The Moon’s Gaze

Man’s Best Teacher

Chapter 1- New Moon

Playlist- Git up, Git Out by Outkast

The monotonous squawking of my alarm clock resounded throughout my room like a flock birds singing horridly in the early morning. I swatted around aimlessly, eyes still closed with a pillow over my head, for the snooze button failing miserably. First I hit my bowl of Fruit Loops from the night before. I could hear the spoon rattle on the hardwood floor and the glass from the bowl crack. Second I hit my phone of the desk and heard my battery fall out from its rear. On the third try, my bad luck continued as I hit my hand against the wall hard enough to make a dent in the wall if not break a piece of it wholly.

I grasped my electric alarm clock finally and threw it across my room like every morning, causing the seemingly endless beeping to cease. I never was a morning person.

I made a loud roar into the pillow that nearly suffocated me to sleep last night as a new day began. “Hooray” I muttered sarcastically. I yanked the pillow off of my head and breathed in deeply, my first breath being filled with the open city smog that eased its way in from my open windows and the slightest taste of bacon that came from the kitchen downstairs.

I laid on my back and stared at my ceiling like I did every morning and gave a half hearted thought to what I was going to do today, deep down already knowing what that was. The past two months were routine for me, and today would be no different.

Forcing my torso straight up, I kicked the covers off of my legs lazily and eased off of my bed, being careful not to step on the broken glass from my cereal bowl. I knelt down and picked up my almost neo-lithic phone, shoving the battery into place and popping the back to the cellular device on. As the phone chimed on, I walked lazily to my bathroom rubbing my head habitually.

The light flickered on as I did my morning bathroom routine: leak, brush, wash. Hopping out of my hot shower, I slipped on some jeans, a two times two small white shirt, and some socks as I headed towards the kitchen, with little to no pep in my step.

Sliding down the banister on the stairs, the smell of food made my mouth water increasingly like a faucet was turned on in my mouth.

A dry “Bonjour, mom.” Leaked out of my mouth as I stepped into the kitchen, eyes half closed from sleep deprivation. She gave me a strangely overenthusiastic “Hey!” and continued cooking.

I sat at the marble dinner counter and could already tell something about her was off. “So mom, what type of guy have you met this time.” Mom rarely brought dates over but when she did, she always had a bright smile on her face the next morning. Whether it was some random guy off of the street or a big time lawyer, she was always happy when a man took interest in her.

She chuckled and replied “What makes you think it’s always a guy that makes me happy, hmmm? It could be something completely different. I scoffed in doubt, purposely loud enough for her to hear me.

“What else could it be mom? Oprah wants to pay your bills for life? Or better yet, Bill Gates just bought you three new all expense paid houses?” I joked lightly. Very lightly. Mom hadn’t kept a man ever since my dad left when I was five. She said he’d just vanished and one day never came home. “Like a ghost” is the way she put it specifically. We heard from him from time to time. He lived somewhere in Tennessee with his new wife. He always wrote as if we all were on good terms, when in reality it was hell. We don’t know why he left, as he never answers when we right back and ask, but mom has hunch.

Mom left the stove and walked towards the pantry, humming a tune from the early 90’s. This was bad. Whenever she hummed that could only mean one thing. “You got a new job!!” I screamed. It was more of a question than an exclamation. This was out of the fact that mom never had a job. She always had her little boy toys pay for us. It wasn’t a choice she made that I supported but it kept her around the house more often, which didn’t cause me to complain. Me and my mom were more so like brother and sister than mother and son.

“Well if you must know,” she began, still fumbling through the pantry “Yes, I did get a new job. But I’m not going to tell you where. You’ll know soon enough.” I laughed at my mom as I recalled the last job she had as a bartender. And the job before that as a waitress. And the one before that as a masseuse. Long story short, they all ended on bad notes.

“Come on mom, you gotta let me know. I need to make a good guess of how long it is until you get fired for hitting on clients and customers like all the other jobs you had.” I joked.

She gave a brief sigh. Out of sadness over my somewhat harsh joke, or over something else entirely I couldn’t tell. “I repeat: you will see. Just be patient.” Even still I laughed at my mom as I finally couldn’t take the reality of bacon being directly in front of me, and not being in my mouth. I rose from my seat and headed towards the stove as I grabbed a Styrofoam plate and plastic fork. We weren’t really big on dishwashing around here.

As I poked at the skillet for a slab of meat, Mom shut the pantry door and glared at me intently. “Did you eat all of the bread yesterday?” I gulped in fear as I realized the truth. Mom didn’t play when it came to food missing.

“Uhh… Y… Y… yeah.” I sputtered.

She gave me a sigh of disappointment and folded her arms. She always did that when she was trying to think. “Okay.” She heaved. “I know you’re not gonna like this, Tye, but it has to be done.” I knew what was coming. The tension in the air practically spelled it out. “I need you to go out to the grocery store and get me some things.”

My heart practically skipped a beat. No way. “Mom, you know how I fell about leaving the house!!” I whined.

“Tye” she pleaded “You haven’t been out of the house since May, when school ended, and I really need these groceries.”

“Correction” I stated coldly. “I haven’t left the house until Jamal died.”

Mom gave me a freezing stare as soon as I mentioned his name. The room felt like the arctic for a split second. This look was what hurt me the most in life. It had too many emotions running through it. Pain, love, fear, but mostly sorrow. Whenever Jamal was mentioned, it always ended up in a fight between the two of us.

“Tye…” she breathed “I really don’t feel like arguing with you right now. I just got a job and everything is going really good right now.” I could tell she was being genuine as she spoke. The look on her face practically yelled it into my ear. “Now go to the store right now. The grocery store isn’t but three blocks away. That’s an order, not a question.” She put on her “I am Mother, hear me roar” voice on with the last sentence, so I already was scared. My mom could be the cutest thing at times, but if you got on her bad side, she’d pull out guns and knives for ya.

Still holding my cold tone from earlier I replied with a “Whatever.” As I snatched the list of food from her warm, soft hands and went to the door to slip on my sneakers and grab my wallet. What more could I have said? Well, actually, I could’ve said a lot more, but it would’ve ended up in an argument that neither of us wanted. Sometimes they were so bad, that neighbors complained. We always said that Divorce Court or Maury was on TV so they wouldn’t know it was really us screaming at each other sounding more like wolves howling than human beings yelling at one another.

I slid on my hat from the hat rack next to the door, and grabbed my backpack to put the groceries in. Then, hesitantly, put my hand on the door knob. For most kids, leaving the safety of their house not a big deal. Honestly, it wouldn’t even be a deal but for me it was different.

Over the summer, I basically shunned myself from my neighborhood and area. I couldn’t take the pain of looking into other peoples eyes, seeing what they thought of me. It was almost too much to bear. Sometimes, if I looked really hard, I swore I could’ve heard voices, but knew that was impossible. The last time I went outside, practically everyone that I knew judged me over what happened to Jamal. They assumed he was a bad apple and so was I, even though they knew me just as much as my mom did. It was heartbreaking to see there reactions to my eyes.

I twisted the brass knob until the door opened almost by itself. The sunlight somewhat tore my eyes apart as the outside came into view. Birds chirped songs that were somewhat familiar to me, and the wind whistled tunes that were like soundtracks to nightmares. The grey sky mimicked my eyes as the trees swayed from the blowing winds from the east. Slyly, hoping no one would see me, I ran to the other side of my house to grab my skateboard, grabbing my hoodie off of the coat rack before I closed the door to my house.

I threw on my new piece of clothing, with my hood up hoping no one would see me, and kicked and pushed towards the market. I felt the winds slap my face as I went downhill, and felt gravity destroy my legs as I went uphill. Of all the places in Georgia, we had to be in the city, where hills were galore.

As I skated along the sidewalks and streets I saw too many familiar faces: my friends Xavier and Zach, my mom’s girlfriend Amy, and a couple of my teachers from my sophomore year of high school. Luckily Xavier and Zach were to busy freestyle battling against each other to notice me, and Miss Amy was too busy talking on the phone to recognize me. And the high school teachers from last year just didn’t care. I mentally wiped the sweat off my brow after the close call and continued to push towards the store, which was not but two minutes away now.

Then a thought hit me. School. School was right around the corner. Three weeks away to be exact. Who knew that spending the whole summer time cooped up in you room could make time fly so fast? Normally I enjoyed going back to school, as it was naturally my forte. Grades were never truly a big deal, I had some good friends and some bad enemies, and I liked seeing everybody. Deep down, I was a people person, but I just hadn’t shown that during the summer.

This year was completely different though. In school everybody would see me, and look at me as if I was some type of freak, the same way that they had on the last day of school AKA the worst day of my life. The eyes that day drilled into my feelings as the headlines in the news plastered every single TV screen: Local Prisoner Commits Suicide. Tears stung my eyes as I thought about it. Basically, I had three weeks to either get over my fear or just drop out of school. I knew that due to my mom’s philosophy on an education that the latter would never ever be possible. But how could the first option work? If I couldn’t get rid of it in two months, how the hell could I get rid of it in less than half that time? This was one of those many times that the world bugged me to the point of insanity.

As I shifted my weight to the tail of my board, I skidded to a halt. I entered the grocery, ignoring the senior citizen out of front who yelled into my ear “Now Hiring” and lifted the note out of my pocket, hoodie still covering my head. I stared at it, trying to estimate how much the stuff would cost, the total coming to about twenty bucks. The list read, in my mother’s horrendous handwriting: Bread, Milk, Fruit Loops, Pop Tarts, and Eggs.

I lazily pushed the cart around the store, my board resting inside it, searching for the appointed foods with little to no enthusiasm. As I crept around the store like a ghost in a graveyard, my mind felt uneasy. Whether it was because of my fear of being persecuted by peoples’ thoughts of my family and myself or because of my awkward nervousness around the staff members of the store, I didn’t know.

I had lived in Celtic Valley, Georgia all my life and every time I stepped in the Kroger, I felt bizarre. The people who had worked here always gave off an eerie vibe, as if we were in a Native American burial ground. But I wasn’t being prejudice. I had a right to feel weird around these people. The same people who worked here when I was four worked here now and were just as creepy. They were various rumors throughout the town about each and every one of them.

For example, one of the cashiers, who we called Old Willy, was an ex-con who got locked up for kidnapping. The very thought of him doing something as horrible as that caused my hair to stand on end. Old Willie was around the age of 65, obviously a senior citizen, and bad enough, was cock-eyed. Whenever he looked at you with his left eye and mumbled a sometimes unintelligible “Good evening”, he was looking at the floor at the same times with the other eye! A perfectly good reason to feel strange in my eyes.

The various stories about the staff members, or at least the older ones, were practically endless ranging from stories about murder to being “mentally unstable”. All I could do was hope they were wrong and go on about my business. But the notion of the stories always clung to my back like a pet bird whenever I entered the store.

After about thirty minutes of strolling through the store, picking up everything that my mom asked me to, and a little more for my personal use, I stood in long line, waiting to pay up and head out. Nervousness still littered my mind like sprinkles on ice cream as Old Willie looked at me intently with only his left eye, greeting the customer and looking at the grocery scanner with the other. My hair stood on end as I looked into his eyes. Or eye, whichever you prefer.

As I waited, and halfway listened to the intercom that played the country slash local news radio station, a headline caught my ear. With an overtly fake country accent, the disc jockey spoke obnoxiously “We have just received word on the state of our city. Celtic Valley is now ranked as the largest gang infested city in the country. Population density was the method to figure the statistic.”

The news didn’t surprise me really. The whole world new Celtic Valley as one of the most drug ridden, gang infested cities in the nation. It was only a matter of time before it hit number one. Though not uprising it did sadden me though, as it recalled bad memories from last year of Jamal. I quickly brushed the feelings off, trying to keep my mature composure. Normally I would have let it be, but in front of everyone in the market, it would blow my cover. Couldn’t have anyone seeing who I was and start judging me now could we?

With my arms resting lazily on the cart full of the appointed items, along with some sodas and a bag of Lays, I couldn’t help but reminisce on the days when Jamal didn’t come home until early in the morning, wreaking of marijuana smoke. Or the times when he “forgot” to give me a ride home after spending the day at the skatepark with my friends. Those last few months we shared disappointed me so much due to the fact that we were so angry towards each other. I tried to put the complete blame on him, but I never could for on the inside, most of it was on me.

Old Willie tapped my head and knocked me out of my day dreaming which was more or less like daily nightmares. I stood tall and began taking my items out of the cart, trying to think of something more uplifting. Too bad nothing in my life had been uplifting in almost half a year.

The senior cashier, practically decaying with age, scanned the items slowly, giving me more time to think of something fun coming up, but nothing came. School would be a drag, seeing all my friends and making new ones would suck, and everything else was unimportant.

“That’ll be… twenty four fifty seven.” The old timer mumbled. I couldn’t help but give a crooked smile as I looked at his awkward facial features, not including his eyes. His hair was a disproportionate afro, practically sprayed with gray, with bald spots looking like crop circles on his scalp. His teeth were a whole nother matter though. They were a buttery yellow, with plaque, now brown, eating away at the enamel in and around his teeth. I could’ve sworn I saw a few gold teeth as he yawned like a fatigued bear. His body was frail and wrinkly, looking as if he was made with toothpicks for bones and plastic for skin. Looking at him slightly made me feel sorry for him. Here he was, looking a like a mistake of the human race, and he worked at the lowest paying job in the city.

I handed him the money, grabbed my change, stuffed the groceries in my pack and rolled out the store in a dash, knocking a basket of flowers down on my way out, hearing a curse from a lady on the sidewalk. Even after an hour of grocery shopping, it seemed as if every one was in the same place as before, as if time hadn’t moved: Miss Amy was still chatting, Zach and Xavier were still spitting their intensely wack rhymes to each other, and old teachers eyed me with apprehension.

The wheels on my skateboard rolled quietly as I seemingly glided across the pavement and asphalt. I knew that as soon as I stepped foot inside the house my mom was going to scold me for not going out over the summer and giving me the strictly parental “That wasn’t so hard was it?” speech. I shuddered at the thought of it happening, barely anticipating the lecture.

Wind lapped at my face as I went downhill, seeing my house in the cul-de –sac in front of me. Suddenly, I got a spark of adrenaline. No excitement for a whole summer does that to you. Just for the hell of it, as I reached the bottom of the cul- de-sac, at almost maximum speed, I leapt off of my board and into the lush grass that covered my front lawn. Why not? Nobody was outside and all the adults had to work during this time of day anyway so I didn’t have to worry about being seen. The lawn was in need of a cut, which I knew was probably going to be my chore since mom had a job now. The tall grass prepared to cushion me as I flew through the air, trying to position myself to land on my stomach so I wouldn’t crush any of the food items, especially the bread and eggs.

As I landed, I slightly lost my breath, not anticipating as harsh of a fall. The wind knocked out of me, I tried to stay calm until it returned. As my breath came back, I coughed and laid on my back, into the grass. I remembered how natural it felt to just be outside, as if I had restraints on my wrists and they had just been destroyed. The smell of rain was in the air as the wind glided over my facial features, while I listened to the earth’s natural breathing pattern: birds chirping, rustling leaves, and squirrels racing around the trees. I had to say, I missed this part of being outside very much, if not the most.

The simple aura of the atmosphere was enough to give me a high. But it wasn’t the high you’d normally think of. It was more of a feeling or emotion than a state of mind or euphoria. I wasn’t drowsy or sleepy or had the munchies or anything of the sort. I simply felt at peace with the world and everything in it, as if this very spot in my front yard was meant exactly for me and I was supposed to lay there for all of eternity. That was it. The perfect word to describe how I felt when I lay on earths grasses, all my past transgressions and history simply washed away with the natural high. The word was “peaceful”. It fit just right, as if it were a puzzle piece in my life.

Not much could change the way I felt now. I was in my perfect spot, on almost the perfect day. The only thing not so perfect was school beginning but that was for later. Now I would just lie down and relax until I felt like doing otherwise. Hopefully that would be never.

As I lay on my stomach, watching the insects and other creatures that inhabited the ecosystem that was my home, clouds floating overhead more so like balloons than gas. The shadows of the figures in the sky moved as slowly as the clouds did, moving by only inches in minutes. The somewhat overcast sky couldn’t have given me more comfort: I hated sunny days, but at the same time despised gloomy grey ones. The sky today was a complex mix of both.

All I felt like doing was lying on the lawn and listening to the wind. The deep, yet sultry, breathe of the wind. I could hear it so vividly. The sound was like the slick whistle of a mother singing a lullaby to her newborn child. It was comforting yet assuring that all was fine and nothing could go wrong. As weird and bizarre as it sounds, at times, back when Jamal was here, I left my window cracked open just to hear the gentle coos of the wind. Even though I was already sixteen, I still enjoyed the “Rock-A-Bye” feeling that it gave me when my eyes were closed and the covers trapped me in my bed, causing warmth to spread to the tips of my toes. It felt like a treat; an extra song from my mother, even though my mom sounded like Whitney Houston after Bobby got a hold of her.

Suddenly, in the middle of my reminiscing, the pitch and over all feel of the gentle sighs of the air changed. Instead of being a liquid sound, flowing like running water, it started to sound forced. As if it was calling for my attention. Normally the sound flowed through one ear, manifested itself in my head, then slyly glided out the other, but it seemed that today it was not the case. Instead of calling for an ear to grab on to or some hair to rustle itself through, the wind strangely sounded as if it called for something entirely different. Something like me.

I blinked my eyes a couple of times just to make sure that I was awake, and even, dare I say it, alive. The normal call wasn’t here today. It was more of a cry. No wait… more of a yelping. The noise wasn’t calm and relaxed; it was distressed and hurt. It sounded somewhat familiar as I strained to listen to it, as if I had heard it before. The more and more I concentrated on the now yelling whisper of the wind, the more I realized that it wasn’t what I thought it was. It wasn’t the wind that soothed my ears and eyes to sleep some nights, or the one that I had only after what felt like minutes ago, probably hours, cherished.

Too into my “high”, or maybe just lazy, probably both, I didn’t bother to move out of my position for my bath in nature was too comforting, too, as strange as it sounds, orgasmic to let go of. But then as I heard the raspy yet loud cry once again, as if a divine act of the world willed it so, I rose to my feet. I looked up into the graying sky, realizing that my earlier assumption was correct. I had to be in the grass for at least around three hours. Rain clouds like the ones above me didn’t seem so close when I first began to lay in the greenery.

Then, remembering the reason I got up, I heard the cry again. I searched around the area with my eyes, not wanting to move my feet just yet, for the source of the whine. As the sound continued to ghoulishly moan on in the air it got easier to go towards the source. My ears perked up intently as I walked towards the side of my house. As I walked closer, the noise became more and more recognizable, less like the wind and more like something that was… alive.

The left side of my grey house, matching the sky almost exactly, was nothing but a petite area of grass not but 75 meters long, with only the heater visible, excluding a few shrubs. As I tiptoed around the house, I heard more distinctions in the noise: rhythm, hoarseness, and pitch. The pattern was similar to breaths, being even paced , but the noise was like a whine. Slightly scared, I slyly searched the side of the house until I heard a rustling noise in one of the shrubs that blandly decorated my house. Mom had terrible taste in landscaping. I looked in the direction of the shrub and saw that it was shaking. It wasn’t a profuse shaking or violent. It was more of a tremble, certainly not enough to scare me away.

Looking hard at the thick brush, the clouds gave no light to the area behind it. I stared hard, trying to decipher what was behind the greenery without actually… touching it. I wasn’t afraid just wary. I stretched out my head, trying to move it farther than body could possibly allow to see what was behind the bush but it was to no avail.

Suddenly, an idea drifted through my mind. Slowly, so I wouldn’t scare whatever was behind the shrub away, I lowered my stance to my knees, and then onto my stomach, took a prone position with the groceries still on my back, reminiscent of some of the video games I played where you were pitted in the middle of battle, trying to focus your shot, aiming while on your front. Now, having a better look at what I was leaning towards, I saw something. It wasn’t something that I expected. It was actually what I least expected to see. I expected to see a squirrel or a rodent of the sort. All I could see through the thick shrubs was blood. It slowly raced down the veins of the leaves on the bush, in different places. I wanted to say something to the bush to see if whatever it was would respond but the words were backed up in my throat like an Atlanta freeway.

Sweat furrowed my brow as I slowly backed away, all of a sudden, not wanting to see the rest of what was behind it. I, using more haste than I did when I knelt to the floor, rose to my feet and nervously shuffled my feet against the fading grass.

All I could do was wonder as I quickly turned from the corner and rushed to my front door, wondering what I should do. Should I call the cops and tell them that I possibly have a dead body by my house? No, too suspicious looking on my part. Maybe I could tell mom and shed check the body out and throw it away. Then I thought better; mom wouldn’t touch a dead roach, let alone a dead body. How was I sure it was even human? It could’ve been a cat or something? No, the yelp was too strong to be anything other than a humans. In the end, as I fumbled with my house keys, I decided that I would ignore. Maybe it would go away like a bad dream. Only time would tell.

My keys felt like they were alive, sliding through different fingers as I nervously itched for the correct one. I inserted the correct key into the lock and unlocked the door as it creaked open like a screech from a horror movie. Nervousness and fear mixed together could truly be a pain. But why? Why was I scared of something so bizarre? If anything I should be creeped out, but surely not scared. My manly instincts started to kick in. Was I going to let something as strange a shaking bush with a little bit of blood on it keep me from looking outside of my own house? Hell no.

I slipped off the straps of my backpack and dropped in a stint, with something similar to adrenaline pumping through my veins, causing me to gain the courage to go look behind the bush. If it wasn’t adrenaline, then it was probably stupidity. There was little to no difference between the two in my eyes.

I hastily rushed down the white wooden steps to my patio and with more confidence than before, planting my feet firmly in the grass instead of tip toeing like a little punk, almost leaving marks, feeling like a soldier going into battle. It damn sure wasn’t that serious, but hey, it felt like it.

As I turned the corner, the bush continued to rustle, as before. I looked closely and saw the dark red liquid that caused me to leave before. It was in the same spot, but decorated more of the bush like a vampires Christmas tree. I marched towards the bush adamantly and got on my knees, the bush seeming smaller than it was before. I wave of relief flew over me. There’s no way a human being could actually fit behind this thing without me noticing. Still somewhat wary, I grabbed a nearby stick, and fondled the bush with it, trying to move areas of it until I could get a better look at what was behind it.

I probably poked around into the bush for five minutes straight until I finally decided to thrust it in. After that, I’d surely get the response from what was behind the bush. It wasn’t dead. I knew that because of the moving of the bush. Finally, I thrust the stick, not but a meter long, into the bush. And then… nothing. I expected to hear a scream or something similar. In the back of my mind I expected to hear a “What the hell?”. But I didn’t hear anything. I waited for a response. Nothing came. I poked again and waited. Nothing came. But the third time I stabbed at the shrub, I could’ve sworn I had heard a growl.

I raised my brow. The growl wasn’t one you’d hear from a human, so I calmed down slightly. Not enough for me to dive into the bush though. I poked the bush one final time and was cut short. My former thrusts had been full pushes from my arm, but this one stopped almost halfway. I felt a tug. It was a strong one too, but nothing to break my arm off or anything ridiculous like that. But seconds later that ridiculous notion came. Suddenly, my arm was jerked from side to side, causing my hand to slip and my fingers to burn as the bark from the stick slid up and down against my skin as I forced myself onto my rear. Soon after, I heard a multiple amounts of grunts and crushing noises until seemingly out of nowhere, the stick, now sticks, came flying out into little gobbled up pieces.

I muttered a curse and shook my hand profusely, still feeling the sting from the friction between the wood and my palm. “What the hell are you?” I whispered ever so silently, half way wanting a response. I crawled closer towards the bushes, wanting to get this over with and pried through the greenery with my bare hands, in the back of my head praying to whoever that my hand wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the stick.

My hand dug deeper and deeper, feeling like it was digging into a jungle, being pricked by leaves and knots in the shrubbery until finally I felt something. At first I winced. Not in pain, but out of surprise. Something wet was touching my hand. It was tickling but felt good at the same time, causing a smile spread out between my dimples. Only seconds later did my mind put together that it was a tongue. I pushed part of the shrubbery aside and saw what had haunted me for the past twenty minutes of my precious life.

Fur rustled off of its back, somewhat spiky, as I stared into its eyes. I glared at them intently, noticing how they resembled the white glow of the moon. The coat of fur that surrounded it was a slick and silvery black. Its teeth were pearly white as it continued to lap its tongue against my digits. They were sharp and almost seemed like they were filed down to the point. It slowly limped out of the bush and closer towards me, more of its hind features becoming visible. The tail wagged ever so gently, showing that it was comfortable with my presence. As if perceiving me as a medic it lifted up its front left paw, covered in blood, with a deep gash slicing it almost completely off of the arm. I shrieked in amazement at how it was still alive after so much blood loss from the wound. A dog the size of a medium sized picture frame stood before, now licking its injured paw as if it were lapping at milk, staring at my brown eyes.

I whispered a “Hey” as I crawled closer towards the dog, our noses almost touching. I could feel its warm breath and cold stare. I chuckled to myself over my former fear, knowing the barrel of laughs would burst out later. My hand then, almost on its own, extended towards his. The dog then, instinctively, returned the gesture with a handshake, putting its tiny right paw into my palm.

The canine then limply walked towards me, and crawled into my hand, its whole torso fitting into my palm. Knowing I couldn’t just leave it here, especially after how kind it was, I cradled the mini dog into my chest like a baby and slyly carried it into my house with the groceries. I could already tell that today was going to be a long day.