After that I began sleeping in his bed each time he laid there alone. In the dark I would lick his face first and he would kiss mine. I didn’t want our first kiss to occur while I was a dog. I also didn’t want our first few kisses to be closed lipped. I wanted and craved a deep tongue kiss in the mouth when I was in my best human form, in the heat of our most incredible lovemaking. After the pecks on my face, he began petting me. When I rolled over so that he would pet my underbelly, he did. Then the unexpected occurred. He slid his thickest finger in my dog pussy hole and made me feel so overwhelmed I howled. After that time, I couldn’t wait for bedtime. He would caress me better than when he caressed me when I was a woman. He would again penetrate me with his finger. In my dog state, it really felt like a satisfying dick. I would thank him by licking his balls and eventually his anus. It was all done in the dark where no one else would ever know our secrets but me and him.
But the next day, Succubus used the key she had made for the front door to enter. I was seated on the bed waiting for bedtime, whenever that would occur, I didn’t know for sure. He was out for a while. Succubus lit two torches and the flames revealed what I had caught whiff of on her arrival. She had a dog in her hand. She placed it on the floor and said, “Now this little bitch will learn her place.” Was she talking to me?
He came home. “Why did you bring that mutt up in here?” he said as soon as he walked through the door.
“Your bitch looked a little lonely,” she replied dryly.
“Put him back in the basement,” he said, as though he knew the dog.
“She stays up here. Why can’t he?”
“I don’t want puppies,” he said.
“It’s the closest you and I are ever going to get to having babies,” she said oddly.
“You talk too much. Take him down now,” he commanded her. She left. Babies, I thought to myself. She’s a dead bitch just like me. We can’t have babies, and she should be glad. I loved the fuckarama without the pregnancies and all of the complications that go along with it. From their conversation I could see that she thought she was top bitch, although I can’t imagine why? There had been plenty of women in and out of his playpen. All of them looked way better than her. She was a no-action bitch. For some reason, though, I thought further. How come I never see any of the other females twice in a row? Meanwhile, this Succubus showed up all of the time? What was she doing to make all of the rest stay away after that first freaky, unforgettable sexual encounter? Wouldn’t every single one of them want a second and third go-round? I did! Why didn’t he snatch back her key to his place? Especially because she used it like she was a co-owner, or paid rent here and was a resident. Why bother to let her in when clearly he didn’t like her? He didn’t even fuck her right. He never ever broke down and whispered in her ear a confession of his attraction to her, or highlighted her irresistible qualities. She didn’t have none! I laughed, but it came out like barking. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I stopped.
“What’s the count on your side?” A male voice had entered our darkness, sounding like he was on speakerphone. I didn’t hear no ringtone, or no doorbell, or door opening, though. He wasn’t in here before he started talking either. And, I never saw my nigga’s house phone or cell phone even during the few times that the firehouse was well lit.
“Two thousand six for the week,” my nigga answered back.
“I’m at 1,566,” the other guy said. “And if you keep dipping into your stash soon I’ll catch up and surpass you,” he added.
“Keep trying,” my nigga said confidently. “Iblis, what’s the week total citywide?”
“Six thousand houses reported in to Father. Average house 1,100, plus top twenty earners average recruitment 1,468.”
“Aight cool. What did father say?” my nigga asked.
“Why ask when you already know. He’s greedy and never satisfied. You the top earner. It doesn’t matter what he says.” Iblis paused. “Yo! Who’s that pretty thing you sped through the block with two times? First time she was in your Jag wearing the white mink. That’s how I spotted her.” My nigga hung up. My head swelled. Even in the Last Stop Before the Drop, the County of the Ungrateful, the State of Ignorance, and the Land of Arrogance, Winter Santiaga was still turning heads and the streets was still watching.
I heard a key turn in the lock what seemed like immediately after my nigga left out. Now that I had overheard the stats on his hustle, I didn’t even get mad that he was leaving me behind fairly regularly in the dark firehouse. Besides, it was warm, and the silk blankets on our bed were soft and comfortable even with the rubber thorns below them. I heard a chain rattle. A flashlight beam flashed on. When I finally saw Succubus, she was holding a long leash with no dog attached. I wiggled beneath the blanket. She started searching around for me with her thin beam of light. It was hard not to make any doggy sounds. The breathing and panting and wagging are endless. When the light beam landed on me, I wiggled out from under and darted to the floor. “You got the nerve to be on the bed under the goddamn covers!” she shouted. I dodged the beam, scattering here and there. The sound of my nails skidding on the floor was giving me away. She started using her chain as a whip and trying to strike me with it. Instead of running away from her, I charged her and bit her left ankle. My teeth penetrated deep in her. “You fucking little bitch, I’ll kill you,” she threatened. She wielded the chain whip so hard that it landed on my back and stopped me dead in my tracks. The pain was great. And it took everything I had not to whimper. Pausing was my biggest mistake. She grabbed me by my hind legs and dragged me backwards. After she was satisfied that she had burnt my face and underbelly, which was scraping against the cement floor, she raised me into her arm. I tried to bite her again. She took both of her powerful hands and forced my mouth closed, then clasped it shut with thick rubber bands. She hurled me against the wall, which was completely extra unnecessary. On impact I felt smashed. Then I slid down to the floor. I was out cold. That must have been the exact point when she leashed me, dragged me out of the firehouse, and drove me away. But I don’t know if she drove me out, or if she put my bloodied body into a trash bag. Maybe she threw the bag into a large trash bin and then it was picked up and dumped elsewhere. After I had high-speed hit the wall, I really don’t know what happened to me next.
11.
My mind clicked on before my eyes opened. Good thing I had no expectation to see light. Even in my dreams there is no light. It’s good that I had let light go. I’d gotten comfortable with only the flame and the dim visuals it allows me to see. Because, when I woke, there was only blackness and no vision at all. I laid there panting. So I knew I was still a dog. My wet and cold nose was assaulted by a series of smells, each distinct, but somehow mixed together. It was not the scents of humans. I know the difference. And it was also not the odor that I was well familiar with that oozed out of the open sewer where I often found myself seated, legs paralyzed and alone. I could feel that wherever I was now, I was not alone. Normally this would be a good thing. However, I sensed a threat.
The side of my body that hit the wall when Succubus threw me was paining me. Testing my abilities, I tried to stand up on all four of my legs. When I did I ached and felt lopsided. I attempted to walk, but I was slow and gaining only inches, which is less than even a new toddler would gain when taking her first steps. In what seemed like an instant, my nose hit metal bars, which caused me to inch backward. When I had taken a number of steps back, my tail hit metal bars. So then I knew. I had experienced this before. I was in a fucking cage. I could hear lots of others breathing. Also some cooing. Some screeching. Some squeaking. Some braying. Some hissing. Some snorting. Some howling. Some mooing. And I also heard hooves hitting the ground. They were all different languages. Yet, I could tell all of the sounds were sounds of captured creature’s, anger, and complaints. I only understood English and barking. So I began barking. It was a genuine, “Where my dogs at the moment.” Many canines returned my call, including the howling
of wolves. However, when they did, I could tell that they were extremely far off from where I was caged. All they were barking about was how fucked up this shit is.
Succubus ain’t slick. She was the same as the authorities. She put me wherever I am right now, to keep me in an unfamiliar territory with no allies. Other dogs would be the natural attraction for me to go to, to gang up with, and not turn into food. I was only happy about one thing. I didn’t hear no roaring. That meant wherever I was, there are no lions, tigers or bears, at least not yet.
For what seemed like a very long time, there was no action. Even in solitary someone comes through and slides in a tray of goop for you to eat and water for you to survive. C.O.s hated us. Yet they had a job to keep us alive. They were responsible for the count. But who’s running this situation here? If there was no feeding, it meant they planned to slaughter us. Or worse, let us die of starvation. The last possibility was they wanted us to attack each other and decide who was food and who was not. Survival of the fittest, like my niggas in Mobb Deep rhymed about on that hot-ass track.
Suddenly I could hear what sounded like two hundred cows mooing. It felt like a funeral song. I got worried that they must know something. I just woke up here. I didn’t know what the hell was going on or what to expect. Then I reminded myself that I was in the realm of the unexpected. Don’t expect shit.
Just when I felt my body getting dangerously weak, after what felt like about six days of nothingness, an alarm went off that caused every animal of every kind to panic even though none of us could do nothing about it. After it damn near blew out my dog ears, which were supersensitive to sound, it stopped. Then the abusive sound of some type of heavy machinery entered the area. Next, a sprinkler system clicked on and my cage was being sprayed with what I believed to be water. I was like, Is this their idea of giving us something to drink? Instead of just standing there with my fur getting soaked, I opened my mouth so that some of the water would land on my tongue. It worked. But I was so vexed that this was how it was being handled. Next I heard a machine that sounded like a snowblower. I know because upstate New York where I served my prison time, some winters brought on six to eight feet of snow. I thought the snowblowers were way worse than the snow pile.
When the sound of the blower reached near to my cage, a bunch of pellets shot out like bullets. I squatted low down to avoid getting pelted. But, there was nowhere to go. As the loud noisy machine moved slowly down the tier shooting pellets in what I guess was each cage, I stuck my nose to my cage floor to inspect what had been served. It was like corn and rocks.
I was tight. Even though I was a dog, Dat Nigga always fed me real food, the way a human would enjoy. I’m not normally a food lover. When I was alive, I never really concentrated on eating. Even when I was at the table with family, for me it was more about them than what was on my plate. I kept a badass bitch body figure, a tight waist and had no desire to ruin it. I wasn’t suicidal. So I was never starving myself or forcing myself to vomit. But, I was never ever pigging out either. A real bitch gotta look right. I don’t want nothing in my body that fucks with my look. At the same time, after I got shot dead, I wasn’t hungry ever and never ate anything. Still, I felt alive, was thinking and having a whole bunch of shit happening to me that I could never have predicted would happen to a dead bitch. As a serpent, and then as a dog, I was the opposite with food. I wanted and needed it. I would strike to get it, even if that meant chewing it alive and swallowing.
This wack-ass feeding system was so disruptively noisy. It caused nothing but a chorus of animal reactions, resistance, and complaints mixed with chomping, cracking, and chewing. I still didn’t eat the corn or the pellets. I knew if I ate corn and all of the rest of the animals were served the same thing, there would be a shitting frenzy to follow. I wanted to vomit just thinking about the odor and the aftermath of thousands of creatures having a shit blizzard and nothing to do but sit in it because nobody would show up to clean it. Dat Nigga was good to me. He let me go off in a far corner and do my thing. He didn’t come walking over there and he never watched. When I was done and had walked away from my own shit pile, he would go and clean it up. I wouldn’t stare when he did. He wouldn’t look my way when he did. He never made me feel like an animal. This circumstance I was in right now was nothing even remotely similar. I sat down, all four legs collapsed. I was thinking about him now as a means to blocking out all of the noise and fuckery. Would he come and get me? Did he know where I was? Would he beat Succubus’s ass until she told him where she put me? Would she ever tell him? Would she tell him too late, after I was already dead? Oh, wait a minute. I am already dead. Um, how did this work? I definitely don’t know. Can a bitch die twice?
Since I couldn’t count the days, I counted the feedings. Six feedings after my first feeding, which I assumed was once a day, I broke down and began chewing from the pellet pile. I had swept the corn to the side with my tongue. So there was a pellet pile and a corn pile and a little iddy-biddy shit pile behind me. My underbelly was wet from the piss. I hated that. My fur was matted. I could feel it. I hated that too. I was heavily hoping Dat Nigga would walk through and free me. At the same time, I didn’t want him to see me in this condition. He had kept me clean and combed and loved.
Suddenly I heard a rumble and felt the ground moving. All of the animals began wailing. They heard and felt it too. I never been in an earthquake, but that’s the word that came to me when the ground shook. When the walls shook and the cages began to rattle, I was like, Hold up. It’s Bomber Girl. Never thought I’d be happy to see the young bitch. But, since she had bombed the firehouse, even though she said it was not her, and even though it was way before Succubus knocked the door down and broke the mirrors and everything made of glass, it felt just like what was happening now, to the tenth power.
After the shake-up, a male voice made an announcement that sounded like it was being propelled everywhere through a megaphone.
“Lah-il-la-ha-illah-huwa,” he said. I was like, Oh no, speak English! Then I heard the sound of a heartbeat being amplified. Somehow, the beating heart seemed to calm all of us animals. It reminded me of the rhythm of roller skating back when my teen crew used to chill at the Skate Key or the Rink. We even had a jam titled “Heartbeat” that hip-hop producers and beat biters sampled all of the time. The soft sound of one flute began drifting over the rhythm of the beating heart. It was so soothing. I’m not accustomed to flute music, but I wasn’t mad at it either. Next I heard a long and high-volume hissing. It was not part of the music. The serpents must be here somewhere in the mix. But it sounded like they were all on the move. I heard cage doors opening way off in the distance. I stood up in anticipation forgetting my weakness and my pain. Suddenly, the sound of the cymbals that a drummer creates with the tap of even one drumstick joined in, making the flute sounds more legitimate. It was working, whatever it was. Various groups of animals seemed to be on the move, following the sound of the music. My anticipation was moving back and forth mixed with fear. Fear of being left behind. Fear of being last out of the cage. What if the walls caved in from the heavy bombing and I got buried alive, dead?
Once the sound of cages being unlocked reached much closer to me, which seemed like forever, with that sound came some light. It was the first light since my dog captivity. My eyes shut to readjust. The light was giving my eyes a burning sensation. Once I opened them, I saw young men wearing lights like a headband. They were dressed in khaki jackets, had a sash of bullets laid across their shoulders, and a grenade belt around their waists. Were they a part of Bomber Girl’s UBS army? She had the bullets around her waist and the grenade on her necklace. Maybe the male and female soldiers rocked it differently. I don’t know. I do know that I could only see young males running the tiers, opening the cages and setting the animals free. They were all guided forward towards what I guess was the exit. But I didn’t see no lavender sky or green atmosphere. I wondered who these guys really were? Who was freeing us and why? Was it Dat N
igga’s crew? It had to be! He was going to war over me! He sent his army to find me! He had to let all of these creatures out until they located the right one, me! My tail was wagging like crazy. I was excited. Finally a nigga who went full throttle for his bitch the same way bitches go full throttle for our niggas! Usually they don’t return the favor. I began barking. Wanted to alert his boys that hey, I’m over here in the corner in the last cage in the last tier.
Once my cage door got opened, I leaped out. Soon as my paws hit the ground my piss squirted out everywhere. I couldn’t contain myself. I started shaking my whole body trying to free myself of anything matted in my fur. I used my toenails to comb through my hair. Without a doggy bath, it would be hard for me to look right. However, I gave it my best effort. Once I did, I had to run to catch up. When I did, I was in a herd of creatures, all running out of the barn warehouse, or barn factory. No matter the type of creature, we were all mixing together, pouring out of each tier and all into the total blackness that was the usual atmosphere of the Last Stop Before the Drop. Animals who would normally be fighting or eating one another were not fighting or preying. There were so many creatures, I couldn’t see all the way to the front. I didn’t know where I was going or who I was actually following. My Brooklyn mind flashed me a warning. What if this was a trick? What if they were leading us all to the slaughterhouse? What if we were all about to become food? Should I turn back? Should I dodge left or right and break through the ranks? What if I did? What then? I was torn. I didn’t want to help myself get got. I didn’t like the feeling of anyone outsmarting me. But, I had some impatient pigs behind me pushing me forward. Then there were the donkeys trotting in front of me. Some chickens fucking up the order and flow just running wild in the ranks. So in order not to get trampled, I didn’t stop or even pause long enough to look all the way to the back. I kept moving in the long march to the unexpected.
Life After Death Page 13