No Dogs, No Masters (Fiction)

29 Mar, 2023

I saw a stranger drowning from the other side of the pool. The guy probably had too much to drink. It was quiet. No splashing or screaming. Just someone who slipped under the surface and stayed down there longer than they could. I didn’t realize he didn’t come up on his own until a fully clothed guy, drenched wet, was pushing on his chest on the poolside. The drowned man’s maw became a weak geyser, spurting mouthfuls of chlorine down his chin. The entire time, behind me, a group of boys, barely past pup age, were the only sound in the warm night air– chattering, enjoying the party.

“Fuck. Holy shit, man.” Cooper was stoned when it happened, sitting right next to me, our hind paws both in the water. He grabbed my bicep in a latch-hard grip and shook it in his claws. “He, like, could have died. Just right then, and he, holy shit, and he didn’t. His life got saved, man.”

The two strangers embraced, the savior facing my direction and the drowned man facing away. Fur dripping, water returning into the pool. It felt like I had seen something I shouldn’t have. Like I was caught peeping. A near-death experience should be private. I didn’t look away.

It was a dingo, the guy who almost drowned. You don’t see a lot of those around here, my dad would say if he saw him. He always made a comment on the other non-domestics.

“We would have had our feet in corpse water, man. That could have been one of us.” Cooper took another pull off of his joint before retching into his elbow. “Fucked up.”

New trucks for skateboards are expensive. I was lamenting this fact at about three o’clock on a Thursday when Marcus decided to break out the beers, a deluge of foam cascading down his paw when he popped the tab. He moved to offer me a can but recoiled like he had been burned in the middle of it, then smoothly slid to Toby instead. After handing off the drink he flopped, from standing upright to sitting, down on a beanbag chair.

They still drank around me, even though they knew I had just earned back my four-month chip. Of course they didn’t stop. I never told them not to. Didn’t want to be a bother. I was proud of how I took the interruption in stride. I continued, but my ears twitched.

I couldn’t skate to work because I hit a tree root growing through the pavement and fell ass-over-teakettle. The wheel popped off the truck, which then split in two. My only mode of transportation to and from work was gone. It couldn’t get repaired until I got another truck for my board, which I couldn’t get without transportation, which I didn’t have.

Marcus was a bulldog who had the droopiest face you’d ever see. Unimpressed. He sat in the beanbag like a stone and occasionally took sips of his drink. “Sucks, man.” Was all he said.

Toby bobbed his head from the other side of the room, used the heel of his paw to put his cap back in place. The ear holes at the top weren’t made for floppy golden retriever ears, but he wore it anyway. He leaned forward on the ratty basement couch. “It’s like the shit about the boots.”

“Boots, what the fuck are you talking about, boots?” Marcus took another swig.

“The boots, you know. You get a pair of boots for cheap, right, but they’re built like ass. So they fall apart. Meanwhile, some richie rich gets a pair of boots for extra money and they’re built to last, so we’re stuck buying shit boots over and over and over.” He pinwheeled his paw in the air, words trailing off into the lip of the can.

“Man, just get the better boots.”

“That’s what I’m saying, bro! You can’t get the better boots! They’re fuckin’ expensive!

“So just work more hours, then get the money, then get the better boots.”

I tugged at the chest of my tank top, trying to get some air. “Hey, Toby, it’s kinda hot in the basement. Can you turn on the A/C or something?”

He didn’t hear me. “ ‘N how the fuck are you supposed to get to work when your boots are busted to shit?”

“Put on some slides or something.”

“Cycles! It’s about the cycles!” Frantically, he circled his fist in the air like he was trying to hurriedly engrave an oval. His tail was wagging at a frantic clip. “They’re trying to keep us oppressed, man!”

“Cycles. Shoots.” Marcus bobbed his head, clearly wanting the conversation to end.

Toby wasn’t explaining it right. I bit my tongue. Wasn’t like I could explain it any better. My eyes watched them drink with barely-concealed lust. The dryness of my throat was overpowering. My nose twitched, nostrils opening up like hungry pits as I tried to swallow the stench of the alcohol through my nasal cavity. Didn’t cut it. Still tried. I repeated one thing in my mind: four months and seven days. Four months and seven days.

The two continued their back and forth barking as Cooper leaned forward from his seat in a folding chair, towards me. “Hey. Can you drive me to work tomorrow, man?”

“I don’t have a car.” I replied. He knew that.

“I know that. I just know I’m gonna have a wicked fucking hangover and I don’t want to drive myself. You can use the car ‘till I need to get picked up, if you want.”

“Is that how you’re gonna pay me back for me driving you to work? By letting me use your car?”

He sucked on his teeth, lip curling back just enough that I could see the tip of his canine. “Bitch, don’t be stingy. Go get the thing you need for your board while you’ve got it. Just don’t drain the tank.” “Fine.” Don’t call me a bitch.

And then he smiled, a charming, jack russell terrier smile, as he sat forward so far that he basically stood in a squat, just so he could pet between my ears. “You’re a good coyote.”

I didn’t like the way he said it. Kai-yote. A trail of beer foam slipped down to his shirt collar and I held myself back from licking it off of him.

I dropped Cooper off in front of a parlor downtown, a dive that was sparsely populated with a few dobermans and the occasional greyhound. The type of place where all the skinny breeds hung out, long-necked and perk-eared. Whip-attentive. What were they doing here so early, like they had something to prove? They watched the car as I pulled away, and I could feel their eyes on me until I turned the block.

And there was freedom. I could go anywhere, effortlessly. No pushing off the ground, shifting my weight, tiring my legs and using my tail like a rudder through the air. I had access to a type of privilege that was stuck behind the barrier of insurance, gas money, parking fees. Just for a day.

My first instinct was to go to the liquor store. A car meant storage. Storage meant more room for more alcohol. Stop, examine the urge, acknowledge, let go. I swallowed the dry taste of morning breath under my tongue and curled my digits over the steering wheel, tight. No liquor store.

I turned on the A/C. June was hot, and people normally trimmed their fur around this time. Last time I tried I shaved a big patch completely bald, right at my belly, and got a shitload of fur stuck in my shower drain. Even if it makes me pant, I think longer suits me. Covers up the thinning spots, too.

A little plastic cutout of a collie in a bikini swung under the mirror.. She didn’t look very affected by the heat, smiling wide, her tail curled up and poking over the back of her waistband. The A/C did nothing except move the hot air around, stinking of air-freshener sandalwood.

Where to go? It was only 8:45 in the morning. The liquor stores wouldn’t even be open, anyway. Stop, acknowledge, let go. Imagine your thoughts floating away like a balloon on the wind. The skate shop wouldn’t be open until later, either. I could find something to busy myself with until then.

I drove around the city aimlessly, looking through the windshield at the swathes of people going about their lives. A beagle in glasses and a long skirt walked across the street, scrolling on her phone. A white sheepdog read a newspaper on a park bench, taking intermittent drags off of a cigar. A small pack of King Charles spaniels scampered around their exhausted parents on the sidewalk. A shih tzu exited a shopping center with bags lining her short arms.

Peoplewatching was only so easy while trying to control a moving vehicle. It had been a long while since I had driven, and I barely avoided clipping the curb every time I was near it. Too many controls to deal with at once, around other drivers. Time for a break.

I pulled up to a convenience store with a pretty empty lot, further out from the main hub of the city. Cold linoleum place with harsh lights and colorful plastic bags lining grated shelves. I wasn’t very hungry, but I needed an excuse to do something. The gravitational pull of the coolers in the back was torturous. I didn’t dare let myself breach into their sightline. Four months and eight days. Don’t throw away the work of four months and eight days.

I instead opened one of the fridges near the checkout, by the big tub full of ice cream. My paw naturally maneuvered to an aluminum can. It wasn’t beer. The can was just designed to look that way, to help wean off addicts like me. Capitalism came up with the most inventive things. “Will that be all?” The black coonhound at the register drawled, her apron tightly cinched around her waist.

I crumpled the receipt and put it in my pocket. “Nah, that’s okay. Thanks.”

She nodded then looked down at a magazine, the cover boasting three new tips to lose belly fat. Social rules dictated that this transaction was over. I still found myself talking.

“Slow day today.” I said.

“Yeah.” She put her chin in her hand, maw opening wide to yawn. One of her sharp teeth had a gold filling. “It is.”

“Is it normally this dead?”

“I guess so.”

“Kinda boring. But at least you don’t have to do too much work.” I popped the tab on the drink and took a sip, half-confused for a beat when I tasted water.

“Mhm.”

“I wish my job was like that. I’m just a pencil pusher.”

“Sounds boring.”

“It is.” I shrugged. “But it’s fine. You just do what people tell you to do.”

“That’s, like, all jobs.”

“I guess so.”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes lifted from the magazine, but her body didn’t. It was the first time she looked at me since I walked in. I just returned her gaze.

“What’re you reading?” I asked.

She shifted a little where she stood, her paw hovering under the counter. Watching me. An undercurrent of cortisol in the stale air. I eyed her, then looked away.

“Have a good one.” I muttered into the can before scurrying outside. I had seen that look before in people, when they registered my appearance for the first time. They didn’t have to tell me– I knew. I was the one who had to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. The years of drinking did it to me, making my fur less coarse than it used to be, falling out in patches. My ears flicked when there wasn’t any sound. The doctor made a joke about me being a coyote. “Good thing your eyes were already yellow, but unfortunately, that did make this harder for us to catch…”

My parents were scared to see me, even after three months of AA. Good progress. Only one relapse. But it was after nine months clean, so it hurt more. Mom took my face in her paws and cried, oh, my daughter, what did you do to yourself? Dad didn’t say anything about how I looked. Just asked about my job and if I wanted to go hunting later. In that blissful moment where a drink was the furthest thing from my mind, all I experienced was hot shame.

I like to think that my motivation escaped me, through my mistreatment of myself. Greener pastures. She was tired of being swollen with lethargy, bloated like a tick and suffering for it. It would be better for both of us if she left. With her left my power to follow through on my urges– a thick anchor of humiliation and disappointment dragged from my neck. At least there was that small relief. Only the unevolved pleasure-seeking synapses were firing on all cylinders, unaware of the higher cognitive functions that could register embarrassment.

Keeping my tail between my legs kept me safe. I could not make poor choices if I made no choices at all.

I put the can in the crumb-filled cup holder and put the car in neutral on accident before shifting to the correct gear. I pulled out of the parking lot and got back on the road leading the opposite way from the city.

Today was Friday. Friday meant the weekend. The weekend meant freedom. Technically I was free now; I told my boss that I was using one of my sick days today. I didn’t have very many of those.

What to do now, with this opportunity? What were my options? Lunch, I guess. Sure, I guess I could eat. My options were all fast food, probably. I didn’t have much of a budget to eat anything else. What was I craving right now?

Nope. Couldn’t have that.

I licked my chops and tried to think of food instead. Something like comfort food– mutton and pork, rabbit, grilled veal…

Eyes glazing over the empty road ahead of me, I thought about going hunting with my father. When I was younger and still reading history books, I learned how we used to kill things with our mouths. Now we do it with more refined tools. My dad took me out shooting and taught me how to clean a buck. Takes more than just your paws to do it. Our milk teeth are gone. They have been for generations.

A loud, screaming honk snapped me back into attention. From his pickup truck, a greater swiss mountain dog leaned out the window and yelled “Who taught you how to fucking drive?!” It was only after he sped off that I realized what had happened. I had almost drifted from my lane, deep in thought, crashing into him. My ears laid back flat on my head, and I put on my turn signal. It would have been better if I hit the median– at least then if I died, I wouldn’t be hurting anybody else. Maybe I shouldn’t be driving after all.

Let the thoughts float away, like a hot air balloon, a released kite, a hyperactive drone.

I pulled the car into a clearing, just off the side of the rural road. An outcropping of trees stood in a salute to the sky not too far away from the cars speeding behind. Paved road turned to bumpy earth, and I only stopped when I thought the car couldn’t handle being offroad any longer. Tongue hanging out, I panted. Stupid A/C didn’t work. My breath was going to fog up the car before I ever caught any cool. Besides, I needed a break.

Fuck it, whatever. I’ll sit on the hood. I don’t give a shit. I’m crazy. I’m a wild animal. You can’t keep me down.

There are strange things you can do to bring you back into your body. To cut the drift and put you right back on solid ground, in confrontational reality. As I sat on the hood of the car, I got that feeling. Cooper liked this car, and I had driven it offroad– it was anything but an offroader– and was now drinking my fake alcohol on the hood of it. The afternoon was beginning to settle in, and I could hear cicadas buzzing in the underbrush.

It was as close as I could get to feeling wild again. When was the last time I felt truly wild?

During my relapse, this xolo dog guy had nearly pulled my tail off. I don’t remember where I even was, just that I was a long way from home in a hot bar and that I was worried about getting to work tomorrow. Even though the haze of innumerable drinks, I still thought about tomorrow. He bit my neck. I clawed across his bare, hairless stomach.

I saw a jackal looking at me from across the bar. She was wearing a brown jacket with tassels down the chest and arms. We looked like we could be cousins, her snout was slender and her haunches were bent like she was ready to run at any moment. I wanted to ask her hey, what’s your name, what do you do for a living, the kinds of questions you’re supposed to ask someone. I don’t see a lot of you types around here. I wanted to learn these things about her through smell alone.

There was no opportunity to ask her anything. I started the fight. I got the cops called on me.

That night in a holding cell, waiting for a friend to come and bail me out because I could never call one of my parents and let them see me like this, I learned a lesson. Probably wasn’t the right one. Feeling good was something I had to get away with. Like I needed a reason to be wild again. To thrash my tail and shred my clothing, to wail and shriek.

There wasn’t anybody around to judge me. But I still looked around, just in case. I poured the water out in front of me, got on my hands and knees, and lapped it up with my tongue, from the dirt, a slurry of liquid and bubbles. Tasted gritty and unpleasant, but at least there was something to taste. I coughed and covered my mouth with my elbow. My ancestors wouldn’t have been so picky.

I froze, ears flicking. A branch cracked underfoot– no, a hoof. I lifted my head.

A deer looked at me from the glade. I knew right where to place the crosshairs in order to kill it dead. Somewhere within me, I realized this was knowledge that did not belong in my brain. We looked at one another, both of us far enough away that we only registered shapes and colors and smells.

I imagined what it saw when it looked at me. My brown fur against the black of the car, face hunched to a puddle too small to drown in. Maybe if I really tried, I could. Did it realize there was something wrong with me, with my fur, with my eyes? Could it not recognize those things at its distance– at its mental capacity?

Pleasure-seeking synapses.They were yelling, barking, howling. My haunches tensed. They wanted something other than what they normally did. This was an ancient urge.

There was no one around to judge me. I was hungry.

Slowly, I pulled my shirt off, over my head. The cool breeze hit my skin, weaving its way under my fur and making contact with my flesh. I unclipped my bra and let it fall into the mud puddle. Talking, driving cars, drinking alcohol, looking forward to the two days at the end of the week where you actually feel free, fuck, even knowing what a week is– I wasn’t meant for any of it. I was a beast built for a different purpose.

To do… what, exactly?

I drank because it brought me back into my body. When I felt disconnected from the world, a wild dog with its teeth pulled out, non-domesticated and unable to perform the duties of a faithful pet, I buried my nose in bottles and cans until the feeling subsided. I could howl again. There was no need for control.

The buck watched me from his place in the forest as I stripped. Shuffling off my sweatpants, my underwear, all into the fake alcohol. The wind waving under my tail, behind my ears, across my hackles. I could smell its scent in the air.

Imagine every last thought, floating away, like a cloud in the sky. Imagine you, unclipped from your leash.

I am not a “kai-yote.”

On all fours, I scrambled forward, barking wildly, picking up speed that shocked me. Yes, yes, I was in my body again! I was wild, I was a hunter! Bounding toward my prey at a growing clip, snarling, panting, tongue hanging out, the impact of my running causing deep shards of pain in my shoulders, ow, ow, my front paw hit a crater in the earth and I fell ass-over-teakettle.

“Ow!” I cried into the empty field, holding my wrist. “Jesus– fuck!” The cicadas did not quiet with my scream.

The darkening sky returned my tear-filled gaze with nothing. I laid there in the itchy grass, dirt and grit indenting itself into my thinning patches. Sniffling and panting. The smell of the deer was gone. It had probably pranced away after I fell, not even bothering to move as it saw me approach. Even something unevolved knew I was no danger to it. Only to myself.

The feeling was similar to waking up hungover, returning to the remains of your life. Having to put back on the mud-stained sweatpants from the night before. Living in the grime, caked with guilt. Sowing, meet reaping. At least the mud was cool against my chest.

I looked at the sandalwood collie dangling from the rearview mirror. She was still smiling at me. Still wearing her bikini. It looked strange on her. Every chance I got, every red light, every time the road was clear and I wasn’t afraid of swerving, I would imagine what she would have looked like on all fours, like in our history books. I turned on the headlights, even though I can see in the dark.

“My day was ass,” Cooper said before anything else, lighting a cigarette as he got into the car. Why didn’t he light one as he was waiting outside? “This chihuahua bitch wouldn’t stop yapping to me about getting her drink comped… Dude, you got fucking mud all over my seats, god. This is a nice interior, I got this shit detailed.”

“Sorry.” I mumbled.

He groaned. “You shed in here too. Like crazy… Whatever. I hope you enjoyed driving this thing, because I’m not letting you do it again. You pick up those trucks?”

I had forgotten all about the trucks. “No.”

Cooper took a thin drag of his cigarette. “Then where’d you go, kai-yote?”

I put the car in drive. My wrist throbbed. “Nowhere.”

With God as my witness, I would make it to four months and nine days.