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There was a new one in its place, and I had to suppress the urge to take a leaping jump onto it.
I really needed to go walk Peter, and if I laid down on that bed after the night I’d had the day before, I wouldn’t be getting back up.
Stripping off my shirt and skirt and hanging them up nicely in the closet to clean this weekend, I shoved my legs into a pair of capri pants and a tight workout top.
I sat on the edge of the bed, and slipped my feet into a pair of flip flops before heading to the bathroom.
After using the facilities and putting my hair up into a ponytail, I walked out the door with Peter, taking him downstairs to the little patch of grass allotted for the dogs of our complex.
Peter didn’t stay, though, choosing to go to the field once again.
I had my shoulder leaning on the side of the apartment building, eyes on Peter as he frolicked when I heard the growl coming from behind me.
I smiled, turning around thinking I was going to see Downy’s dog, Mocha, but it was anything but Mocha.
This dog was a mutt of some sort.
He had horrific marks all over his body, some healed, some not.
One of his eyes was closed over with scar tissue from trauma he’d received, and his coat was non-existent in patches.
It was more than obvious that he was a dog that’d fought. My heart clutched, in fear for my life, and in sadness for what he’d gone through.
I started to slowly back up, my hand running along the side of the building as I backed up.
He followed my movements, one of my steps equaling one of his.
Each time I moved backward, he moved forward.
Peter barked, and then started barking quicker.
The sounds got closer, but I watched the dog tense, ready to pounce, and I knew Peter wouldn’t make it.
The dog was going for me, and I didn’t have a chance.
I ran out of building as I backed up, leaving me three different directions to run, but none of them being viable options.
I’d be caught any way I went.
There was no way I wouldn’t be.
I was in flip-flops, and the grass back here was taller, thicker, and filled with briars.
I’d give it a try, though.
Peter’s barks were getting frantic, and I thought for sure they were coming from a different direction now, but my eyes stayed on the dog. The scary, poor dog.
He leapt when I finally chose a way to run, but he didn’t hit me.
A loud bark of a gun’s retort sounded, but I didn’t turn around, I just ran towards the parking lot in the distance.
My shoes were lost in the first three feet, and two feet more I knew my feet weren’t going to hold out against the briars.
One exceptionally painful foot plant had me falling and I put my hands out to break my fall.
When I landed, I rolled into the fall, feeling the sharp pricks all along my back and side.
My carpet burn stung, and I cried out just as Downy’s loud, sharp voice yelled, “Don’t move, honey.”
I froze, too scared to hope, too scared to look at him to see if I was actually hearing his voice and not dreaming.
Warm, callused hands touched my thigh, and I finally looked up into the alarmed green eyes that I’d been dreaming about for two weeks now.
Downy.
“Oh, my God,” I said, launching myself at him.
He caught me, wrapping his arms around my back and pulling me up.
I hissed when the movement pushed the tiny little barbs into my skin, but I didn’t care. I was safe. I wasn’t about to be attacked by a dog. I was in Downy’s arms.
I started to cry and clung to him tightly. I buried my face in his neck, letting all the adrenaline and fear leach out of my body with each sob.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he soothed me.
I was shaking, holding on so tight that I had to be cutting off his air supply, but he didn’t complain.
He only held me as the tremors wracked my body.
I felt someone’s hand moving on my back, removing the briars from my back and legs.
I felt his voice vibrate in his chest as he spoke, but I didn’t comprehend the words.
A normal person would’ve probably recovered by now.
I was not normal.
I had a story, just like everyone else did.
Mine, though, was special. To me, anyway.
See, I’d been attacked by a dog when I was twelve.
It’d been a Doberman, and it’d been one that I had been coming around since I was a baby.
It’d been the club’s dog. One that stayed at the clubhouse to ‘protect’ the club’s belongings.
I’d ridden that dog’s back, pulled on his ears, thrown the tennis ball for him.
I’d done that and more.
Except, one day, I went to the club without telling my father I was going.
It was supposed to be a fast, quick trip.
I was only going for my bag that I’d left on the picnic table outside.
I’d climbed the fence and made it all the way to the picnic table before the growls finally registered.
I thought for sure that Bobo, the Doberman, would be okay with me coming. I mean, he knew me for Christ’s sake!
Except he wasn’t. He really wasn’t okay with it.
And he’d attacked me.
So bad that I blacked out within seconds.
I’d been told, later at the hospital, that I’d been shaken like a rag doll, teeth tearing into the flesh of my arms and neck.
The back of my neck had been in near shreds. My spinal column had been exposed, and Bobo was on the killing stroke when my father’s right hand man, Big Papa, took him down.
The only way for him to do it, though, was to shoot the dog and hope it wouldn’t hit me.
He’d been unlucky, and so had I.
The bullet had penetrated the dog’s brain like he’d meant it to, but it’d traveled straight through the dog and then lodged into the meat on the side of my right hip.
