“Oh, you foul little beast!” she cries.

Not quite knowing what’s going on, I look around in a state of bewilderment making to touch her arm. As my fingers glide across the bony flesh of her elbow, she turns to me with a look of horror on her face. For a second, I think it’s some fault of my own, but when I follow her gaze, I understand the source of her alarm.

“After all we’ve done for him, and this is how he repays us,” she says theatrically throwing her arms into the airs.

“It’s probably the fish,” I reply nonchalantly.

Ahead of us, Hachikō squats next to a trash can.

“Why couldn’t he have waited until we got to the park?”

“When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go,” I say, not liking how cliché I sound.

“He’s brought shame on us,” she whines to the empty sky, “shame and disgrace!”

Observing the dog as he squeezes out a stream of violent, liquid shit, I bring my hand to my nose before the worst of the smell hits me. There are so many shades of brown. It’s like some satanical rendition of the rainbow. Looking over his shoulder as his legs shake from the strain, I see the embarrassment in his eyes, and yet I know he can’t help it. Despite what Meeko thinks, he enjoys his predicament no more than we do. Standing between him and the traffic, I take off my jacket and hold it before me as if I were a matador readying myself for a bullfight.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Giving him some privacy,” I say.

“You what? Trust you to be more concerned with him more than your lover. Don’t worry that everyone’s looking at me, you just think of the dog.”

“I’m sure he takes no pride in shitting by the side of the road. The least I can do is spare him his blushes.”

“It’s my blushes you should be concerned with, not his.”

With this, she promptly throws the lead to the ground giving me the evols.

“There,” she huffs, “you love him so much, you take care of him.”

Folding her arms, she growls first at me then at Hachikō. Walking past him, she covers her nose the same as me before nudging him with her foot causing him to almost fall. The shit squirting from his arse shows no sign of diminishing, however. The way it snakes its way across the paving slabs reminds me of a video I saw a few weeks back, only in the video it wasn’t shit but blood. Some guy in Brazil had been hacked to death by a gang of machete-wielding bandits outside a café. The victim’s arms had been sliced almost entirely off, remaining attached to his body only via thin strips of dangly tendon. His body was a mess of deep cuts, the fatal one being to his neck. The blood that flowed resembled a river—like the river of slime from Ghostbusters 2—the one Dan Aykroyd went for a swim in. I’d shown Meeko the video, but she hadn’t been too impressed and had demanded I remove it from her view. The machete video, not Ghostbusters 2.

“Poor Hachikō,” I say, before putting my jacket back on and taking the lead in hand.

“Don’t worry, at least I love you.”

Sticking out his tongue while the last of the shit squirts from his arse, I glance at Meeko who’s making a face, first at him and then at me.

“Sewer rats, both of you,” she quips before turning her back and retching.

Smiling at the dog, I lead him away from the scene of the crime thinking of the dead guy from Brazil and wondering what his last thoughts must have been while he bled out with the angry sun glaring down on his once innocent body.

A Journal for Damned Lovers UK

A Journal for Damned Lovers US

Anthology UK / Anthology US