THE DOGS
A short, short story - Ask me anything.
Dear Readers,
What is on your mind? Would you like to ask me something?
If so, please comment below and I will endeavour to answer as many of your questions as I can for this weekend’s post.
A radio team will be recording my writing this week, collaborating with my son Carlo on my answers to your questions, and so make them juicy. The show and airtime TBC.
Below, a short, short story.
Hanif
Overnight it had been raining, but to one side of the precipitous stone steps there was a rail to grip on to. With her free hand she took her son's wrist, dragging him back when he lost his footing. It was too perilous for her to pick him up, and at five years old he was too heavy to be carried far.
Branches heavy with sticky leaves trailed across the steps, sometimes blocking their way so they had to climb over or under them. The steps themselves twisted and turned and were worn and often broken. There were more of them than she'd expected. She had never been this way, but had been told it was the only path, and that the man would be waiting for her on the other side of the area.
When they reached the bottom of the steps, her son's mood improved and he called, "Chase me". This was his favourite game and he set off quickly across the grass, which alarmed her, though she didn't want to scare him with her fears. She pursued him through the narrow, wooded area ahead, losing him for a moment. She had to call out for him several times until at last she heard his reply.
Their feet kept sinking into the lush ground but a discernible track emerged. Soon they were in the open. It was a common rather than a park, and would take about 40 minutes to cross: that was what she had been told.
Though it was a long way off, only a dot in the distance, she noticed the dog right away. Almost immediately the animal seemed bigger, a short-legged, compact bullet. She knew all dogs were of different breeds: Dalmatians and Chihuahuas and so on, but she had never retained the names. As the dog neared her son, she wondered if it wasn't chasing a ball hidden in the grass. But there was no ball that she could see, and the little speeding dog with its studded collar had appeared from nowhere, sprinting across the horizon like a shadow, before turning in their direction. There was no owner in sight; there were no other humans she could see.
The boy saw the dog and stopped, tracking it with curiosity and then with horror. What could his mother do but cry out and begin to run? The dog had already knocked down her son and began not so much to bite him as to eat him, furiously.
She was wearing heavy, loosely-laced shoes and was able to give the dog a wild blow in the side, enough to distract it, so that it looked bemused. She pulled the boy to her, but it was impossible for her to examine his wounds because she then had to hold him as high as she could while stumbling along, with the dog still beside her, barking, leaping and twisting in the air. She could not understand why she had no fascination for the dog.
She began to shout, to scream, panicking because she wouldn't be able to carry her son far. Tiring, she stopped and kicked out at the dog again, this time hitting him in the mouth, which made him lose hope.
Immediately a big long-haired dog was moving in the bushes further away, racing towards them. As it took off to attack the child, she was aware, around her, of numerous other dogs, in various colours and sizes, streaming out of the undergrowth from all directions. Who had called them? Why were they there?
She lost her footing, she was pushed over and was huddled on the ground, trying to cover her son, as the animals noisily set upon her, in a ring. To get him they would have to tear through her, but it wouldn't take long, there were so many of them, and they were hungry, too
I really enjoyed this story which quickly became the stuff of my nightmares from a possible runaway tale - as always you took me by surprise!
My question relates to my own struggles: since my recent upping of certain long term pain medications, while I thought the opposite would be true, my creative juices are now kaput. I was hoping opiates would unearth a hidden Mary Shelley within! How have you found medications have altered your creative flow? While you have managed to keep writing, early on this seemed based on real events but here are examples again of you writing creatively - you are unstoppable! Do you have particular strategies to work through the hazy days? With much love, Kate x
Dear Hanif,
Your gripping story makes me want to share a brief tale I just heard yesterday on a French radio, and which could entertain you for a short while. A man recalled a terrible childhood fright when one day, as an eight-year-old boy who lived in a poor suburbs of Paris in 1962, he was playing with a football under a half-built bridge and he was suddenly surrounded by what he first perceived as two huge glistening waves. Yet, in a matter of seconds, he realized the grey waves were actually two dense packs of rushing rats. The animals started to squeal out of excitement while biting his ankles, calves and legs, while jumping up to try and bit his hands and arms. The boy immediately sensed that he could well die on that day since he was all alone in this dilapidated area and there was no one around, and they were so numerous and fierce and dogged. He desperately tried not to fall. He also remembered thinking about the people who would find him after his death, after he had been half eaten by those determined beasts --he thought about his mum in particular. Hopefully, a ragpicker heard him scream and emerged from a nearby shabby shop where he brought back all kinds of rags. and keys The boy was familiar with the man since they lived in the same neighbourhood : he had been nicknamed "M. Gruyère" (a Swiss cheese full of small and big holes). The man was quite stout, he had a white beard, wore a hat and carried a pouch. He also wore leather boots typical of those worn by French soldiers in the trenches during WWI. And he had a stick in his hand, that he probably used as a hook to search through the litter. The boy instinctively understood he would be safe with that man, who started to strike the rats (a blow fell on the boy in the process), to shake them off the kid and who kept on "slaughtering" the assailants even after the boy was out of danger, as in revengeful frenzy. Like the boy, the smart rats instinctively understood that the tide had turned and they immediately scurried away and scattered around, like an army in disarray. The man and the boy parted without a word. The boy did not thank him because that was not done in those days and in that kind of place, They each went their own separate way and the boy never thought of thanking M. Gruyère. Recalling that episode yesterday, the former boy was submerged by a profound regret because the ragman is probably dead now and the now grown-up kid will never have the opportunity to tell him about his gratitude for rescuing him on that day. That could stand as a mirror story to accompany yours --all the more so as the time coincidence between listening to one tale yesterday and reading the second one today is quite striking in itself... Best wishes from Florence