Sheltered

by Laura
3^rd Place Winner 2005 Fireside Stories

Hunger. It is the thing at the front of my mind right now; behind that is thirst, and third in line is the sickness I feel all over. At least it's warm. Three of my sisters lay in the bed with us; they have not moved for a long time now, though time is immeasurable here. All that are left are my brother, my mother and myself. My mother won't let us suckle anymore; she growls and snaps at us when we try. Her milk has dried up, anyway. It has been seven sleeps since my eyes and ears opened, and it seems that it has only gotten worse since then. I don't remember ever not feeling sick. There was intense itching at first, so much that I gave up trying to scratch it all; now my skin is simply sore, so sore it hurts to move.

There is no light. It makes no difference to me; I've never seen light anyway, only subtle shades of black. None of us have moved much for quite some time, only enough to shift position when our limbs begin to tingle and go numb. Mother rises every now and again, to sniff along the walls and scratch at one particular place. She has been rising less and less lately, simply lying in the dirt with us, snapping half-heartedly when we try to nurse. I whimper quietly, nuzzle my snout into my mother's flea-infested fur, and sleep, more than halfway hoping it will be the last time I do so.

I awake to chaos. Loud noises outside the walls that have been my life thus far, my mother scrambling and barking, growling at that place at which she always scratches. I struggle to face the noise, to try to decipher the movement in the blackness of our hole. It hurts too much to move, so I lay there, eyes straining to catch anything they can. Suddenly, there is light! Real light, not the faint shadows and highlights of fur and eyes. And it hurts, more than I thought anything ever could. I cry loudly with the pain, and my brother echoes me, yelping over the unfamiliar noises outside and the din of my mother's snarls.

I hear a strangled cry from my mother, more barks and snarls; finally, I have the motivation to turn around and look, despite the pain of the light and the rawness of my skin. What I see will be forever branded on my memory in terror: huge beings, much larger than my mother, have attached a stick to my mother’s neck and are pulling her from the hole as she fights desperately to get loose. I cry more, fear now added to the pain I feel, the lessening of the agony in my eyes made up for by the terror in my screams. Though I scramble frantically to retreat as my mother is finally pulled from the hole, strong paws grasp me, roughly rubbing my pain-wracked body, and my yelping redoubles, fueled again by agony.

The monster drags me from the only home I have ever known and dumps me unceremoniously onto a cold floor caged in by metal bars. My brother accompanies me in moments, in the same manner, and we rush to the comfort of each other’s bodies, trembling in terror, our cries dwindling to whimpers in our throats. We cower in the corner of the harsh metal den as loud noises are supplemented once more by darkness and the whole contraption begins to move.

We travel for a short time in the obscurity of our imprisonment, our mother in a similar den next to us, nosing through the bars to make sure we aren’t injured too badly. When the movement of the den stops, the monsters seize my brother and me once more and our terrified cries fill the air before we are taken into a cool room and deposited once more in a metal den. This time, it doesn’t move, but sits stationary in a sterile area next to other empty dens.

After a short while, we are poked and prodded at uncomfortably, but are given water and soft food to fill our shrunken bellies. After a burning immersion in water and chemicals, a salve is rubbed on our skins and I finally feel a bit of relief from the ever-present anguish of living in my own skin.

We spend a few uneventful days in our original confines before being moved to a different room, one filled with others of our own kind, each in their own separate metal dens. By the time the monsters, that have proved to not really be so much monsters after all, move us, I am feeling a great deal better than I ever remember feeling, to the point that I even have the energy to play with my brother. I don’t get much opportunity to do this, however, for the first day that we are moved into this new den he is removed and taken into another room. I wait diligently for him to return, but he doesn’t, and the next day I am removed in the same manner.

I am handed off to a smaller monster that holds me tightly, making strange noises in its throat that are almost comforting. After another short ride in a contraption that is quite similar to the one I arrived here in, I am deposited outside in the grass, where the small monster plays for a while before rising and going inside a large building.

I have been here a long time now; long enough to grow larger, almost half the size of the small monster. I am too large for it to tote around now, and it cries when I try to play like I did when it first brought me here. As I lie in the grass next to my shelter – they don’t let me in the large building anymore – one of the larger monsters emerges from the building with a leash. I sit up and wag my tail happily. The leash means that we are going somewhere! The monster makes a noise with its mouth and utters syllables that I have come to recognize as my name – “Zmokey” – and I rush over happily. It clips the leash onto my collar and I follow it to the contraption that they use for transportation. I don’t wonder why the little monster isn’t coming; it quit coming with us on trips a long time ago.

As the thing is traveling, I happily stick my head out the window, reveling in the feel of the wind flapping my ears and tongue. I wait patiently when we stop for the monster to let me out, but I am confused as my paws hit the harsh concrete. When we travel, we normally go to the park, where I can run freely and play with the others of my kind there. But looming forebodingly in front of me is a large, metal building, one I vaguely recognize. The monster leads me in. Once we are through the door, it squats in its peculiar manner in front of me, petting my head and speaking softly in its odd language. It hands my leash to another monster and turns, going through the door without so much as a glance over its shoulder. I whimper and try to follow, but am held back by the leash – the object that once meant freedom and fun to me now restricting me from going where I want most to go.

The new monster pulls me into another room and forces me into a cage, and now I remember why I recognize this place. Horror fills my heart as I remember that I came through here with my mother and brother, and came out alone, never seeing them again. I stand on my hind legs, forepaws rattling the chain-link door of the cage, barking at the retreating back of the monster, pleading with it to please, let me out; please, let me go back to my family! My entreaties are lost among the noise of the room, though, all the animals there beseeching the same of the monster.

I lay in the corner of the cage for days, no longer imploring the monster to let me out when it comes to feed me; there is no purpose to it, and I realize this. I rise to eat, to drink every once in a while, to relieve myself in the opposite corner; other than that, I have no reason to get up at all. I wonder why it is that the others continue to beg the monster to let them out when it enters the room. Don’t they realize that it won’t? I sigh and lay my head on my paws, watching the door to the room, as that is the only thing that changes during the day, when the monster comes through to hose down the cages or shove food through the grate.

I eye the monster listlessly the next time it comes through the door, but raise my head and perk my ears when it neglects to push food through my grate as it has all the other cages. I rise and come to stand at the cage door, watching it as it continues down the line to feed the other animals. Eventually, it returns to my cage, and my heart swells as I see that it is fiddling with the latch. I bark excitedly, jumping about and wagging my tail as it enters and attaches the leash to my collar. Finally! Perhaps it will let me return to my family after all! I follow it excitedly through one room and into another, but become confused as it lifts me up onto a table. It removes my collar and I watch it curiously as it articulates strange, soft noises, scratching me behind the ears before grasping a needle in its bizarre paws. Oh, another shot; I’m familiar with this, they gave them to me when I first came into this place and again before I left it the last time, and I received more not too long ago. I wait patiently for the slight sting of the needle in the ruff of my neck.

But once the shot is complete, it does not return my collar or lead me away to resume life as scheduled. Instead, it continues to pet me, soothing sounds coming from its throat. I blink at it before a clenching pain renders me unable to move, to even rotate my eyes to look at it, to ask it, Why? I’ve never felt pain this strongly, this agonizing, not even when I was trapped in the dark place so long ago. I cannot even whimper to let it be known. The agony lasts only a few minutes before my muscles relax and I pass into the blackness, the darkness where my life began.