Unfettered by Shawn Speakman

Author:Shawn Speakman [Speakman, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780984713653
Publisher: Grim Oak Press
Published: 2013-06-20T21:00:00+00:00

Living without a dog felt strange. It felt wrong. It felt better than living with one. Maybe later, Alexander told himself, it would get easier.

Days passed and flesh knitted. The last stitches came out, and the low, gray skies of winter settled in. Thanksgiving came and went, and Christmas began its low, flat descent. He had nightmares sometimes, but less often. He had moments of profound and crippling fear that came like bad weather and then moved on. His doctor put him on antidepressants, and they seemed to help some.

The morning he didn’t call a taxi was a Wednesday. He’d been online the night before, looking at his bank balance, and when he woke up, he just didn’t make the call. He drank his coffee. He ate his eggs. He walked out into the cold, biting air with a scarf wrapped around his neck. The dog park was empty, the grass brown and dead, the trees leafless. Walking across the parking lot where it had happened was like going back to an old elementary school; the place was so much smaller than he remembered it. It was like someone had come and taken the old place away and brought in a scale model. The fear he’d expected didn’t overwhelm him. It was just asphalt and sidewalk. It didn’t mean anything. Or maybe everything it meant he carried with him anyway, so the location added nothing. He reached the bus stop with its green roof and advertising poster walls for the first time, pleased with the accomplishment, and spent the whole day at work exhausted and unable to concentrate. He wound up staying late to finish things he should have had done before his afternoon coffee break.

The evening streets were dim and empty, the daytime world of downtown already closed down. A dull red between the skyscrapers to the west marked where the sun had been. The shopfront displays glittered and shone for nobody. Alexander pushed his hands into his pockets and scurried toward the bus stop, his mind already skipping ahead to a cup of hot chocolate liberally spiked with rum and an early bed. Maybe he could see if anyone had left a message for him online. Or if there were any decent movies on. At the stop, he sat on the formed plastic bench and pressed his hands between his thighs. The city had put a programmable sign marking the time until the next bus, and he watched it count down to nothing and reset without any actual bus arriving. A few cars hissed by.

The dog came out from an alley to his left, its claws clicking on the pavement. The blackness of its coat seemed to defy the light. It trotted down the street toward him, moving in his direction with a distracted air. A mastiff. A rottweiler crossed with something huge. No fat cushioned its skin, and the muscles working under the fur were as large as a man’s. Its breath steamed past stained teeth. Alexander pressed himself against the back of the bench, heart racing, the metal taste of fear in his mouth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.