A Dog’s Life
Week 2, Day 3
I heard the dog whining before I heard my alarm. Not my dog, mind you, as I don’t have a dog on account of how much responsibility they require. The neighbor’s dog was who I heard — did I mention that was before my alarm? The sun wasn’t up and I wasn’t supposed to be either, but the dog, my neighbor’s dog, didn’t care, and neither did my internal clock.
Everything in my apartment was quiet. Well, there were the normal white-noise things: the refrigerator was doing its humming thing, for example, but other than that and the little creaks and snaps that all dwellings seem to make, everything was quiet. The rustling of my covers as I flipped them off of me was loud — that’s how quiet everything else was. Except, of course, for the neighbors’s dog.
Get Malik Turley’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I padded and shuffled my way into the bathroom noting just how loud I was in the quiet-except-for-the-damn-dog space and resigned myself to a day that was starting well before was necessary. That fact got easier as I made more noise, maybe because I could hear the dog less? The sounds of my pee hitting the water in the toilet, the gurgle and flush when I pushed the button on top of the tank, the pshhhh of the faucet when I went to wash my hands. Those sounds were welcome and normal and not related to having been mercilessly dragged out of bed early.
It wasn’t until I’d made my way back into my bedroom, finally awake enough to pick up my feet like a proper human, that I learned just how early it was. The screen on my phone cheerily displayed 4:46 as if that was a reasonable time for anyone to be up looking at it. I didn’t look at it for long, deciding it needed a time out for having the audacity to proclaim such an ungodly hour without apology. I turned it face-down on my dresser and shrugged myself into pajamas. There was no way I was putting on hard pants hours before the sun was up. It was bad enough that I’d have to put them on eventually.
The dog added scrabbling at a door to the whining song that had dragged me out of bed. I didn’t really begrudge the dog. My neighbor was to blame. And, by the sounds of it, or rather the lack-of-sounds of it, they were sleeping blissfully through the cacophony created by their best friend. I’d never met them. I didn’t know if they were a man or a woman or maybe someone who didn’t believe in gender at all or someone who fluidly moved between genders or landed smack dab in the middle. All I knew was that they were ignoring the creature they’d decided to take on the responsibility for and were doing so in a way that resulted in me standing in my kitchen before 5 am contemplating what the loudest breakfast menu might be.
I pulled open the humming refrigerator and stared at its silent contents.
***
This is a story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes “clap” for it. My “winning” start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and might grow into a full short story!
