Gone
If I listen I can almost hear the knocking. Fate is asking me to open the door. I don’t hear the sound, and reach for the latch to open the gate. Fate in the form of golden fur rushes through.
The golden fur is special to me and I don’t want to see it hurt. The golden fur that would never touch a fly or even growl at anything is charging ferociously. I run, but not fast enough. I yell but not loud enough.
My mind flashes over three scenes from weeks gone by. All of the scenes are unpleasant. Golden fur tangled with black fur through a wire fence. Now, there is no fence. The thoughts are gone. I shudder and run faster.
My neighbor is working in her yard with her dog. That dog is the only thing in the world that my princess, with her bright golden fur, hates.
The fight is over the second I run up and yell at the dogs. Princess is slinking away, knowing that she did something wrong. Before I have time to be relived, I hear more growling. This sounds different though. I turn to see my neighbor’s husband run into the yard with a knife.
He is mad. Very mad. I can tell he’s mad by the ways he growls his cuss words and threats. I can’t tell if he is threatening me, or my dog with a brutal death. A flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye and I am saved. A school bus is rounding the corner and he retreats to his porch. I see princess back in our own yard and start breathing again.
Why did she do it? I don’t know. Why was that big, black, dog the only thing in the world that she hated? I couldn’t say. You could have asked her but now the dog house is empty. The leash hangs in the shed, swinging in the wind.
She is gone. Gone like the leafs that fall in the winter, but unlike the leafs, she wont be back. Ever.