Fan Fiction ❯ Sad Dog, Wise Dog ❯ Sad Dog, Wise Dog ( Chapter 1 )

A/N: I wrote this a few months ago as my creative writing final, hee. It was... really late at night when I wrote this, and I was exccedingly hyped up on caffine, so you really can't blame me for my twisted nature, now can we, neh?

~.~.~.

I never liked traveling, but sometimes, you don’t get a choice in the matter because hey, sometimes you needed to move on and in my case, move on a lot.  That didn’t change the fact that I don’t it, but hey, what’s a guy to do, but grin and bear it and hope that things would change.  Besides, after this, I’m going have to settle down for a little while because my savings were running short and I would have to get a job, and live someplace, probably rent some old biddy’s extra room or else live in a shelter until I could get enough money to rent some old biddy’s extra room.

     I couldn’t stay that long, I never could stay in any place that long because eventually something would happen, something bad and I would have to run, just like I always do.  I dream sometimes that I’m in one place for longer than a few weeks, but as my mom always said, or as I imagine she would, you can’t eat dreams, you can’t wear dreams, so stop dreaming and get to work, but I don’t have a mother, though I know I did once.  How else could I be born, unless I just appeared one day, like a mushroom that pops up in the middle of the night, over something’s carcass or something dead just the same.

     But all the same, I hate traveling and I hate buses, but I couldn’t afford a plane ticket or a rental car, so a bus it was for a trip that was two days, two days of being crammed into the little bus.  I’d been on them before, the long trips, stuck next to the same person who often as not took up just a little too much of the seats, spilling over into mine because they had no sense of boundaries, or they would stare at me and try to speak to me and ask questions.  I hated the ones who asked questions, since I never liked questions, not at all.  Now I don’t have anything to hide (lying) but I simply don’t like people knowing anything about me, as I once told a person, and they gave me a look like ‘what does that mean’ and I didn’t speak for the rest of the trip even though the person tried and tried.

     Now I was on the bus and the person next to me, he was a nice kid I guess, maybe just a little too skinny, with sad dog, wise dog eyes like one of those hounds, the short long ones with the droopy eyes like he knew all there was to know and frankly, he couldn’t make himself care about any of it.  I just knew this kid was going to be the type who asked questions and wanted to know things.  Sometimes I used to make things up for those people who talked and asked questions, stories of some non-existent life that maybe I wished I had, with a wife (Met her in high school, married her after college), my two-point-five-oh-six children and the family dog (A retriever, everyone has a retriever or lab) in my nice house in the suburbs and a job as an accountant/dentist/store manager.  But that grew old in the way things do when you do them over and over enough times and you can’t think of anything new.

     Scaring people doesn’t work either, because then people remembered you and remembering was bad.  Word got around, through those casual mentions people do of ‘Oh, I was on this bus, see, and the freak next to me, he said the weirdest things, he kept twitching and he was-‘.  Well, one got the gist and I threw the twitching in because, hey, how else do you scare people than to have an unexplained nervous twitch?  But if word got around and somehow my description came up from some source, police or whatever, they would remember me and then, I’d be one step closer to being found.

     I’m not saying I was on the run, more like I just really didn’t want to be found because I was wanted in connection to too many bad things that have happened over the years and really, I didn’t want to try and explain those bad things because I couldn’t.  None of it was my fault I should say though I know that is just self delusion and all those bad things are my fault, that I’m just bad luck walking on two legs, that I’m Murphy’s law embodied.

     But back to the bus kid.  He kept asking me those ‘Where are you goings’ and ‘Where are you froms’ and I didn’t like it, but this kid kept talking and describing things, so I knew he was on his way home from college, to visit his family over break, his sister was pregnant so he was going to be an uncle but he already was an uncle since his oldest brother (he had 3, him the second youngest) had kids. The kid kept trying to turn the questions to me, saying something about himself, then directing it back towards me, like he wanted to actually know about me and he actually cared.  But this kid was persistent, kept talking to me no matter how little or much I answered, like he was determined to get it all out of me, to know who I was no matter what, no matter if I didn’t want him to know.  He kept glancing at me with those sad dog, wise dog eyes, gesturing and trying to draw me out, and as much as I was tempted to tell him to kiss off, to go away, I didn’t want to talk to him, something stopped me from saying those very things, probably because I knew already it wouldn’t work.

     Where are you from, he asked me for what seemed like the sixth time, and I merely glanced his way, didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say.  I wasn’t from any place and people tend to remember you if you list nowhere as your place of residence.  I didn’t encourage him, I think, just staring out the window in silence to his chatter, seeing telephone pole after telephone pole and trying not to follow them with my head as that usually made me motion sick, like it was some masochistic game.  I was distracted and only half paying attention to the kid though I really would have rather not been paying attention at all, and my mind was in that nice place that’s halfway to unconsciousness and free of pain and of thought even, where you simply exist, so what happened next really wasn’t my fault, you can’t blame me for it at all.

     The nice kid, he suddenly asked me a question, one that my mind didn’t ponder on, didn’t react to as my mouth answered it.  It was a Why are you going to where ever it is your going? And I didn’t even think, I just said I was running, running away, trying to hide from the police, from Interpol, from whoever it is I was hiding from then.  Ever have one of those moments where you want to just turn around and snatch what it is you just said right back in, force-feed yourself the words back and destroy all evidence you ever had of it?  I had one of those right then, but there wasn’t anything I could do.  The nice kid, he turned back towards me, eyes going big for a moment, before narrowing slightly, like he was surprised I had replied, and while you would expect him to be disturbed, he didn’t seem to be at all, like he expected me to say something like that.

     I’m was kicking myself, but I’m also half expecting, half hoping the Nice kid’ll make some glib expression of how everyone is running from something and his is nothing new though it is because, who runs from the police and the Interpol and the god-knows-who-else in connection with some really bad things that one mustn’t go into.  It was like my guilty conscious, because I actually acknowledge that its guilty decided to play a trick, a game with me and make me say the things that I should only think, but still manage to spit out.  Like some sort of Freudian slip, saying what you really mean, though I didn’t mean it actually, or at least I like to tell myself I don’t.

    But the really weird thing was, the nice kid, he didn’t say anything for a while, just watched me with his Sad dog, wise dog eyes and didn’t talk, and I almost, almost wished that he would talk, would say something and renew his previous banter and unendingly prattle.  But like my mom would have said, I think, you can’t eat dreams, you can’t wear dreams, so stop dreaming and get to work.  I’m not saying there was anything I could do, and while you would probably say that I could have passed it off as a joke, being on the run for connection to some really bad things, I knew that wouldn’t work because of the way I froze, the way he didn’t talk that I wouldn’t be able to pass it off.  I never was a quick thinker, my mind didn’t leap between ideals with all the agility of a deer or a cat, so I knew before I even tried that I would pull it off.  I didn’t meet his eyes, I tried to ignore him as the Nice Kid stared, and I hoped that I would disappear just like I had appeared, like a mushroom, here one day, then gone the next.

     Maybe I could have stood up, called the bus driver to stop, asked to get off, or maybe I could have said something, but I was frozen and this kid, he wouldn’t quit with that unnerving watching and I couldn’t take it anymore really, it was like that story by Poe, The Telltale Lung or something, where he murders the old guy and he can hear him breathing under the floor boards or whatever when the detectives are there and is slowly going nuts.  Except my lung was his Sad dog, Wise dog look and I’m fairly certain I was already quite mad, and maybe I felt the urge to poor it all out randomly, and quickly, but I wouldn’t do that because I’m not dumb and I do happen to have a very strong sense of self preservation, which might have gone on vacation five minutes back, but now was back with a vengeance and wasn’t letting up at all, thank god.

     It was a long moment before the nice kid spoke, and when he did speak, I noticed that we were slowing down, the bus was slowing down and I panicked, thinking the Nice Kid, as soon as he got off the bus would run to the police station, go in and convince them that he was telling the truth with his solemn gaze and his incessant words and they would come and I would be held responsible for all those bad things that happened to others and were my fault, but I didn’t do, I swear.  But the kid spoke, and he said that he wouldn’t tell anyone, and hell, I believed him, maybe he was hypnotizing me, maybe he had some insane powers of the mind that could spellbind me, this Nice Kid who had Sad dog, Wise Dog eyes had ensnared me even if he was just a college kid going home to see his family.

     Course, then the bus stopped and I glanced out the window and watched the people outside for a moment, before looking back at him, but he had turned his solemn gaze elsewhere, his long and too skinny limbs reaching forwards as his body tensed in stretch.  The bus driver stopped, I stood up and raced for the front, not saying anything to the kid, not saying anything to these people who had been my companions for two days and I was out the door and grabbed my bag from where it was being unloaded and made a break for it, away.  I had come to this place because I had to move on and I had to create a new life, but now I would have to go again and really, I didn’t have any money left all because I’m stupid and I let my mind wander, and I glance back and the kid is watching me go, standing there with a half smile on his face and I think, maybe I shouldn’t run, because after all, he probably just thinks I’m one of those weirdoes you encounter when your on a bus on the way to nowhere.

     But then, I’de rather not take the chance, so I run, just like I always do, to escape the bad things that happened to other people and were not my fault, and to escape the Nice Kid’s sad dog, wise dog eyes and that breathing, breathing lung of guilt.