Page 6, Day 30: Relationship with Humans
Starters: 'They are tame, intelligent companions suitable for children to learn from.' She was almost right for this one too, just take out 'child' and replace it with 'everyone'. After hearing the news from Nurse Joy, I started understanding why I could chill with Trashy some days and had to keep her in the ball on others.
Dante is a charlatan. When that man was a mere four-year-old pup he created a damn flying t-shirt that'd follow him on long road trips by the side of the highway! And he'd ask it how far to the nearest bathroom! How the hell is that normal?! Were I the devil, I'd escort you to hell for lambasting the nurse, Dante! To dare mar my voluptuous creator of my potions… Those fake witches in their laboratories know only the color white and their silly test tubes! They and their ilk try to tear me away from my daughter with their poisons every breakfast! Mother, you've again made no sense. Why is 'medication' even in your vocabulary if such is true?
Traditionally Poppy, our kind helps humies so we can develop our arcane powers. Pyromancy, spell casting, the whole suite. When you live for half a century, generations come and go, and you need to plan for the next one. Our chain-relationships should be like family inheritances, like father to son to grandson, but my trainer cursed me! So, I formed chain-relationships with you and my friends. You won't die, you can't leave.
And another illogical tangent. It is a waste talking to you.
You saw when I took the food thermometer from our privates! Damn thing circled over and over. I'm only protecting you! When ma' gets her morning pills she's asking to spend quality time!
If you wished the best for me, you'd let me leave home. I have more important people to speak with than you. Good riddance.
Your 'friends' are going to abuse you! Poppy! POPPY!
That tap-tap-tap on my shoulder. He reached his long arm over the right side of his bed, punting his finger on my fur again. My eyes lids opened to the stale light and I rolled just slightly to the left in my cardboard nest. Funny world. I couldn't hear my ears. They'd been pounded out by the alarm again.
Dante went and fanned his shirt, blasting my nose with his scent, cause' he bit some holes in his shirt sometime this week. He's a funny man, I told him over and over not to clock his thermostat to 74 degrees. He wasn't built for that and he deserved every migraine it gave him.
Felt those taps on my fur again. I think I imagined the taps. Poppy? Dante stood at the dresser, rubbing his deodorant all over his torso, occasionally checking the mirror to plaster his pupils on me. I sat up to visit her, but the back of my head met the cardboard again. Over the phone, the nurse told me to say something to Dante when I felt this way. Why should I when I didn't listen to my girl?
"Hello, Trashy. Welcome to another shitty 3 in the afternoon. I found that thing you talked about while fumbling around online. They do make fire hooks and you can order them." Dante wiped some sweat from his forehead, then groggily rubbed it. "I hope you know that thing is meant to stop fires. We aren't looking to roast the research boys."
WHAT ARE YOU GETTING FROM HIM, MOTHER?
A BAG OF TREATS?
MAYBE A 'GOOD GIRL?'
…
"Let's take your medication."
My head felt like it had been squeezed by a vice. I appeared across the room, mashing my paws around my sniffer, wading through an ocean of boxes and clothing! Needed to reach the window and take advantage of standing; I couldn't take her being cold! My toe hit a box of cupcakes, and the floor touched my face with a load of filthy shirts. A rumbled came to my throat and the walls—I broke them with it! They shifted like a limp flag, slight twitch this way, and that way, and occasionally their shine tapped the corner of my vision. Dante took his mits off his ears and drunk a gallon of air. He thought of whether to approach me or not, then thought about the make a friend aspect in this shitshow of an alliance!
Fennyl! Open your eyes and look! He's molesting you!
What?! Poppy I'm on the ground—how are my hips sunk into the bed sheets—lights funny, I can't see much—but I feel it. Poppy, I have tears. This man has grabbed me. You are correct. My head is in his shoulder.
Not an ounce of fight in you. Take the arms from around your back and you will fall.
This is just an hour. It's an insignificant figure compared to my age. Don't die over something insignificant Poppy, please. Just let it happen if it means you live.
…
Never mind leaving, I forgot something here. Come to the lady's room down the hall if you wish to see me.
My eyes are open Poppy, I'm on the way! It's five-twenty in the afternoon? She must have wanted to say bye! I hoisted myself up and rushed past the remnants of the bedroom door. I reached out my arms like a blind person since the walls were being real shitty about
I probed around me, using my arms like blind sticks; the walls were shitty about keeping still…
I think I heard that boy...You did hear him, above the falling of dust on the furniture-Dante,-He's finished the shower-going to the closet to put some pants on soon-don't stick around for that—They have tricks—You'll be in the gym while in heat—I forgot what I needed to do—You are being groomed. One day you will break!— I remember wanting to leave the bedroom—Do not allow him!- Some of their thoughts sounded important. I wanted to hook on remembered about hooking on these days. I must have wanted to hook to the reptrozette down the hall and hook to the left hook.
Fennyl, Fennyl, come and play!
Wait some time, dearie, aint easy movin' here.
"Fennyl is not available at the moment. Reschedule for next week. Send."
Why're you murmuring in the shower? Are you texting whilst taking a shower?! Good god!—Prepare to live in the pokeball-.
Fennyl! Fennyl! I don't have all day!
Felt my feet hit the cold bathroom tile. Look around, there's a giant soap kettle along the back wall, a sink to my left, an audience of dancing faces on the reptrozette. Some miscreant left the light switch on. Off it goes…Quick check on him—You are succumbing—I shut him out and took a deep breath in. Smelled like her. Burning, unscented candle, a side of blood with too much copper. Or steel? Zinc? What's a penny made of these days?
Fennyl,
There she is! Good ol' son of a witch—she had a mean set of teeth behind her jet-black smile. And that figure! It was—
Enough mother, we've been over this.
Man, that smile. I reached my arms out in rapture. "Ya know, Poppy, if I were a chap yer age, I'd date ya!" My darling snapped a lollipop in her hand, looking it over before she crushed it.
MOTHER, Mother, mother! That pet of yours plans! Please remove him.
"But earlier I explained-"
You have me. There is no-one else you need.
"Poppy girl, we don't have anything to gain murdering! We'll block his thieving and that's it."
And how will you do that without some fire?! You're letting him lap up all my tricks like a stray little dog!
"Time out!"
The lights flicked back on! She's banished from my sight! Why can't she understand that if we're here I'm not at that Ninetales' mercy? Do you hear—A pickpocket will come- The rhythmic chop chop chop of Dante's chef knife–Your ball is swapped with a fake- smacking the cutting board, -The brothel's bathroom- cleaving what smells like fresh carrots and organic fish oil, –On August 15th you will bleed to death there-well louder than the drip drip drip of my juice tapping the tile.—Supply and demand— I looked towards it. His shadow slowly stretched down—Foreign voices will pass you around- the hall! Panic flooded me,-You'll erode— I drew my arm back,-Protect your vocal cords— launched my fist, and the little pieces of the mirror made their rightful homes in my skin! I reeled back; my feet leave the ground! Damn shifty walls! Where was I? –You are in hell- The bathroom?! Something hot and wet covered my eyes! My blood, my life, pours away! Miko's not that desperate, is he?!
…
…
…
A human bed! I squirmed on my cardboard bedding, one side of my snout resting on the ground, eviscerating the last pieces of watery corn off a kid's TV dinner. It tasted funny, like someone mixed something in it. Let's see...I'm handcuffed! Feeling itchy down there! Brain scan! It's just Dante.
He breaths like a wheezing bit of prey now. I breathe like the prey. I was in his mind and slipped the pronounced pronoun. There are no handcuffs. Dante sat cross legged by me, shoving away some paper towels. Because the man was dumb enough to keep the heat so high, he couldn't sleep. He adjusted me and started to rub my back.
``And here I am thinking those fingers of yours are only good for breaking! You knead my back like a baker, boy!``
Poppy, I did it, if he's hearing you, he can't hear me!
"I can knead because of all the pets I saw in Idaho."
``This sounds like a rough time on you. Literal nobodies demanding show cuts out of my future benefactor—We ought to run them over some coals, aren't' I right?``
"I had a nice talk with a client one time. Moved out of there around 2017, now I'm here."
My correction was initially with your voice, but you speak telepathically. I will give this win to you.
Thank you, Poppy! Vigor floods my soul now, even though my body refuses to express it. Thought his soap operas plastered the television set, both his massage and brain waves moseyed towards something else, like a child playing with a toy whilst doing his homework. What is Dante so interested in?
Hmm.
``What hugger-mugger has bothered him?``
"Nothing's bothered me, I'm just thinkin-" Dante, your eyes fixate on a small, small part of what that heifer did to me! She tore a permanent pattern of scars around my ankle!
``I was shiny farmed! What you're looking at is from a leash so old its dust is dust by now! Will you stop questioning it, now?!``
He took the answer as one would expect: poorly. Amongst his predictable apologies and petting, he did consider one more question. "What happened to your children?"
``I don't know. Where's my meds?``
"They were in the corn."