In the car, Jonathan seems more cheerful. “Good Jessie. Good girl. We’ll go to the new meadow and chase balls now, eh? It’s a big meadow. You’ll be able to run a long way.” And he tosses a new tennis ball into the backseat, and you chew on it, happily, and the car drives along, traffic whizzing past. When you lift your head from chewing on the ball, you can see trees, so you put your head back down, satisfied, and resume chewing. And then the car stops, and Jonathan opens the door for you, and you hop out, holding your ball in your mouth.
This isn’t a meadow. You’re in the parking lot of a low concrete building that reeks of excrement and disinfectant and fear, fear, and from the building you hear barking and howling, screams of misery, and in the parking lot are parked two white Animal Control trucks.
You panic. You drop your tennis ball and try to run, but Jonathan has the leash, and he starts dragging you inside the building, and you can’t breathe because of the choke collar. You cough, gasping, trying to howl. “Don’t fight, Jessie. Don’t fight me. Everything’s all right.”
Everything’s not all right. You can smell Jonathan’s desperation, can taste your own, and you should be stronger than he is but you can’t breathe, and he’s saying, “Jessie, don’t bite me, it will be worse if you bite me, Jessie,” and the screams of horror still swirl from the building and you’re at the door now, someone’s opened the door for Jonathan, someone says, “Let me help you with that dog,” and you’re scrabbling on the concrete, trying to dig your claws into the sidewalk just outside the door, but there’s no purchase, and they’ve dragged you inside, onto the linoleum, and everywhere are the smells and sounds of terror. Above your own whimpering you hear Jonathan saying, “She jumped the fence and threatened my girlfriend, and then she tried to bite me, so I have no choice, it’s such a s
hame, she’s always been such a good dog, but in good conscience I can’t—”
You start to howl, because he’s lying, lying, you never did any of that!
Now you’re surrounded by people, a man and two women, all wearing colorful cotton smocks that smell, although faintly, of dog shit and cat pee. They’re putting a muzzle on you, and even though you can hardly think through your fear—and your pain, because Jonathan’s walked back out the door, gotten into the car, and driven away, Jonathan’s left you here—even with all of that, you know you don’t dare bite or snap. You know your only hope is in being a good dog, in acting as submissive as possible. So you whimper, crawl along on your stomach, try to roll over on your back to show your belly, but you can’t, because of the leash.
“Hey,” one of the women says. The man’s left. She bends down to stroke you. “Oh, God, she’s so scared. Look at her.”
“Poor thing,” the other woman says. “She’s beautiful.”
“I know.”
“Looks like a wolf mix.”
“I know.” The first woman sighs and scratches your ears, and you whimper and wag your tail and try to lick her hand through the muzzle. Take me home, you’d tell her if you could talk. Take me home with you. You’ll be my alpha, and I’ll love you forever. I’m a good dog.
The woman who’s scratching you says wistfully, “We could adopt her out in a minute, I bet.”
“Not with that history. Not if she’s a biter. Not even if we had room. You know that.”
“I know.” The voice is very quiet. “Wish I could take her myself, though.”
“Take home a biter? Lily, you have kids!”
Lily sighs. “Yeah, I know. Makes me sick, that’s all.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. Come on, let’s get this over with. Did Mark go to get the room ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. What’d the owner say her name was?”
“Stella.”
“Okay. Here, give me the leash. Stella, come. Come on, Stella.”
The voice is sad, gentle, loving, and you want to follow it, but you fight every step, anyway, until Lily and her friend have to drag you past the cages of other dogs, who start barking and howling again, whose cries are pure terror, pure loss. You can hear cats grieving, somewhere else in the building, and you can smell the room at the end of the hall, the room to which you’re getting inexorably closer. You smell the man named Mark behind the door, and you smell medicine, and you smell the fear of the animals who’ve been taken to that room before you. But overpowering everything else is the worst smell, the smell that makes you bare your teeth in the muzzle and pull against the choke collar and scrabble again, helplessly, for a purchase you can’t get on the concrete floor: the pervasive, metallic stench of death.
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Holly Black
Matilda was drunk, but then she was always drunk anymore. Dizzy drunk. Stumbling drunk. Stupid drunk. Whatever kind of drunk she could get.
The man she stood with snaked his hand around her back, warm fingers digging into her side as he pulled her closer. He and his friend with the open-necked shirt grinned down at her like underage equaled dumb, and dumb equaled gullible enough to sleep with them.
She thought they might just be right.
“You want to have a party back at my place?” the man asked. He’d told her his name was Mark, but his friend kept slipping up and calling him by a name that started with a D. Maybe Dan or Dave. They had been smuggling her drinks from the bar whenever they went outside to smoke—drinks mixed sickly sweet that dripped down her throat like candy.
“Sure,” she said, grinding her cigarette against the brick wall. She missed the hot ash in her hand, but concentrated on the alcoholic numbness turning her limbs to lead. Smiled. “Can we pick up more beer?”