Yellow Submarine

A boy and his dog part three

A thirteen year old boy surveys his neighborhood from his bedroom window, poised on the second floor of a house at the end of suburbia. There are a few younger kids noisily playing basketball and an old woman tending to her garden. The air was heavy with the usual amalgam of magnolia blossom and car exhaust peculiar to southern suburbs. The sky is clear and bright. A car passes now and then, but for the most part all is routine and sublime oblivion. Looking out from his window watching the world execute the same motions it had yesterday and would execute tomorrow the boy is overcome with a feeling of incredulity. It all seems so distant, so shallow, so fake. Everything is empty.

The Boy's family had moved to the neighborhood a few years ago after his father lost his latest in a succession of jobs. He has no ties here.

He opens the window to let the breeze tussle his hair. It seems to refuse.

He glances down at the razor blade on the window sill and steels his resolve.

He had come close before in the last few years when some fresh calamity besot his family. He kept pressing inward until sharp pain and drops of blood pooled and pulsed from his wrist, but the pain and the blood always seemed to lend a certain finality to the moment which shattered any surrealism.

The first time was after his parents had a particularly nasty fight, not that any of them were very amiable, and his mother had swung at his dad. His dad didn't hit back, he just took it. He always just took it from her. He remembered liking the pain.

The second time was after his father had called a 'family meeting' so that she could tell everyone she had cheated on him and was leaving the family. She seemed so defiant, almost like she dared someone to raise an objection. He remembered thinking that perhaps they would pull together in their grief.

There were other trials, and other times, but never so lonely. Before there had always been some invisible thread of hope binding his hand from completing its task.

His hand seems to have newfound freedom today.

He picks up the razor and stares at it a while, noticing the edge; its different color and sheen.

He sets the blade to his wrist.

"Up and down or across?" came the rhetorical question. He could never remember which way you were supposed to go.

He didn't feel the usual twinge of dread or even the tiny thrill of apprehension.

He decides that diagonally will be the best way since he can't remember.

He presses down and starts to cut.

A whimper behind him.

He is startled and turns around, concealing the blade and his wrist behind him.

It was his dog.

He was unwelcome here. Now. In this moment.

"Get outta here!"

His shout meets a blank stare.

"Go on, get outta here!"

Louder this time, but still no response.

"GO! LEAVE!"

Nothing.

He tries to force the dog bodily out of the room.

The dog seems to resist. This was unlike him.

This is not good.

The boy punches the dog and hears th hollow thud of his fist against its side. It is without effect.

He punches him harder.

The thud harder, but to no avail.

He begins to punch and scream and beat the dog.

"GO! NOW! YOU'RE RUINING IT!"

The dog recoils slightly but is resolute.

"GOD DAMN YOU!"

He beats.

And beats.

And screams.

And beats.

He beats and screams until his arms grow too heavy to lift and there are tears rolling down his cheeks.

He collapses.

A blubbering mass on the floor. The dog whimpers slightly.

The boy feels a cold nose on his face.

He is overcome.

He is not alone.