The boy hadn’t slept in longer than he could remember. It’s not because he didn’t want to, he just…couldn’t. The nights were too full and too frightening. He had been enduring it for long enough at this point that he couldn’t remember what it was like for his head to hit the pillow and drift off to sleep like a normal person could. It just wasn’t possible with all of…them there.
Some nights were better than others and he would only feel a nip at a toe where he would retreat his foot back underneath the covers and the rest of the night would be uneventful. Other nights were worse but still tolerable. A scratch across his back or his face, but nothing that would still be welling blood come morning. But then there were the bad nights. And they were happening more regularly. He would awaken from whatever fitful dream he was having with the crushing weight of them on top of him, making it to where he couldn’t breathe. He knew by now that they didn’t want to kill him. If they had wanted that, he would be long dead by now. No, it was as if they delighted in his torture. He didn’t even know what their faces looked like since they were always veiled…in shadow. Literally.
He was being attacked by shadows. They wore a crown of horns and sometimes he could even see rows of too many teeth in the suggestion of a gaping maw. They were the color of a night sky. He could see them better when the moon was full and peering through his window, but then other nights when the weather had turned sour and there was no ambient light to be found, they were almost simply a part of the dark itself. But he could feel them. They had weight and breath that smelled of iron and sulfur. He had come to think of them as…his demons. They must be his because nobody else could see what he was seeing, even when they stood watch. They only saw a little boy thrashing in the night.
The preacher had told him as much and asked him to repent, and that was the only way that he could be rid of them forever. He had tried. He had pleaded and cried to god to remove them from his life as he was oh so tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep a peaceful slumber. He felt like there was something wrong with him when no matter how hard he prayed and pleaded, night after night they tortured him in his bed.
He had tried to sleep in other places. Once in the barn with the mules with the mosquitos singing a chorus of high-pitched squeals in his ears as they batted their tiny wings looking for a purchase to drain him of his blood. Another night he tried to sleep in the crawl space below the house where it smelled like dirt and mold and somehow never completely dried. And yet another night he tried spending the night with Matthew. It was supposed to be fun and a reprieve from the thing that had been haunting him, but there they were again as the rest of the house lulled into a peaceful slumber. They always found him.
His mother and father were at their wits end with him. His father even slept in his bedroom in a rocking chair one night, a lot of good that it did. As his father snored in the chair, they climbed on top of him, and he could feel them begging him to just open his mouth. Just a little.
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Yella was lost. He remembered being born, and he can remember his mother, and bouncing around after a meal of milk from her swollen teats. He could remember how carefree those days were. Chasing bugs and even the occasional mole as they popped their heads out of the ground for a look around. He was clumsy in those younger days and never caught them, but it didn’t take away from the fun he had pursuing them. It never got old.
As he got older, the old man in the house started taking what he guessed were his frustrations on him. First, it would just be a smack on the nose, but then it progressed to a kick to the ribs from his worn leather boots. He didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. He never wanted to do something to earn the ire of the old man. He just wanted to be loved. For some reason, he always had a glow. He didn’t know what colors were, but when everything else was gray and monotone when the old man came around, he smelled like the rotten eggs in the barn that the chickens misplaced and he had a glow around him. If Yella had a word for it or something to compare it to, he would’ve known that the man was glowing red, but he had no way of knowing that, so he just knew that when the glow got brighter, he should run, and hide. That worked most of the time, but then there were days when he still got caught by the collar that the old man had made him wear and then the boot would come. When he first got the collar, he was proud of his gift. Now he felt like it was only there to be a shackle.
Yella’ had gotten bigger, and now he had no idea where his mother had gone. He hadn’t seen her in a long time. Where he used to sleep in the barn, now he had to sleep outside tied to a post. Whether it was raining or snowing or even a clear pretty night, there he lay in the grass as his only bed. It was easier for the old man to catch him that way and hit him. He tried not to cry and yelp. He did that at first but it only seemed to make things worse so now, he only yelped when a rib got cracked and it was a reaction that he couldn’t control. He didn’t know what he had done, but every day was just more of the same.
If Yella’ had known what time was or how to measure it, he would’ve known that this was the life he had lived for a little over two years now. He was defeated. Sure he got scraps from the house from time to time, and the water bowl got filled when the old man remembered, but there he was, at the end of a rope, the grass that used to grow here now trampled to dirt from his pacing the limits of his bindings. He felt like there should be more than this to life. He remembered how happy chasing the crickets and the moles had made him, so he knew that this life should be better. He just wanted the old man to love him.
If Yella’ could speak, or comprehend words, he would’ve known that the old man only kept him around to deter would-be thieves, and thought no more of him than being a nuisance that he had to feed and water occasionally when he thought of him at all. Yella could smell that there was more out there. When the wind blew just right, there were smells that he couldn’t even imagine where they came from, and he wanted nothing more than to find out exactly where that was. The loveliest smell of all however was when she showed up.
Walking around him with a wide berth as if she were wary of him, her white here seemed to glitter in the sun. She smelled like nothing he had ever smelled before, but he wanted a better sniff of her, how could he not? He ran to the end of his rope and it jerked him backward as it was attached to the collar around his neck. He fell to his side and yipped reflexively as he landed on his already bruised ribs. He wasn’t discouraged. He stood up again and glared at the rope. It wasn’t that thick. He began to chew on it.
It didn’t take long before the rope was completely chewed through, and her smell was still in the air. He had to find her. She was the most glorious thing that he had ever seen. He trotted happily through the yard, enjoying the feeling of grass on his feet. It had been so long since he had felt something other than dirt under them. He almost laid on his back just to wallow in it like he had wanted to do for so long but couldn’t since he was restrained by the rope. Her smell was something that couldn’t be ignored, though, so he trotted happily with his nose as his guide, searching for the direction that she had traveled.
That’s when the glow came. Around the corner of the barn, the very one where he had shared a tuft of hay with his mother and siblings so long ago, the old man rounded its corner and he saw him tense. Yella’s heart sank. He knew that he was going to get the boot now, he would be furious that he had left his yard and his rope. So Yella’ decided to run. Right toward the old man. As his heart rate started to rise with the effort of his run, his little mind thought of the rope and the rain, his mother, and his siblings. He thought of the boots in his ribs and the long days with no water. He thought of being away from all of that and he ran harder. Anywhere that was away from Old Man was better than here, and seeing her in his yard reminded him that there had to be something more to life than a life at the end of a rope inside of a circle of dirt. He had tried to please Old Man, and until this moment he had held out hope that there was still love in his heart for him, but something snapped in the air around a white dog running free in his yard and he knew that he would never be able to please him and this broke his heart. All he ever really wanted to do was to please.
Old Man crowed something at him, his voice rising in amplitude and anger and before long he was screaming at him. Yella hated being screamed at, but it had been a long time since he had heard a kind word, so he was numb to the scolding. He was glowing brighter and brighter, the red orb surrounding him looking like a bonfire to Yella’s eyes in black and white. He realized at that moment that it must be the meanness in his heart with nowhere to go, so it had to bleed out around him in light that made him look like he was on fire. He had something in his hand, and Yella recognized it as the stick that boomed and smoked and scared him when the man pointed it at something. He didn’t have time to think, there was nowhere to go with the fence that touched the sides of the barn. The only way out of here was through the barn, so Yella ran straight toward Old Man as he began to raise the smoking stick and point it right at him as he ran toward him.
The sound was deafening to Yella’s sensitive ears. He saw the flash of fire at the end of the stick and a plume of smoke belch from its end. He felt something thump him in his haunches and it started to burn, but he kept running, determined to make it to the other side of the barn. Old Man cursed loudly at him seeing that he hadn’t stopped him from escaping and began fumbling with the stick of fire and digging through the pockets of his old worn trousers. Yella narrowed his eyes and ran with an ignited passion.
As he got close enough to see the red in Old Man’s eyes, his angry owner must have realized that he wasn’t going to be able to make the stick flame again in time, so he raised the stick like a bat, getting ready to swing it at him as he ran by. With one last burning burst of effort, Yella ran toward his legs. The stick was over his head now, so fearing that he was going to knock him in his head and back into the fence line, as much as he hated the thought of doing it, he lunged at his thigh and bit down hard. The old man screamed and Yella could taste the blood that leaked into his mouth through the worn denim of his trousers. He shook his head, the man’s leg still in his mouth warning him the only way that he knew how that he would settle for nothing less than freedom from him. Old Man fell to the ground, his screams turning to whimpers and Yella finally let go of him and backed away. The bright light that had been surrounding him was dimming. There was a lot of blood. He didn’t mean to hurt him that bad, but something in his gut told him that if he hadn’t bitten him it would be him on the ground bleeding instead of him.
He glanced back to his haunches, the sting getting sharper, and noticed that he hadn’t been unscathed. The booming stick had left its mark, and he was bleeding out of his hip. He licked away the blood and tasted the iron, but he knew that he could still walk, so that’s what he did. Looking back toward Old Man, he felt remorse underneath the joy of the prospect of freedom.
“Ye’ bit me! I’m bleeding out, you goddam dog, come here!”
Old Man tried to get up but his glowing red light that only Yella could see was merely a flicker and he slumped back down to his back. Yella’s ears had stopped ringing from the blast of the flaming stick, and he heard as Old Man’s heartbeat was slowing and then finally stopped. Old Man was dead.
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The boy felt like he couldn’t be long for this earth. He couldn’t sleep, and he barely ate when his mama forced it on him. He couldn’t take much more of the shadows taking him over, night by night, little by little. He was as at peace with dying as one could be when you had lived so little life, but he was so tired of the nights of torment where the shadows came out to play and use him as their toy. They had gotten worse. They crawled through his ears and out of his mouth and washed the taste of burnt wood and saltine sulfur across his tongue until the taste of anything sweet in this world became nothing but a gag-inducing episode of disgust. His dreams, when they came fleeting and sweet, were filled with fire and red burning embers.
He had no mirror, but if he did, he would see the black rings around his eyes and his emaciated ribs poking through his pale white skin. He didn’t have anything left to vomit out of his stomach, though he wished he could so he could have those few moments of feeling better. He would know if he could see himself why his mother looked at him with tears in her eyes despite the imitation smile that she wore on the corners of her mouth like an ornament decorating a dead tree. He knew she was trying to be brave for him, and even though it didn’t help, he admitted that it made him feel better. Any young boy looks to his parents for strength, and even though the cracks were in their foundation from watching an unknown horror creep underneath the skin of their child, they let him lean on them for comfort despite knowing it was breaking them into an inevitable rubble.
The Boy wearily raised himself up from his sweat-soaked sheets onto his elbows and could see that the sun was setting outside of his bedroom window. He heard thunder in the distance and the smell of petrichor was in the air. He weakly raised the glass of tepid water to his mouth and sipped. It tasted like ash, though the water was crystalline and clear. Everything tasted like ash. He could hear them waiting. He could hear the heavy breathing and the malicious laughter waiting until nightfall. They would be back tonight. They were back every night, but tonight would be bad. It was always bad when he could feel them waiting.
He had been relegated to sleeping when the sun was out, as his nights were now for torment. He couldn’t afford the water from the tear that was uncontrollably running down his cheek, but there it was nonetheless. He could hear his mother weeping from another room in solidarity, and it broke his heart. The preacher hadn’t helped him, but he had hoped that he had brought some comfort to his parents. Now it seemed that even that false sense of hope was wearing off, her tears confirmed it.
*scratching on glass
He was startled by the somber mood that his mother’s crying had put him in when he heard a sickly scratching at the glass. Darting his weary eyes toward the window, he knew before he saw it what he was going to find on the other side of the glass. Like clockwork, the black claws of an inhuman but somehow still human-like hand creaked its long and jagged nails down the surface of the glass. He could feel the sharp-toothed grin on the face that it belonged to even though it was too dark to see it in earnest. They always brought in the dark with them, they were the dark itself.
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Yella had been walking for longer than he could remember. The pervasive thought in his head was that he was hungry. He had been living off of garbage and scraps in the woods that he was only able to find with his nose but it of course was never enough. His stomach was always growling and he knew that he was getting skinny, but he pushed on, just making it day by day. At least there wasn’t a rope around his neck anymore, and it was worth everything for that fact only. He could still feel the scars and callouses from it when he laid his head down somewhere in the leaves and detritus along the path of his travels.
He was no stranger to being chased away by a person who was usually yelling, sometimes throwing stones, and occasionally wielding a flaming stick which filled his heart with dread and terror every time that he saw one brandished. He always hoped for a kind hand, but so far had found none. Everyone in these hills seemed to have no room for a wayward dog who was down on his luck, though if given the chance had all of the love in the world to give. He had seen the red glow a few times, though not nearly as starkly contrasted against the daylight or evening stars as Old Man’s. This gave him a semblance of hope, that perhaps there was some good in the world out there, and all he had to do was sniff it out and he would finally be home.
This particular evening as he cautiously padded his way along a dirt track, he smelled something particularly foul on the air, and his instincts simultaneously told him to run away and also to find its source. Such is the plight of a dog, trusting their nose to find something unknown but not ever regarding the event with much caution before seeking it out. This evening was no different. The night was cold. It may have been merely cool to a person who had been well fed, but to a homeless mutt who was barely classifiable as skin and bones, he was in desperate need of a place to get warm. That made the foul odor not appealing, but intriguing. He rounded the bend in the road and saw a weed-covered dirt drive meandering off into the gloom of the night. There was something else though, something that made his heart skip a beat. The red glow cut through the darkness and the cricket song sliced through the trees.
Even if Yella could talk, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it was other than instinct that drew him toward a light that had only meant danger to him throughout his lifetime, but he followed it nonetheless. As he slowly made his way down the driveway, he became concerned when he saw a singular window of the house blazing with the intense red light that he had come to know as a warning sign that Hell was near. He couldn’t find reluctance in his heart, merely concern, so he kept going.
What he saw next defied anything that Yella could understand as a dog who was raised by a cruel owner, but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that what he was seeing was cruelty itself. Normally when he saw The Red, it was an outline around the shape of a human. What he was seeing now, however, was a figure who not only was surrounded by the halo of sickly carmine but one that emanated with the luminance of blood. The figures were slender, with limbs longer than they should be, claws the length of kitchen knives, and a crooked crown of horns above their heads. They caused him fear, but they also caused him stoicism. They didn’t belong. They weren’t “right” for this land of green and dirt, and somehow he knew all of this to his core.
A low growl reflexively began emanating from his throat as he watched them huddle around a singular window of the house. There was a man in a rocking chair smoking a pipe several paces away from the window who either didn’t care that they were present, or was completely oblivious. The reddish light was so intense that it lit the periphery of the scantily tree-clad yard in front of the house. Yella couldn’t understand how he could sit there so calmly, the wisps of smoke billowing out of the corn cob that he clenched between his teeth, but he realized that he couldn’t have seen them and stayed so calm. The only excuse was that he was oblivious to their presence.
The red figures moved in a way that didn’t seem natural to Yella. They flickered like chickens pecking at the ground, their claws pawing at the window pane. He could hear the screeches of claws on glass from the many yards that separated him and the house and it hurt his ears. Everything inside of him wanted them to leave, and the urge to rid this place of them was becoming one that he couldn’t ignore the longer he watched their bird-like flickering movements. Something inside of his heart told him that they were doing harm, though he was unsure what that harm might be. He only knew that they didn’t belong and he was steeling himself against his nerves to accomplish exactly that.
Yella didn’t even think about it before his legs were powering him toward the myriad of hellish blood-red figures. The growl in his throat was itching to get out of him, and eventually, it erupted into a bark that sounded more vicious than he realized he was capable of being. He had a target and he meant to destroy it.
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The little boy’s father heard the growling-turned-barking before he saw the flash of yellow fur in the gloom of the evening. His cursory rocking in his chair was halted immediately as the events transpired so quickly that he didn’t have time to fathom reacting with anything other than shock and being frozen in place.
The dog was tearing across the yard, but not toward him, so fear wasn’t his initial instinct. He did find himself wishing that he had brought his shotgun out with him as he normally did, but the events surrounding his household with what he had come to understand as the impending doom of his son had him not thinking clearly. The streak of fur seemed hell-bent on something that try as he might, he just couldn’t see. What worried him was that he was running directly toward his son’s room.
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Yella could smell something that reminded him of rotten eggs in the chicken coop back on Old Man’s farm. And smoke. Something burning and singing everything in its wake seemed to waft off of the crooked hell-red figures that loomed in congregation around the window of the house. His stomach churned against the unnaturalness of them. The way they moved and the way they seemed to breathe and exhale fire and hate was something that even a scrawny yellow dog could comprehend. He knew that whatever they were there for was full of hate and spite and evil and he wanted nothing more than to eliminate them, even if it cost him everything. They didn’t belong on this green earth that had been so cruel to him in its verdant green beauty full of dirt and rainwater.
The creatures sensed something impending and they turned toward Yella who was in full gallop right toward them. They shrieked and cowered simultaneously. If Yella didn’t know any better, he would say that he had caught them off guard which for creatures so vile was quite the feat for a beast of any size, especially one as small in stature as he was. He didn’t care. He was going to confront them with everything in his soul. Within striking distance, Yella leaped into the air, his white teeth, broken canine and all, bared toward the creatures in red.
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The scratching outside of the window had stopped. The little boy thought that perhaps he had finally died and passed away into the great beyond. But he still felt the fever in his skin and tasted the ash in his mouth. Something was…different. He shuffled his weakened body up to his elbows and summoned the strength, against his own judgment, to go and peer out of the window. Tiptoeing slowly toward the cool glass that peered into the front yard of his house, he heard…barking. It sounded to him like a battle cry, a song of war and of victory. He often imagined a hero from one of the stories his father told him standing in valor against stacked odds, charging headlong into impending doom and unlikely victory. He didn’t know why he thought of that just now, but it was the first thing that popped into his head hearing the fierce charge of a creature unseen. He wasn’t afraid. The cackling laughter of what he had come to perceive as the demons that tormented him turned into wails and screeches of a combination of anger and terror. He could see their horns cast in shadow against the night sky and the pallor of the moon that hung like a specter over the trees in the distance. They were shuddering and jolting back and forth as if they didn’t know which way to go, unsure of their next move.
He realized at that moment that the glow wasn’t only coming from the moon. There was something else, and the light was growing in incandescence. It was as if daylight itself was coming before it was due in the dawn. That’s when he saw the open maw with ivory white teeth bared in defiance. One of the front teeth was broken away, but the brown eyes were full of intention and surety. The yellow fur rose into a Mohawk on the hackles of the yellow dog that was charging the shadows.
His child brain, enamored with stories of Indians and warriors thought that this is what the army must have seen when the natives charged them in battle. Warpaint and spiked hair, bravery, and a just cause. The dog barked its war cry and leaped into the air, straight at the center of the congregation of darkness itself that had tormented his every waking moment for the last few months and almost killed him…
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Yella’s teeth sunk into the glowing red flesh and a wail of pain emanated from the largest of the horned creatures. He tasted embers and ash, but no blood. The air became a chaotic flurry of blinding red light as they tried to scramble and dash away from him. They were afraid. Yella snapped one bite after another, pulling chunks of smoke and rot and casting them aside, clambering for his next mouthful. The demons wailed and screamed, unable to run from the canine’s wrath and intent. He meant to rid this place of them, and that’s just what he intended to do until his last breath. Slowly the demons, being ripped into smaller pieces, seemed to lose their luster. The red light was fading and the world around him was filled with a cloud of acrid smoke and a mock snowfall of white ash fell from the sky and settled onto the ground around him as he fought with everything that he had. It was working, he was winning.
Finally, as if the world let out a great sigh, there was nothing left to bite. Yella spun around, looking for another target, and found none. He saw several of the creatures blink away into the horizon who must have been watching the slaughter from a distance. They retreated into a still night, the moon being the only light around after their departure. Yella saw a stir on the porch to his left, and a man was standing there shotgun raised.
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The little boy was already running for the front door. He had just seen the bravest warrior he had ever fathomed rip his shadowy tormentors into nothing, their veil finally lifting from his presence. It was as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and his barefoot footsteps felt light as a feather as he raced across the rough-hewn pine floor. He crashed through the screen door and didn’t even register his father standing on the porch as he ran by him, wanting only to meet his champion. There in front of him, a yellow dog, broken-toothed, covered in dirt, and smelling like a dirty dog smelled, he saw the most beautiful thing that he had ever known in that ball of yellow fur. He ran up to the dog and embraced him around the neck, tears streaming down his cheeks. The dog panted and licked the little boy on the face making him laugh. At that moment, Yella finally felt like he was home, and the boy finally felt as if he could breathe for the first time in his life.
The boy’s father looked on in amazement as he lowered the shotgun pointing downward. Something had changed in his son. The dark circles were gone from around his eyes, and the flush of pink glowed on his cheeks. As he embraced the dog that he had just seen snarling and snapping at the air, he couldn’t help but wonder what his boy saw that he didn’t. He merely saw his son stepping away from death’s door. He walked to the boy’s side and saw the brown eyes of the yellow mutt staring up at him. For some reason, the thought that went through his head was one of unconditional love and thankfulness. The dog resonated with something deep inside of him, and he kneeled down to scratch him behind the ear. The dog licked his hand and wagged his tail, and from that moment forward, life felt whole for them all, Yella included.
🦮
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This is a special podcast and a hard one to record, but I knew it was necessary. On September 29th at 2:33 PM, I lost the best friend I’ve ever had. I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life that week. It was the choice to forego my selfishness and give my best friend relief from his suffering.
Biscuit came into my life in February of 2015. He was an ugly, dirty mutt with a collar that had grown into his skin wrapped around his neck and initially, I chased him away, fearing for the outdoor cats that we had at the time. That sentiment only lasted a few days as he continued to show up on the edge of the yard, then eventually into my space in my workshop, and eventually, after disappearing for 3 days and coming back with a broken foot, into my home. Biscuit had some broken teeth. He had heartworms and he was covered in dirt, oil, and filth. He got cleaned up and treated and within a few months, I couldn’t imagine life without him.
He had one of those hearts that resonated with my own and before long he became as close of a family member as anyone who is blood to me is. He was always down for an adventure and refused to be left out, so Biscuit went everywhere with us. He traveled to multiple states on camping trips and vacations, rode to the grocery store and anywhere else I traveled more times than I can count and covered thousands of miles in the woods on trails with me happily at the end of a leash.
He was dealt a life that he didn’t deserve. He had been cast away from his previous owners and in time we came to discover that he had been shot and abused. Despite all of that, he never showed anything in his big brown eyes other than an endearing love and joy for life. He even made friends with our cats.
He was a roller coaster of a ball of hair who scared us as much as he loved us with his ups and downs in health throughout his years. He had emergency surgery for bloat that almost killed him. His love wouldn’t let him die and he survived and carried on. In 2022 he began to limp and we thought that he must have harmed his leg somehow. One of those moments that stops time in its tracks happened when we discovered that he had developed osteosarcoma in his leg. He wasn’t long for using it and in a few months, we made the decision to amputate his leg because the drugs had stopped working.
Again, love wouldn’t let him be done and we got another year and a half with him. He walked many miles in his doggy wheelchair and never seemed to mind being handicapped. He was just happy to have his people and his life, just like always. The dog knew nothing but love, dehydrated chicken treats, and his favorite, Arby’s roast beef. Every day he was happy to be there and he kept me company through more tears and heartache than I could have survived alone.
Biscuit no doubt saved my life. This story is an allegory of his life. The little boy is me, and he, unlike anything or anyone else in my life, was able to chase away my demons. I didn’t know that I needed that dirty hobo of a dog, but I did. He gave meaning to a life that I questioned the purpose of more times than I can count. He reminded me that love trumps all of it and I loved him like he was my child.
His body gave up before his heart did. Even up until his last days, unable to walk or even sit up, he nestled his muzzle into my lap and left a tattoo of himself on my heart that will be there forever. Dogs and boys have an uncommon bond that you can’t find anywhere else, and my life is no doubt richer than it ever could have been without him.
I write this story as a tribute to him. It can’t ever encompass the love that I had for my dog and the love he had for me, but it is a good way to honor my hero and my yellow savior. The world is a little darker without him in it.
Pet all of your best girls and boys for Biscuit after listening to this story, and may their paws leave an unmistakable mark on your hearts just as he did mine.