Keita

A Spin off from a much bigger piece. This is from the POV of a dog as his owner has a mental breakdown in the car

             Have you ever seen someone have a mental break down? Well I have. And there wasn’t anything I could do to help. My human female, she was a wonderful young woman. She always treated me with respect. In fact, many times I forgot that I was a dog. I was her baby. And I was really all she had left.

            When the human male was killed in the car accident, my female was so sad. She wept for months. And I was always there. In fact, I had taken up residence on the bed. I slept at the end of her bed every night. I made sure she was safe. She had nightmares. They were always the same; the ones where she would wake up screaming and crying. And I was always there to comfort her.

            I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Keita. I’m a Shiba Inu. And you’ve caught me in a very precarious position. My human female and I were on a trip of sorts. I’m not sure why we left the safety of our home in West Virginia but we did. I didn’t understand much of what she was saying. Hey, I’m a dog. I don’t understand many human words. All I know was that she kept repeating the name of her human male.

            She’s driving the car. We’re heading up a mountain. I’m not sure she knows where she’s going, or that she’s even driving. She keep going on and on about that little plastic thing. The one that makes noise that she talks into, and she talks about the male human. I wish I understood more. She keeps repeating my name. But my human vocabulary is limited to; Keita, mommy, Tommy, treat, sit, lie down, be quite, bad dog, and good boy. So you see how it may be hard for me to understand.

            This place is dangerous. There are things out there. Things that will hurt my human. I whine hoping that she’ll turn around. That she’ll snap out of her delusional psychosis. I keep vigil in the front passenger seat. The trees loom in the darkness. They are large and scary. And those things are waiting. I can smell them. They stink. They smell like the time my female left the casserole in the fridge for two weeks while we were on family vacation. The smell is getting closer. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

            I snarl, my lips curling over my gums. Pearly white teeth glisten in the moon light. A fog has settled over the stretch of high way. An ominous fog. The headlights bounce off of the silvery grey. It’s hard to see very far, but I don’t need to see. I can smell it. I can smell the hell beast. It darts out in front of the car. A low deep growl erupts from the pits of my stomach. Even I am surprised at the sound. My human sees the beast. It looks like a dog, but it doesn’t. It’s a monster of some sort. She slams on the breaks and sends the car into a spin. My toes grip the seat and I wait nervously for the spinning to stop.

            When it did, we were pointed in the direction that we had just come. The monster was gone. Even his scent had dissipated. I look at my human, she’s shaking. She say’s something, and her voice is normal, the same voice that I grew up with. My human was back. I can smell the tears as the leak from her eyes. I like her hand and she scratches behind my black ears.

            “Bark bark, bark!” If you spoke dog it would mean “I love you mommy.” But she doesn’t have to speak dog to understand. She knows.

            She smiles at me and starts the car. Neither of us know where we are, or how far we drove, but that’s okay. My human is okay. And frankly that is all I really care about

Author's Note

This is a spin off from my Fanfiction Congealed Psychosis.

Reviews

[Wulfstan Crumble]

I dont know what a shiba inu is except sheba is a cat food in england and inu is japanese for dog. Though i feel that may be a coincidence. lol. Its an interesting perspective and also i knew something was up when you said, "my female human." haha. it infers there might be more species or genders under shiba's control... they are definately like a pet. Its an interesting story and has potential but for me it wasnt so horrific. The story does have potential though.

[Eagle Cruagh]

Exceptional dog story and a great human
story as well.
Very well written, expresses a lot of emotion
and the imagery is great.

[Ruby Moon]

its a good write....interesting but not one of your best...
but i havent read all your works so i not sure
>.

[JoshuaSpeaking]

this is written from a very interesting perspective. i love that part about it, and it's also written quite well, but there were a few things that were bothering me:

1. "Pearly white teeth glisten in the moon light. A fog has settled over the stretch of high way. An ominous fog." - This right here just seems a little too cliche for me, which kind of puts a damper on that paragraph.

2. words like: dissipated, precarious, and delusional psychosis all seem to me like you should sort of 'dumb them down' for lack of a better phrase. i know that you're trying to make the dog like it's thinking and we're hearing it's thoughts, but when i think of a dog and it's vocabulary, i don't think of it using words like that.

all in all, this is a good read. like i said before, a very good perspective.

p.s. i agree with the other reviewer, if the 3rd to last paragraph is supposed to be scary, it needs some revision, i wasn't really feeling scary.