. And so, she tousled his fur too vigorously, and stroked his long, proud features as she’d done a thousand times before. Still, he didn’t move; his brown eyes staring off into the distance, concentrating, almost, on some far off figment of his imagination. They pulled her away still screaming at the top of her lungs. Screaming for someone to do something; go after the man; save her beloved; anything. Later, in the solitude of her room, comforted by her father, this child of ten, tender years, struggled to make sense of a senseless act that had cost her old, faithful friend of a dog, his life. She always knew for sure he would never leave her. He was her prince, the only tangible thing she truly believed in, truly trusted. To be taken from her before his time, to be wrenched from this world and tossed in the gutter like a useless piece of trash, would not go unanswered. And when she’d be asked, in years to come, what started the madness that became her life, she would only say, calmly, but with concrete resolution, “Because he killed my dog. I did all these things because he killed my dog.”