Love Is Watching Someone Die

Probable - 323 words
Lindsey Thompson

The sirens called, as they always did, around noon on Wednesday, undulating between tritoned noise and a beautiful low breeze. They called forth bays and screams and yaps from the neighborhood, but this day the family noticed that Kurt made no motion to join his kin. Where once he would tilt his nimble head and throw back his ears to bid the wailing whistles to stop, he now glanced at the sky despondently, with his head tucked between his paws, and sighed in the summer sun. The mother looked with concern upon the hound’s aging body, curled in the warmth he could barely generate himself. The father wondered if the vet could ease the passing—trouble was, he was not ill exactly.

The probable cause of his depression, though up for much speculation, was unknown. Perhaps it was loneliness, that he should see his final days without the company of his companion, a terrier who had been hit by a car on a runaway journey some two months ago. Perhaps it was merely exhaustion, with years stripping his once perfected figure of its sheen and its use.

But had Kurt the tongue and language to communicate to the family, he would pose only one question, “When is Lisa coming home?” His only love, his master, had moved to Seattle, a young woman just recently married. Though she had been away at college for four and a half years, something inside Kurt knew that this place—his yard, his building, his family—was still her home. She would visit and scratch his ears just the way he liked, rub the brim of his nose—she was the only one who knew to do that. Yet, the last time she came to see him, she smelled different. She felt different. She wore new metal, smelled of a new person, like a new person. And she felt far away.

He didn’t want to die away from her.

What Sarah Said - Death Cab For Cutie