Kitty 8

I am participating in NANOWRIMO this year. I will attempt to post my daily ramblings in the hopes that eventually it will become a book which will entertain you as well as myself…

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

Kitty Part 8

By Plot Roach

It was Hunt who found the path that lead from the Celestial Pack's home to the dwelling place of the humans. Chase lead the way with his brothers following close behind him. By dusk they had found themselves a little village, the human workers were returning to their homes from the fields, leaving their tools next to the doors of their homes as they entered. They watched as men, women and children feasted upon the wheat from the field, found comfort in one another’s arms and settled down to sleep for the night. Chase and Chew had jealousy in their heart for the humans, while Hunt’s heart held only wonder.

The dogs waited until the light extinguished from each hut before going to work. Chase ran through the fields, the mighty wind kicked up from his fast feet destroyed the crops that the humans had worked so hard to harvest the day before. Chew was busy destroying the scythes, hoes and other tools that the humans used to plant, tend and gather their crops. Hunt stood to the side, watching the huts for any signs of movement. But as he watched the huts, he had forgotten to keep an eye elsewhere in the human‘s land. A rabbit, sensing the movement above his hole in the ground, raised himself to the world above and found the brothers in their mischief.

Quickly he sounded an alarm, using his back foot to thump the ground. The humans woke and dashed out into the light of early dawn, and saw what the dogs had done. Chase ran from the scene, being the fastest among them he knew he could not be caught by the humans. Chew, thinking that it had been a plot all along by his brothers to get him into trouble, launched himself at the rabbit and caught it about the neck. He was certain that his brothers had somehow put the rabbit up to warning the humans, so he loosed his anger upon it, tearing it to pieces.

The humans, upon seeing the death of the rabbit who had given his life to warn them of the dogs' trickery, chased the dogs to the edge of their village. One of the humans, having taken up a broken blade of one of the scattered tools and hurled through the air at the two remaining dog brothers. Chew cowered, unable to move. Hunt tracked the blade's flight and called a warning to his brother, Chew. Upon finding that his brother would not move, Hunt threw himself in front of Chew as the blade plunged into his heart, killing him instantly.

Chew ran off after Chase, leaving his brother's body to grow cold in the dirt.

Once the humans found Hunt's body, they tore it to pieces as Chew had done with the rabbit. They returned to their village and collected the remains of the rabbit. One of the men, upon accidentally licking the blood from his fingers found that the rabbit tasted quite good. He shared it with the others and they took turns fashioning spears from the broken tools and began to hunt the smaller animals. These became the first weapons that humans learned to use on the animals in their world, and eventually, upon one another.

Once Chew had found his brother, Chase, the two of them huddled by the sleeping forms of the rest of the Celestial Pack, pretending to be asleep.

When the pack woke, they asked the two brothers where Hunt had gone. But Chase and Chew pretended to be ignorant about it. The alpha of the group, a large black wolf, came forward and smelled the blood upon Chew's hide, both the blood of the rabbit and the blood of his brother, Hunt.

"You have tasted blood and must now be cast out of our world." The black wolf said. "You have taken a life, though you did not need to for survival." And the wolf was right, for they ate the same grass as the rabbit and did not need flesh for sustenance.

"It is not blood but berry juice!" Chase cried, lightly licking at a spot of the dried blood to convince the alpha male.

The others of the pack tasted the blood on Chew's coat and found it appealing, licking Chew's hide until it gleamed. The black wolf, barked a command for them to stop, but they no longer listened to him as they were now too obsessed by the taste of blood to listen to reason.

"Enough!" he yelled at the pack. "Since you have all tasted blood, you will now all live and die by your urge for it. I cast you all out of this world, where your lives have been easy and peaceful. You will now be forced to hunt and kill for your food. You will now know hunger, pain and sorrow. You will fight amongst yourselves, for you now have no leader. And know this." The black wolf said, growing is size and ferocity. "I will not be one of you, but will hunt you all to the end of your days. When a sickly pup is born, I will take his last breath. When a great hunter falls to the tines of a deer, I will take his last drop of blood and when you feel the endless sleep of cold beckoning you, I will take your final heartbeat. I will be closer to you than your own skin, and I will never leave until I have taken what I want from you, for I am Death."

That day, which had begun in golden prosperity, saw the banishment of every dog, wolf, coyote, fox and canine creature that would come to roam the human world.

That cloudless day that had shined upon their pelts found them saddled with their first reminder of Death, for they now all had shadows which could not be cast off until they had shed their very skin.

The dogs who had been tricked into tasting the blood by the brothers Chew and Chase then chased them from the pack. Just as all packs of dogs, tame or wild, now turn upon the cowardly and the weak of their own kind.

The dogs were forced to flee to the human world where the humans caught them, eating some, casting out the wildest and saving the rest to use to hunt the smaller animals. Thus the partnership between the humans the dogs was formed.

Death walked the land and when he took the soul of any of the Celestial Pack, he also took its form. Thus he shifts constantly with the memories of his victims.

And of Hunt? When Death came upon the pieces of his body, he breathed life back into the golden haired dog.

"You did nothing." he said to the youngest brother.

"I only watched." Hunt said.

"But," Death said. "You stood by when your brothers destroyed the human's food, when the rabbit was killed and when yours brothers ran. You sacrificed yourself for one who ran away like a coward."

"He is my brother." Hunt said. “I would do it again if I had to."

"And you claim him still?" Death asked.

"One cannot change the litter he was born to" Hunt said. "As he cannot chose the world he is born to."

"How true" Death said and cocked his head to the side to study the young dog. "And reborn you shall be." he said, touching noses wit the golden haired dog. "Time and again you shall be born in the human world when all the other hounds have log since come to me. Your brothers will be trapped in their own skins and unable to die until they have found you and asked for your forgiveness."

"Then I give it freely, to let them pass from the human world and back into our own for I hold no grudge against them."

"Ah" said Death. "But with each new life, you will not remember them, nor what you have been through. Each body will be a clean slate. So first they must find you, then they must convince you of your past, and then finally they must ask your forgiveness."

"But-"

Death interrupted Hunt's argument by severing his soul from his body and casting it into the body of a pup just being born into the world of humans and dogs.

Then he began to hunt the Celestial Pack and their descendants.

There were times when Chase and Chew searched for their brother in earnest, trying to convince him of their past and to ask for his forgiveness. But he either never believed them or was killed before he could give it.

More often than not Chase and Chew vented their frustration on those who were unlucky enough to cross their path. Of those they feasted upon, Chase and Chew were able to steal their form, much like Death was able to take the form of his victims. Mother dogs use their story to scare their pups into minding them by saying that the two trickster brothers will come for them to eat them in the night, appearing as friends or loved ones to lure them away from the safety of their pack.

The two brothers traveled the world of the humans, always searching for the path that lead home. Sometimes the two brothers traveled together, but mostly they kept to themselves. They had made a pact that if they should find Hunt again, they would use him to find the path to their former home and bypass this nonsense of forgiveness. But Chase's temper always gets the best of him and he murders Hunt before the way can be shown. And as for Chew, his paranoia keeps him from trusting his reborn brother and he always takes the wrong path, leading to nowhere.

And as for Hunt, he is born countless times into the world of humans and dogs. Sometimes he is a wild thing, living by his instincts in the forest. Sometimes he is the loyal hound of a human. But always he is born with bold heart and a clever mind, walking the world of the wild and the tame, yet belonging to neither.

Kitty felt that she could see him clearly, a golden furred figure at the top of a hill. Sunlight streaming upon him, making him glow with an unmistakable magic as he surveyed the world around him. She felt like a small brown mouse compared to his sleek facade.

But then he turned to her and, looking into her eyes, she felt transformed into a creature of legend. She felt taller, more muscular and as if she was one of the Celestial Pack itself and not some mutt of the streets half starved and meek.

It was the howling that woke her up. She shot to her feet as she heard the mournful wails encircle her. It was followed by the yipping of the smaller dogs and the threatening barks of the larger ones.

"What's happening?" she asked the dog in the cell next to her own.

"Some dogs are headed for the end of the hall." he said between barks of obscenities aimed at the humans.

Then she saw them, being dragged on leashes by the humans workers. Twenty in all, with two dogs per worker.

"I've never seen so many go into the room at once." said the Dalmatian.

"I wonder what happens." Said the Chihuahua.

"They go into the room and the Dark One comes from a pipe in the floor to collect them." said Mitch.

"They keep the Dark One a prisoner here as well?" asked the Chihuahua.

"I don't see how that can be, since dogs still die out in the wild." said the German Shepherd.
"So they must have some way of summoning him." Grimy said with a shiver. "Imagine being that powerful to summon the Dark One to come get some poor dog's soul and then send him away again."

"Who says he leaves?" asked the Chihuahua.

"Well he has to." said Grimy. "I mean, who takes the souls of other dogs if he stays here all the time?"

"Maybe there's more than on Dark One." the Chihuahua said.

"Bite your tongue." said the Dalmatian.

But their chatting ceased as the doomed dogs were loaded into the chamber at the end of the hall. Kitty leaned forward in her cage and could see that the inside of the room was painted an industrial green color, there was nothing in it except a pipe that lead up from the center of the floor. There were no windows and only one door. How could the Dark One fit through such a small pipe? she asked herself.

Once the dogs were locked in, most of the humans left. One stayed behind and pushed a series of buttons by the door. It seemed to Kitty that time moved slowly, like frozen water thawing from a drainage pipe during winter.

Before their breakfast was served, two men came back to the chamber, one was rolling a wheelbarrow. The other man pressed another series of buttons, the door swung open and the dogs inside were on the floor. They looked peaceful, as if in a deep sleep. It would look comforting, Kitty thought. If you didn't know any better. The men began tossing the dead dogs into a pile in the wheelbarrow. Once it was full, one of the men wheeled it out of the room and through the door of the pound.

"What are they doing with the bodies?" Kitty asked.

"A truck comes to collect the dead, like it does this time every week." Mitch said.

"How many bodies go out?" Grimy asked.

"Ten, sometimes fifteen." Mitch said, scratching behind one ear with a back leg. "But never this many at once. Never, before today."

The last of the bodies were hauled off in the wheelbarrow and another human hosed out the inside of the chamber as some of the dogs' bowels had emptied after their death.

"I didn't see the Dark One, did you?" asked the Akita.

"They say that you don't actually see him until you die." The Husky said. "Or if you have a vision." he added, looking at Kitty.

As soon as the men were done unloading the bodies of the dead and cleaning out the chamber at the end of the hall, one came by their cages, switching the tags from the white neatly printed slips, which listed their dog type, possible age and sex, to blazing orange colored ones, which listed only a date. They swung on each cage door, tied by the thinnest of wires.

"What to the orange tags mean, Mitch?" Kitty asked, a low whine in her voice.

"It means that you are next in line for the chamber." He said, dropping his eyes to the ground as the world spread from one cage to the next. Tomorrow the Dark One would come for them.