Utopian Circus

by C. Sean McGee

Chapter 26

  Flying through the air, the giant Doberman bit straight at the neck of its companion that too had leapt from its post; it focused on the small matted dog whose face was dripping with now dark red coagulated blood and whose eyes were alight with adrenaline.

  The two Dobermans crashed against the cold concrete floor, rolling and twisting over one another as one dug its sharp teeth into the other’s throat and the other wailed in agony and frustration as it struggled to break free until finally it could struggle no more, blood pouring from a gash in its neck. The great noble hound drooped its head and gave up its fight, choking on the last drops of blood spat up from its soaking lungs that had gathered in its throat.

  The surviving Doberman lifted itself from the floor and shook off the blood from its coat. Its eyes glimmered like two diamonds, but their shine brought no comfort or desire to Ruff who sat captivated by its masonic stare. Instead, they directed an orchestra of fear in his conscious mind and kept him clipped of his wings and illiterate of strategy.

  As the Doberman breathed, the air stained bright red as it exhaled murder from its lungs. Ruff sat silently waiting for his courage to build. His own rage had waned and he was caught in an adrenaline shake that left him unable to focus his mind and concentrate his energy.

  “The Queen is dead? Are you sure?” asked The Doberman Guard.

  “I saw it with my own eyes. She died in her own reflection. It was violent and it was bloody” said Ruff.

  “And we are free?” he asked

  “Yes. You are free” said Ruff.

  “Tell me,” said the Doberman Guard, “what is love?” he asked.

  “It is not a word. It is not something to be thought of or conjured. It is merely a bind for which you willingly give yourself to but on which you cannot will” said Ruff with a ginger smile.

  The Doberman Guard spoke nothing more and parted, letting Ruff pass and heading off to sit by itself in a corner, lie quietly without the fret of love and be a dog.

  Ruff ran through the exit and into the winding corridors where he had last seen his human friends. He rushed through the open slit in the wooden frame of which he had chosen for his friends and as he ran through, his mind was plagued by the account of choice and the wonder of what may have come from it.

  And as he ran, he cursed this conscious prison for the walls were thick and closing in and he felt strangled by his fear, imagining always the worst for the humans that he loved and he wondered if this was love, to always imagine those closest to your heart being set upon by the very worst of your imagination and as he ran he thought to himself amidst the mental furor; “why can’t I just be happy?”

  As his mind raced and pined amongst a cocktail of love and tragedy, his tiny paws pounded against the cold concrete and he ran and dodged and jumped over every obstacle that came into his path until he reached a fork in the road.

  His tiny paws pushed forward into the dirt as he slid to a stop. He looked ahead at the three paths before him.

  “Which way would they have gone?” he thought.

  “If I were a human, which of three would I choose?” he said to himself out loud.

  He tried for seconds and then minutes to intellectualize and rationalize the variables of probability, behavior and then luck. He couldn’t fix himself any to sort of conclusion. Instead, he just doubted every thought that came into his mind and he started to use words like can’t and won’t and shouldn’t and improbable and the more he invited the warm comfort of doubt into his mind, the more he sank into the impossible.

  He tried to yell to see if his voice would carry through to the scared humans and maybe they would call back for him and he would run to their saviour but when he opened his mouth and projected his voice, he was returned only by silence.

  He yelled again and this time his voice bounced off the walls and straight back in his ears. It sent him crashing to the ground, burying his head between his paws. His mind started to blur and one image became a thousand as he traded fears upon which there were so many and none of them within his grasp. His conscious eye felt like a mirror ball. He couldn’t focus on one image long enough to conquer it.

  It seemed like he was pressed against an invincible army of his own past transgressions. Things he wished he had done, words he wished he had said and as his mind played out the parody of his life, he imagined himself always in the worst of situations having said the worst of things, even when in truth these things hadn’t been said or hadn’t been lived.

  Still; in his mind, he put himself at the mockery of his friends, at the mockery of his peers, at the mockery his idols and then; when he was truly broken and vacuumed of fight, at the low degrading and mocking gruff of his father. And as he sat in his conscious theatre; wishing he could close his conscious eye, the true extent of his fear bucked up upon its hind legs and threatened to tear the reigns from his hands.

  As he buried himself low into his conscious mind; trying to back away from the black shadow, the echo of his own bark continued to work its way down the winding corridors, dancing off of every wall and never disappearing but instead; like the sound of an intruder’s footsteps from under a bed, they slowly got further from the scene of the crime.

  His mind was blackened now by the great black beast the stood over him as he nursed on his mother’s breast. Around him, a circle of hounds snarled and their eyes thirsted on his tiny frame, pressed against the warmth of his mother’s body.

  About him lay his brothers whose stories had already been told, their lives; though short, had already been lived and as he crouched at his mother; drinking from her breast, he watched as Shadow took his brothers and flung their tiny bodies high into the air and into the mouths of the circle of hounds around him; the savage beasts snapping their jaws shut and tearing away at the tiny slithers of flesh.

  The black dog moved inwards and pressed his paw against the stomach of Ruff’s mother causing her to yelp and for Ruff to de-latch and roll backwards onto the thick wet mud. There was no kindness in these monsters. Shadow stood over him; saliva pouring from his mouth, the great black beast looking vile and tantalized and out of control as he stepping forward and pressed down on Ruff’s small body.

  Then came the scream.

  Ruff’s mother bellowed so loud and like the clapping of thunder, it put the fright into Shadow who took his paw from Ruff’s body and turned to the weakened mother who was now on all fours with her head lowered, her eyes raised, the hair on her back primed and hungered by her love for her child to sacrifice herself.

  His mother yelled again; so loud that he could not help but close his eyes and as he did, his mother dove upon Shadow but she dove into her death as the circle of beasts set upon her, ripping apart her body but getting nowhere near her heart. His mother could not save him, but she could give him the gift of love before she died.

  And this sound would stay in his consciousness forever; the sound of her call to war but he had never understood it until now. He had thought it was something to fear; something he should be ashamed of and will himself to forget but in fact, he was merely afraid of the strength of his own heart.

  His fear was the blanket that warmed his love, keeping it free of conscious picking as a fire burning within his soul that kept it complete and delivered from aging. There was no fear in his heart, there was only love. He had bound it in fear to protect this love from his tyrant father, the one who took his mother’s life and raised him as his own son amongst a pack of savages, learning only to hate the nature of all things.

  He had protected his mother’s love even from himself for he knew that Shadow would change him, that he would one day condition and become the savage beast and walk amongst the pack and thirst for bloodshed as they drank heartily from the breast of war.

  Now; in his mind, Shadow; once such a domineering figure in his life, one that taught him to live, to learn, to stay afoot; one that always seemed magnificent and mountainous in his thoughts, was just a small dog like he, that maybe itself
, was keeping love in a cage and protecting its delicacy from the wither of age.

  The image of Shadow began to vanish, but not before he stood back on his fours and lifted himself high into the air and barked loudly, calling Shadow to turn his head as he walked into the distance.

  Shadow stood still with its head turned to Ruff.

  “I love you and its ok; I’m not scared of you anymore. I understand you and I love you so thank you” said Ruff to Shadow as he turned his head and walked off lowly into the recesses of Ruff’s imagination; somewhere insentient.

  Ruff; the small matted dog, lowered his hind to the floor and lessened his thought. The voice that deafened in his conscious mind was now silenced. He lowered his snout to the floor, resting upon his two front paws and looked ahead calmly without looking ahead; his eyes opened and present but his conscious mind focusing instead on the young boy and remembering a moment of play.

  He remembered how the young boy had woken from his sleep and chased him about with his hand and his heart and as he thought of this image; of this memory, his mind flowed with the love that he felt as he thought of his mother.

  It was as if, for the first time in his life, he was drinking from a reservoir of kindness, of love, of sacrifice and of forgiveness and he smiled to himself as in his mind he ran about the shadow of the young boy, prancing to and fro, engaging him in childish play; awakening in the child, the love that he too dressed in fear to protect from this Industrial, antipathetic world.

  As he envisioned and drank from the well of benignancy, his state of mind drew clear and an instinct he had separated himself from in the past hours had returned to him. The voice spoke not in his mind, but in his stomach and like a compass it willed him in a direction and he argued not with its reason, picking himself up and running straight ahead into the tunnel, still running in his mind, the moment of play he shared with the young boy.

  And it was then that he discovered the power of conscious thought and its reasoning. The Bitch Queen was right; in theory. Existence played always to a concerto. Love would come in threes and so too would the nature of being for the conscious, the subconscious and the visceral soul when strung in harmony, are in tune with the universe.

  He was as a rider to its steed, a conductor to its orchestra and a father to its son. He could direct his subconscious towards an obstacle, but he could not make it jump. His word alone; shouting in his mind, was weak and more so, unconnected. He needed an image to align his three states; his conscious mind, his emotional centre and his subconscious state.

  When he focused his conscious mind on a memory; his north, he conjured the emotion of love; the gasoline for his vehicle, the fuel for his fire. And then his instinct took over; his subconscious state; the vehicle that would drive him towards his outcome.

  “Consciousness is grand,” he thought as he surged forward, driven by an abundance of love, racing forwards through the endless weaving and turning of concrete walls until eventually the sound of heavied breathing and coarse snarling drew upon his ears.

  Before him, just out of his reach; and he out of their senses, stood the two monolithic beasts with their hooves pounding against the cold concrete like two great bulls fixing to charge. Before them, he could see his two human friends cowering low to the ground, backed against a wooden frame that at its height had a gap large enough for them to escape, but of which they never would with these snarling beasts on the tips of their toes, playing with their food.

  Ruff felt no fear anymore for his heart was undressed and he had a life time of love to drink upon. He thought of his mother and he listened to her bark in his mind and as it filled his conscious ear. It filled too, the spirit in his limbs and from it, his heart grew larger and his sight became sharper and his will became immalleable.

  Ruff smiled to himself and then ran through the cold damp air and charged at the two boars which sat still, catching their breaths as their prey huddled together at the foot of a large wall made of old splintered wood.

  He screamed loud and unforgiving, what sounded like a call to war but was in fact, the extent of his heart, the whole sun of his love, exploding in a visceral charge as he dove onto the back of one of the boars, latching onto its neck and concentrating the extent of his love for his two human friends on killing these monolithic beasts.

  “Go” screamed Eve, taking Donal by the hand as the two boars fought to shake off the small matted dog’s ferocity.

  The two humans jumped to their feet; Eve pulling Donal tight against her body and looking briefly over her shoulder as the small matted dog they had travelled with was being mauled by two giant creatures and she knew in that instant, they only had seconds to spare.

  She took Donal and threw him through the hole in the wall and used the last of her spirit to jump and latch her hand on the opening and pull herself through, diving after Donal immediately to the other side and then they were gone; out of harm and on their way to where they needed to be.

  Ruff watched with his last inch of life as his two human friends, the last love he had shared in this world, escaped free from the tyranny of hazard. There was savagery at the tips of his teeth as he ripped at the boars’ flesh but there was relief in his heart as he knew his friends’ lives had been saved and though his mouth snarled and ripped at skin, his heart shone, grew fonder and smiled.

  The second boar clenched at Ruff’s back, biting deep into his spine and ripping him from the other boar’s neck. The other boar then bit into Ruff’s face and the two monolithic beasts held their clasp, their giant mouths crunching down on his small matted body; their teeth cutting through his skin and tearing him in two as they shook their massive heads violently to and fro.

  In his mind, Ruff kept the image burning strong of Donal escaping over the wall and he felt a plumage of love ripple through his heart which in the next instant, was torn to pieces.

  His tiny mouth held a grin as the last image he had in his mind was of the young boy smiling back at him.

  “This is love,” he thought, as he died.