From my view, the old lady that had scooped me away looks like a drowning body. Some grey, washed out, struggling creature that lives in the deep cracks of her home; a corpse who's illegally beating heart presses and pounds with a stutter. Last night I watched the elder turn amongst her sheets and I know that this human is dangling in the maws of death.

All windows are sealed with valour and curtains draw as if an encounter with light will suck that weak portion of life that remains coiled and coughing up blood inside her. The doors are much the same; numerous iron locks adore their edges and restrain them to their frames. I have entered a cave at the bottom of the ocean; I float about after this sea creature, subdued and as if I had sunk here by way of my concert shoes.

Her shapeless dress sways about as she tries to peel the fridge open, tantalising me with the hope of receiving its lush insides. But she isn't strong enough; our only salvation is in the dry crackers that rest in the easy to pry open cupboard. The lady leans heavily on the counters and walls as she moves throughout the house. She will stand high for minutes at a time before she hurriedly needs to breakdown on the closest bed or chair, wheezing and gasping for lungs that she doesn't seem to possess.

I don't know why this lady purchased me; she can't care for herself let alone another. Sometimes I think I might understand; at times when she is sitting there dying, and knowing it, she will stretch out her ropey, blue arm and I will press my young, warm muzzle to her crying, tearing skin. I think I'm here so she doesn't have to die cold and alone. So I try my best to offer her company in what she has guessed will be her last days.

There is no sun light detectable through the curtain cracks, so it is during the night when I first smell the sickness. It's inside the human, crawling and growing, spreading and destroying. By the time she wakes to my wines it has doubled its tirade, slowed her racing, whooshing blood flow down and has started to emerge through the minute pores in her skin. I can smell it, hear it, and when I try to get her aware by liking her face, I can taste it too, sizzling on my tongue and popping atop my tastebuds.

The lady human pushes herself up and tries to walk to her rusty mirror. She does this every morning, she brushes her hair, changes from her cotton pyjamas to a mothballed dress and puts on her pear jewellery. Why does she do it? Why does she push and exhaust herself so much with this morning ritual even on the days when she never leaves the house? She never has any visitors and can't even find the energy to feed herself properly anymore, so why does this strange human habit come above her health and hunger?

She's going to kill herself if this goes on, she sacrificing all her days' worth of energy to elegance rather than meals. I watch her stumble on the way to the bathroom; something is killing her, and all I can do its watch it inhibit her from my situation on the soiled, creaking wooden floor.

It's midday when she realises; I imagine that pain must have exploded over her corroded bones. The lady clings to the table like a knife is being screwed into her ribs. I start to bark, probably the first since I was taken from home. She cranes her turkey like head around it me and her fluidic, bulging eyes are blanketed in their vein ravaged lids; I howl low and long as her knees fold and she crashes to the disgusting floor and lands in a haunting spectacle.

I howl again, I cry; but the human lady made sure nothing could get out of this house, and by the same law, nothing sure as damn hell is managing to get out.

I hear the pile of bones and skin reverberate the name the human lady had baptised me with; Daffodil. Hurrying over I see the sticky limbs twitch and reach out for me. There was no question to it, I slipped under her arm and burrowing into her arm pit. Close now I can hear the micro-sonic sounds of the slowly silencing lady. The ocean of air that dangerously tips and sways in her chest, the skipping and freezing music of her heart; I can smell the disease as it constricts her gurgling intestines and I stay regarding her like a master piece song as she slowly fads to the edge.

Then, an unusual rage blows up in me; I jumped away from her and raced as fast as my unlaboured used legs could propel me. I smelled for hints of outside air that might have slipped through from outside into the stale, underwater stinking aroma of the inside. I searched for cracks in the ancient floor boards that I might be able to squeeze down into the foundation through or for ruffling curtains that gave away windows that had been left open forgetfully all this time.

There was nothing of the sort; the human lady was stanch in her isolation.

By the twelfth minute of my rage, I found myself balanced on the edge of the threadbare couch, tensed like a tiger and judging the distance to the curtains that sat on the wall some meters away. I felt like a pounding drum on legs, like Christopher-bloody-Columbus, getting ready to sail out, wondering when you get to the edge if you're going to fall off the bleeding map.

I hurled myself at them, feeling like there's angles at my side; stagnant air takes on sudden life as it whistles through my ears and I fly better than a bird for a heat beat or two.

The only thought racing through my head was of a memory, back when days were pure and good, of how a ball had smashed one of the windows in the sitting room with ease. I am certainly bigger than any ball; was all I could think before I impacted at a bruising angle and murdered the grimy window to shards. Bits of it become embedded into my meat and rain down on my coat in short revenge.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, and was not in any way ready to peel them open yet. Prickly twigs catch me and I feel myself crash through and against branches. Solid ground caught me and held me while I lay in feint sleep. Lying in darkness pain starts to hatch along my skin as adrenaline was vacuumed from my system. Finally, I became brave enough to pry my eyelids apart; all I can see was a covering of glass that twinkled like stars in the setting or perhaps rising sun. Heaving and heavy, my body struggled upright; I saw that I was deep amongst a dead bush, all its leaves were curled over and brown, its thin branches brittle and hanging from strains of bark.

My gasping breath echoed through the garden and I explored it with care. Everything was dead except for a few green, cruel plants which had grown into dictatorships in their own areas of the yard. This yard was dead beyond the plants; I could smell no animals, only the unforgiving taint of human destruction that hangs around in parts of the town where there were factories and too many houses too close together.

I started an awful orchestra of noise and streamed around the prickly yard. There were plenty of holes in the neglected fence and I pulsed through them, across numerous other yards, in multiple levels of desertion. I tried to catch attention and annoy humans to me. But there is not many around right now and the growing light tells me it's because the morning is being born.

I am streaking across another foreign yard when a swearing, smoke breathing, fat job of a man starts towards me from where he was leaning against his back door. They call it being judgemental, but I didn't let him come into reach of me, didn't trust him an inch. I see the next yard is fixed up better and I hear the pray and whine of a dog that is moaning about within. I slip back the way I had come, hoping the stump man with the mad light in his eyes will follow. He does no such thing and I am no crazy crusader as to dive back and try to tantalize him to trail me once more.

I battle back to dead garden of the human lady; I keep my mind on my duty and spin around to the front of the yard. I position myself down and start up a circus, one people can't wait to roll up a newspaper and flog.

In quick time someone visits, they god nearly tear me in half so I lob myself to safety amongst the full, unheeded growth of the weed taken garden. The fair haired, high heeled visitor slams on the door, raving to take the anger out on the owner now that the dog is out of range. Where is that old woman who lives here? That's when it's realised that not everything is chugging along to full promise in the house. This is an age where neighbours look out for thy's neighbours and I could not be more grateful for the human's efficiency in connecting the dots.

The angry human calms and leaves only to return a time later with a partnering of others. They crow bar the door open and disappear inside, so I go in after to keep them in my sights. Beneath the noise of their voices when they find the old lady, I can hear the thankful wheezing. As she is carried passed I see her veins are swollen and she looks worse and truly ready to die this time. My back aches, I'm thirsty, hollow-gutted, but I call no attention to me. I plant my muzzle into her palm which had fallen down of her stretcher. Her fingers tighten as she feels me with the certainly of a blessing and I sit and watch as she is loaded into a medical smelling cart and pulled away by two gigantic four hooved beasts.

There spreads a hush and people that had gathered to observe the change to the morning way disperse. Only one person notices me, a more sober man than the rest, he gathers my dangling ear in an affectionate fistful than grumbles away home. I'm all but forgotten, because I've got a naked neck, no one ever saw me or learned I was her dog; I decided what this feeling is like, being the lone dog, the dog pushing on into the darkness of the rest of them.

It's the visit that saves her damn life. It's the visit that god well pushes me onto the streets.