Savage Tales

cuts through my eyelids and they infuse their way into my dreams.
    My captor is like me. He looks exactly like me. Or so I tell myself. I have not seen my face in mirror or photograph or film in ever so long. So he starts to look like me, I imagine. Him and his dog are all I see. He hardly speaks but the dog looks at me and barks. Damn you, dog!
    When he goes away for days at a time he leaves me a large portion of food and parks the dog near me. As if I might do anything to escape. As if the dog would be the only thing stopping me. As if these bars weren't enough. I don't know where he goes. I've asked him but he just looks at me and laughs. I even asked him to take me with him once, in the back of his car or truck or whatever he has. To chain me up or take me in the cage and tranquilize me how he will to get me in that situation and position, but to get me out of here for a bit, for a change. To give me new substance to run through my mind. And if he won't let me go for a ride, then take me outside for some air, daylight. I think we are in the country. That is the last thing I remember when he got me.
    But my captor won't even give me any words to remember what words are like. So I just run my tired old words and images and the feelings that come with them through my mind and laugh an insane laugh that makes the dog bark at me ever so softly, piteously.
    I have seen the dog's food and it looks very much like my food.

    Today he has left, and by the amount of food he has left me and the dog (he has not told me anything, as usual) I deduce he shall be gone for one of his longest trips. Where does he go? To the city to resupply his mad schemes and this country warren? But what does he do there? Bah, what do I care. Probably a-whoring his energy away now that I am captured and no longer menace him. I am on the verge of madness and I wonder how he idles his time. Does it matter? No. It does not.
    Sometimes when he is here with the dog he shouts "Attack!" and points at my cage. When he does this, the dog lunges at my cage, however friendly the beast may have been before or seemed in that moment, and I have to retreat to the back of the cage to avoid those pinching razor teeth. The man has no reason to have the dog attack me. I am obviously no threat. Yet he does it. Out of boredom or malice or as a reminder of his power over me. And then he feeds the dog. The dog always expects the food afterward. I have noticed this. And once the dog has the food it is friendly again and will even come up to the cage and let me pet it. What a mad situation it is, but one which I might take advantage of.

    So he has left me for many days with the dog and the food. I keep my food in the cage away from the dog, who has plenty to itself. For I know the dog would take my food when I slept if it could. The dog always wants more. I have noticed this as well.
    So with the dog and I alone I make a test of it. I point down the hall and say to the dog in a voice as much like the man's as I can muster, "Attack!"
    The dog hesitates for only a second and then runs down the hall where I have pointed, barking at an invisible target. It maintains this berserker state for several seconds before calmly returning to me and standing before my cage. I scoop a little bit of food out of my container and place it before the dog, who laps it up greedily. I pet the dog's head as he does this.
    The next day the man is still away and I make a test of it again. This time the dog barely hesitates and lunges down the hall madly, surely as aware as I am that there is no threat there. When he returns and awaits his reward for the performance, I do not disappoint him.
    We audition it once more the next day, and this time there is no hesitation from the dog. My command and the dog's rage down the hall are nearly simultaneous. It is a beautiful and horrible thing, this.

    Finally, as my food supply is dwindling (because I have been giving so much to the dog), the man finally arrives. I hear him in the other end of the building. He does not come in to say hello, or Honey, I'm home . No aloha.
    But a few hours later I hear his feet approaching from down the hall.
    This is the moment. My only chance. The only one.
    He and the dog enter and the man shoots a toxic grin at me. This is it.
    "Attack!" I yell, pointing at the man.
    The dog understands. It is not a loyal dog.
    The man has no time to understand. He cannot see how he has been tricked. There is no pause to contemplate