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Monday August 3rd 2019, 8 a.m.
The dog came from over the hill, trotting along a well-worn path to wherever it was going. In cooler weather, there might be walkers jauntily setting out, but although still early, the day was hot, too hot, and the night had brought little relief. The dog’s tongue drooped from the side of its mouth, long and pink; its breath came in rapid, shallow gasps.
It reached a driveway, stood still, looked around. Further down there were movements: something big, and the shouts of men. The dog took the opposite direction. It passed by a house and into a garden, where the smells changed from the dust and dryness of the stony path to the cooler fragrance of grass and flowers. Then came the smell of water, and the dog quickened its pace. Reaching the pond, it paused: a pale, blotchy creature moved beneath the surface, slow and unaware; when the dog approached, it darted with a sudden twist, vanishing into murkiness. The dog drank greedily, jaws chomping at the water as if it was meat. Then it raised its head, jowls dripping, muzzle testing the air; now there came the smell of smoke, but mixed within it, as the faintest of breezes stirred, was a different smell, one both familiar and new. The glistening nostrils twitched.
The pale blob in the water reappeared, and when the dog looked down, the creature’s eye was a pool within the pool, deep and black. For a moment they stared in mutual appraisal and suspicion; then the dog drank again and the creature moved lazily away.
The dog knew about smoke, knew the dangers it brought, but this was not so thick or oppressive that it was deterred from exploring. That other smell, the one that was oddly familiar, called for investigation. The dog set off briskly.
At the top of the garden, it halted. The smoke spewed from a single spot, a swirling funnel of whiteness drilling the sky; then it dissolved and drifted, settling further away. The dog approached cautiously.
Near the source of the smoke lay an immobile form, and now the smell was stronger, a human smell of sweatiness, and again within it that hint of something else, a freshness that awoke a curious lust. The dog went closer, padding softly across the grass till it reached the human. And now its whole body quivered, tense with the thrill of something fierce and ancient: the hunt, the struggle, the kill. The feast that is the reward.
But the dog was neither hungry nor savage, and this wasn’t food it was used to. At most it was intrigued enough to lick the human’s neck, taste the rawness of the gash: the lump that landed with a squelch in its bowl everyday was infinitely better. The dog nudged the human’s arm with its snout, put a tentative paw to the human’s head, and obtaining no reaction, trotted away.
A few yards on, it came to the scent of another human, then another; the dog followed, but the path was blocked by a gate and here the smoke, though not so visible, was a nastiness in the air. Skirting round the top of the wood, the dog went on its way.
