Excerpt
from An.Al – The Origins
Her footsteps echoed like the steady drum beat of
a marching band. She pulled her jacket’s hood over her head and drew its lapels
closer together—it was a size too small for her, its colour now faded and indistinguishable.
Her hands dug deeper into the jacket’s pockets, and finding a cigarette and a
box of lights, she stopped for a moment to light it up. She pulled hard on it.
Long, deep, and hard. What should the
next move be?
Think.
The dogs turned around. Their playful conjugation
interrupted. Angry. Alert. The air held an alien smell. They sniffed: cigarette
smoke and her. They barked as a warning to this creature on two legs: don’t trespass, don’t intrude, don’t
interfere. They circled and growled. Their eyes glowed with anger and intent.
The hair on their backs bristled—a war-hungry Roman legion ready to fight the
rebellious Gaul.
She didn’t feel like playing, not on that night,
not when there were bigger and more important things playing on her mind. She
wanted peace, quiet, and a plan. But the stupid mongrels were intent on
fighting her for it and she was not one to back away from a fight. Not with
Peter egging her on.
She saw him, the captain and commander of the
pack, the leader of the feral rebels. Skin spotted like a Swiss cow, ears
pinned back, sharp teeth dripping with drool and slobbering over the street,
white and black hair bristling on his back like white noise, eyes gleaming a
fluorescent green and yellow in the moonlight. When she saw that look on the
dog’s face, she knew he would make for an excellent playmate. She didn’t care
about the others. The manic wildness in the dog’s eyes reflected hers.
‘Always know
where the attack is going to come from,’ she heard Peter’s voice whispering
into her ears.
‘Never take
your eyes away from the prey,’ he said, as she stepped sideways onto the
pavement and started walking backward towards an abandoned building, all the
while maintaining eye contact with her new Playmate.
‘Be aware of your surroundings, your
environment. Use it to your advantage to isolate the prey,’ Peter
instructed.
When she bumped against the door of the building,
she found it unlocked. The barking reached a new crescendo and the dogs looked
more menacing now. Did they mistake her retreat for fear? Stupid dogs.
The dogs could sense their kill slipping away and
the alpha dog, realizing the same, leapt for her throat. She pushed against the
door, opening it just wide enough for her and her-plus-one to enter.
With the refined skill of a ballet dancer pulling
off a simple but highly technical plié, she took a step back, grabbed the alpha
dog by his neck, turned around, and kicked the door shut as she fell down under
the weight of the massive dog. The door jammed shut, scratching against the
floor as it closed behind the two of them.
The odds were evened out now. Her lips curled up
in a smirk and she grunted, her face contorting with effort as she rolled over
on top of the dog, stuffing his mouth with his own leg. The howling, barking,
and the scratching continued outside the closed door—background music to her
party.
‘You really . . . really shouldn’t have,’
she reprimanded the dog as she caught her breath. She smiled gleefully as she
attempted to grab the dog’s rear feet while ensuring that the foot already in
its mouth didn’t come loose. Moonlight streaked through the broken and
blacked-out windows of the building. The dog whined as it saw her baby-brown
eyes turn black with murderous delight. Her smirk grew wider. With the legs
firmly in her hold, she used her free hand to dive into her back pocket and
fetched her trusted switchblade. In five swift and swish moves, like a trained
game-meat butcher, she deftly cut away at the tendons joining the dog’s legs to
his torso and distending his ball sac, turning the big, ferocious alpha dog
into a big, cuddly, bleeding soft toy. She stood up, dusted herself, and wiped
her face with her blood-speckled hands, smearing crimson onto her face.
As the dog lay there, withering and moaning in
pain, she dropped her rucksack and watched the pale moonlight glisten against
the dark, oily blood of the dog. She squatted next to the dog, marvelling at
the spurts of blood the arteries threw.
‘Awww . . . are you in pain doggie?’ she asked,
concern underlining every single syllable uttered in her innocent, child-like
voice. The dog continued to moan, its body twitching in mortal convulsions of
pain.
‘STOP MOANING YOU STUPID DOGGIE . . .’ she yelled,
‘ANSWER ME!’ Her shouts were muffled by the punches she threw on the dog’s
furrowed face. When the fury of her punches finally stopped, so did the dog’s
twitching—its skull broken in seven different places and its brain served as mashed
potatoes, on the side, on the hard concrete floor plate.
‘Doggie? Doggie?’ she called out to the dog,
softly . . . like a scared little girl looking for her beloved doll to comfort
and reassure herself that the bogeyman won’t harm her. When the dog didn’t answer,
she curled up on the floor and slept.
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