Hi all. The following is a true account of one of my most prized posessions. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to hit the share button if you really like this! I will post more writings like this in the future.
The Dog
by Aidan Zingler
Once beloved, the old, raggedy stuffed animal gathered dust atop the storage bin, its tail held together by white stitches. I sit atop my bed and pick up the old husky. It used to have long white belly fur and a luxurious grey-brown back and ear curls. I had been devastated when my youngest sister, Aurora, had grabbed Dog and thrown him onto the newly painted basement floor. Grey paint had coated his white belly. For over a month, I had tried to comb out the paint to no avail, so I took Dog with me when Dad drove us to visit Grandma.
I carried old Dog gingerly in my hands, tears in my eyes, as I entered her enclosed porch. Grandma opened the interior door and moved to hug me, but stopped when I held out Dog. "Å nei," she said, one of her Norsk phrases, and gently took Dog from my hands. "What happened?" My story stumbled out in a torrent of words, some slurred into tears. She hugged me against her side. "We'll fix it." She had gotten out her shears and her sewing kit and told me to play in the sandbox outside. I did as I was told. By the time my siblings and I were called indoors for dinner, Dog was clean and shaven. No hint of grey paint anywhere except on the edges of his whiskers. I folded Grandma three peace cranes that day in gratitude.
Dog held no formal name. He first appeared when I was three years old - wrapped up in red and green Christmas paper, one of the few gifts we had that year. I hugged him in delight; his fur long and soft, his eyes brown and sad, and his tail curled like a peppermint cane. Dad asked me his name. I shouted, "Dog!" I had misunderstood the question, only meant to state what he was. A dog. But the name stuck.
The irony was not lost on my family each time I packed Dog into my suitcase. I preferred cats and held a deep fear of dogs, and yet, Dog was my prized possession. For every trip I took, Dog traveled with me.
Dog had many an alias, one being King Bryant the Third. He ruled Landra, my bed, while King Kitty - this bright garish 'cat' stuffed animal that had a different neon color for each limb - ruled Artica, my other younger sister's, April's, bed. King Kitty loved to kidnap King Bryant's adopted son (named simply Son), a husky pup I'd found in a church bin and slipped into my backpack when no one was looking. King Bryant would valiantly search for the Son, often forced to answer riddles from Artica's other denizens, or would narrowly escape a deadly Care Bear Stare. King Bryant knew to never trust a Care Bear.
One adventure required him to ascend a cliff of pumice rock, which lurked at the foot of our beds. Carefully he climbed, his feet and claws scratching for purchase, until the top, where his Son sat, shivering, in the clouds. They overlooked a massive rainforest, the trees bigger than the pumice mountain, and a waterfall cascaded into a cool, turquoise lake. Vines and bushes blocked much of the forest floor from view, the sunlight barely penetrating. King Bryant and his Son avoided the forest, neither could hold a flashlight well without it tiring their teeth, and hopping on three legs to hold one was quite ridiculous. King Bryant refused to sully his dignity. His adopted Son didn't mind if the hopping didn't last too long, but King Kitty loved to ruin such games whenever they kidnapped the Son. The Son never seemed to mind the kidnapping; perhaps King Kitty had become a second parent by then?
King Kitty often laid traps along the paths up the pumice mountain or along the edges of Landra or Artica. One trap accidentally summoned a horror from the void. That day, King Bryant had to fight his way out of a dungeon of crotchdiggers, deadly headless and bodiless Barbie legs that spun from the darkness. One could only detect them from the wind across the hairless skin that howled through the dark. King Bryant got sliced once along his tail. The Great Grandma Spirit would, eventually, mend his wounds (time ceases to exist for games such as this, and often I would tape the tail in place until my family could head up to Grandma's again). King Bryant knew not who devised such dastardly creatures (my older sisters' creation one Halloween), but it was one of the few times he teamed up with King Kitty to defeat their evil. Crotchdiggers were not allowed in Landra or Artica.
The room I shared with April wasn't technically a room for a child. More of a living area in the basement. The pumice wall blended into the rainforest wallpaper, and that ended where our beds began. Two dressers marked our "wall" that separated our beds from the Sega Genesis TV. On rainy days, Dog and I would curl up in the broken beanbag chair and navigate to the music section of the options screen - the frozen levels of Sonic the Hedgehogs being the best. The pound of the rain in harmony with the 8-bit melody gave the world a surreal quality that invigorated the imagination. I always tucked my journal nearby and would dutifully record how long I played or read and any ideas that blossomed. Dog kept watch on my shoulder, in case any ghosts ventured beyond their lair deep in the realm of Laundry.
As an adult, did I ever stop bringing Dog with me on my travels? Deep in the South, I carried Dog in my backpack, while I chainsawed broken branches, sledgehammered posts, mud and taped drywall, and dug forest trails. Dog witnessed it all in safety, and often slept by my head at night. When my teammates asked about him, I would laugh and say he was a great pillow. But the truth was Dog comforted me in dark times - a reminder of goodness in a life riddled with trauma and disappointment.
I look at Dog now, at age thirty-eight, and I realize I never stopped bringing him with me. He'd been to 38 states, tucked in my backpack, where he peered out through the hole I made with the zipper. Dog had transcended his humble origins - King Bryant the actor, Dog the pillow, and now my favorite good luck charm. I pet his head, his fur no longer soft but prickly in spots from age and countless stitches to mend yet another hole. I position him atop a pillow on my bed, his final throne, a memory encased in fiber and cotton.
/Slutten (The End)/