Hunger

We are hungry…

Weeks have passed since we were last fed-- our muscles have become stringy and thin; our bones show in grotesque, sharp-angled ridges through our loosely hung skin; they say hunger makes us faster.

Some of us have already succumbed to the painful ach of our shrunken stomachs, dying slowly over the course of several weeks until finally collapsing, what little life they had possessed fleeing at last from their broken bodies. Their emaciated corpses aren’t even worth the energy required to know on the skinny bones. Our companions’ remains lay mostly whole near the back of our cages, forgotten and left to rot.

We are hungry.

The time spent brooding in our crates is silent—we have long since lost the energy to live… life itself becomes a barely-performed task that we perform for the longest hours imaginable, cursing our survival but unable to fathom a dismal escape. Instead, we simply grow surly, our barest grasps of sanity beginning to slip as the constant grinding of our empty stomachs grows more painful. Malnutrition has made us carnal; we fear nothing, not even death.

With such a passion, we hate to run. We were built for it, we were meant for it, but the mere scent of the outdoors (a deliciously pungent odor of cheap hot dogs and human sweat) spikes an almost unbearable pain in our empty innards.

Boss-man told us every race lost was another day without food. He thinks we’re lazy. He thinks that starvation will motivate us to run faster. But the plain truth is something a thick-headed idiot like him cannot see—without nourishment our bodies are weak. We are slow. Other dogs—well-fed and healthy—quickly speed ahead of our lagging bodies, full of energy and life where we are filled with only desperation and despair…

… and so we continue to fast.

We are hungry.

When we are not being forced to run, we are locked away in the dark of a basement filled with large, dirty cages. The pungent odor of mildew and urine permeate the damp air, like a soupy fog that chokes our silent throats. The kennel is silent, save for the slight shuffle of tired bodies as they scuttled across the rough cement floors… instead of our voices resounding in the night, the halls only echo with the ominous rumble of our stomachs, the creaking of our bones, our raspy, labored breaths… we are mere ghosts of our former selves, silent, with no purpose for ourselves.

He has done this to us. He is keeping us here, for his own purpose. Oh how we hate him and his nauseating sneer, his beer-belly and sausage fingers. Pitiful excuse for a human being… HE IS CAUSE OF OUR SUFFERING!

We are angry—enraged and ravenous, locked in the dark with nothing but our hunger. Through our veins pump pure hatred and adrenalin instead of blood, mixing to create a steroid, the only thing that keeps us from falling apart completely.

We feel the holes in our stomachs. We hear the strain in our limbs. Our hatred for our captor is the only thing keeping us alive.

We are hungry.

It won’t be long now…

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Billy “Boss-man” Boe hated losing money. It was like losing little pieces of his life, like losing his fingers, one by one, to those greedy gamblers at the track. They’d gobble up his fortune and profits without so much as a smart-assed comment, leaving him with nothing….

How he HATED to lose…

… and those damn dogs were the cause of the increasing space in his pocketbook. The mangy beasts still refused to give him anything more than a half-assed jog. He had administered every sort of punishment his twisted mind could think of, but each method seemed to leave the dogs a little more drained, a little thinner, and a hell of a lot meaner.

Damned mutts. Stubborn, foul bastards that cost him money…

‘Not today,’ he thought, slapping the palm of his hand with the long, metal pipe he had brought with him.

Those stupid beasts would run faster or so help him…

With a hefty shove, he forced open the heavy steel door to the basement and lumbered down the isle at a leisurely pace, idly swinging the pipe in one hand.

The kennel was quiet now-days. The dogs were too lethargic to even yap. The thought made him so mad…

“Get up, you pieces of shit!” Billy shouted around his lit cigar, blowing smoke into the dark cages and rapping on the chain-links with his pipe.

There was a shuffling of movement inside, but the dogs refused to approach the door.

“Scared is ya?”

Silence.

“Lazy sons of bitches—I’ll teach ya to slack off on ol’ Boss-Man!” Wrapping his meaty fingers around the handle, he flung the cage door wide and brandished his weapon, prepared to swing at the thin figures slinking around in the shadows.

He swung once, blindly, his blow meeting only hair. He advance, swinging wildly. “I’ll flay the ‘ides offa every damn one of ya! I’ll—oof!”

The pipe flew out of his hand and landed on the other side of the kennel, hitting the floor with a resounding clang! He had fallen over an old greyhound carcass, landing hard on his side.

Billy bit back a curse, struggling to raise his heavy body off the ground. He paused when the sound of paws on pavement echoed in his ears, along with the barest hint of a growl that resonated thickly in the carnivorous silence.

Fear began rising in the pit of his stomach and the hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end—his weapon was gone, lost in the dark, and now he was all alone…

Twelve pairs of eyes and twenty-four rows of teeth glinted in the dark.

We are hungry…

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