The dogs despise him. That is all there is to say about their hate for man, but on their impatience toward this singular man—

He has settled in the center of the room.

This room, in all it is and has been, is a coliseum of barking, animalistic grievances. Loud. The growls, the howls, and the whines keep him in unpleasant company. The odor, the fur, and the monotony keep him unpleasantly busy.

The kennels are stacked so high that the topmost cages push against the ceiling tiles, and the cages crowd the walls in such a way that some hold only bundles of wires and extension cords. Parting for a front and back door, the rickety animal cages are seats for an audience—a beastial audience often driven to terrible fervor, no matter how minor the performer’s movement or expression.

So, Finnian is still. Slim Barbara pings him through the County Sanitation private chat: Ms. Joanna says they bite the new hires too. A fang emoticon with canines as sharp as those in the cages follows, then a link.

[ANIMAL HANDLER ENTRY GUIDES]

The dogs are quiet now. The room is still. Clicking the link feels risky. It might provoke the beasts. So, as gently as possible, he presses the left mouse button.

[ACCESS BLOCKED]

[PLEASE SUBMIT EVIDENCE TO PROVE CUSTODIAL COMPETENCY. THIS MAY INCLUDE DETAILED REPORTS, WITNESS TESTIMONIALS, OR FOOTAGE OF A JOB WELL DONE]

The beasts are provoked by the rejection sound the computer makes. The dogs howl, and Finnian groans along with them. A bell joins the chorus with slow, deliberate tolls.

The first of three work blocks has ended, which means it’s time for the daily stand-up. Finnan has never understood its value in a gig-profession like this, but supposedly, the meeting is meant to boost productivity and efficiency. A few [Custodians] who already have their feet in the game don’t get it either, so they don’t bother to show up half the time. Finnian, however, is too new to skip.

The meeting takes place in an open office where desks are exposed to everyone instead of sheltered by cubicles. It’s supposed to be a team-building environment, but for newbies lost in the shuffle, it’s hell. Finnian recalls the week after orientation—emergency calls for County Sanitation were as frequent as ever. If a new hire couldn’t latch onto someone, they could only sit while veterans stared in passing—too short on staff and time to guide the greenhorns, just attentive enough to wonder when they would get to work, and tired enough to push for firings and replacements.

A dozen [Custodians] are present at the standup, some new, some not. Ten minutes after it is supposed to start, he lumbers from his office, as country as they come with the blond mullet to match. Instead of walking to the center of the room, he waves them to where he stands, near his door.

Most of the things he says, Finnian ignores. He is meant to be in the field, sanitizing, not handling logistics in the office.

“...And with those encouraging words from big sanitation, any questions? Any blockers?”

One of the other recent hires, Mason, raises his hand. “Is being irritated a blocker?”

Jamie genuinely ponders this for a little too long, then shrugs.

“The kennel room. Everyone can hear that chaos all day. None of us can think.”

Murmurs float amongst the crowd with a few eyes purposely avoiding Finnian’s. Jamie does not avoid it.

“I’m not an [Animal Handler],” Finnian explains, trying to get ahead of it. “I explained that before I was sentenced to solitary confinement amongst matted fur, sir.”

“Don’t matter,” Jamie says. “Sedate ‘em early in the morning block and they’ll hush ‘til evening. One meal a day. Water ‘em. Bathroom ‘em. Ain’t complicated.”

[ACCESS BLOCKED]

[PLEASE SUBMIT EVIDENCE TO PROVE CUSTODIAL COMPETENCY. THIS MAY INCLUDE DETAILED REPORTS, WITNESS TESTIMONIALS, OR FOOTAGE OF A JOB WELL DONE]

Finnian closes the browser. The leashes and collars are all frayed.

A dozen of them hang, threadbare, on the back door. But he’s supposed to let them out to feed and use the bathroom. Maybe that will calm them down? Sedatives are a no-go, as the name and dosage are locked in the guide, and Finnian has no interest in becoming an [Animal Handler], even if it does come with an extensive database. There have been too many stories of someone specializing out of their office’s desperate need, only to be stuck there for the rest of their career.

He doesn’t even know what they eat. And the leashes and collars are all frayed.

[ACCESS BLOCKED]

“Again,” Jamie sighs, spreading his hands and then moving them closer with each syllable. “Se-da-tion. Sedate the mutts, man. They’re not even real dogs.”

“Not real dogs?”

“Not real dogs.”

“What are they?”

“Freak little demon things. Spirits? Fae?” He leans in close, sketchier than graphite, and whispers, “Look, I’ve got no clue what those things are, if I’m honest—“

“What—?”

“And it ain’t just dogs in that room either, no matter what they look like, but we got ‘em on inventory, and Big Sanitation’s got us marked for inspection in three weeks, and I’ve put it off thrice already, so we just gotta’ keep ‘em alive—whatever that means.”

He slowly pulls back from his lean, bug-eyed and nodding as if the implication is clear. As if the two are on one train of thought. They aren’t. All Finnian caught was the fact that State Sanitation or Federal Sanitation would be here in a few weeks to inspect an [Animal Handler] who wasn’t an [Animal Handler] and a [Program Manager] who was as odd as they come.

“You get me, Finn,” Jamie says. “You’ll fit in just fine around here.”

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[PLEASE SUBMIT EVIDENCE TO PROVE CUSTODIAL COMPETENCY. THIS MAY INCLUDE DETAILED REPORTS, WITNESS TESTIMONIALS, OR FOOTAGE OF A JOB WELL DONE]

Thirty-six cages. Thirty-six bowls of water. Thirty-six bowls of kibble and bits.

Today, like the last week prior, he has operated on guesswork instead of procedure. The exact logistics of how to feed an entire kennel is still locked behind the [Animal Handler] database. But it’s the last block of the work day, and after seven days of doing this, everything is still alive.

“Good enough.”

Sunset paints the kennel room a gold it does not deserve. For a moment, Finnian lets it bathe him, ignoring the uproar of the crowd which barks insults in a foreign language. Until they find someone willing to go [Animal Handler] or someone willing to pirate the resources he needs from the [Animal Handler] database, it would be this way.

Her chat is still on the screen: I asked Joanna if I could pirate the books. She says no. Sry. While it looks innocent, it drips with her sarcasm. She didn’t mean a single word of it, though she probably did ask Joanna if she could steal. She says there’s mystery meat in the cafeteria. Edible for dogs lol.

The meat sits in a trash bag on the counter where Finnian has worked. The odor is strange— fruity, as if it is rotten. “That’s how it comes,” the thin cafeteria man says. “Ain’t rotten, just the parts people can’t eat. They pulled it off a gig last week. We kept it frozen.”

“How can you tell the difference between what’s edible and not edible?”

He stares until Finnian takes the bag and leaves. So, the bits in the kibble are leftover meat and marrow from something. “Something” is the best description.

“What do you think it is?” Finnian asks one of the dogs he suspects to be not-dogs. It is clearly ravenous and bashes its body against the rusty bars. “Whatever it is, you’re hungry for it.”

The last bowl of food and water has been placed outside. Though he doesn’t know exactly what to do, letting them out at sunset feels like a small kindness he can give them. Day time during Georgia summers are brutal, humid and the only unpredictability is whether it's in the nineties or hundreds. Around this time, it comes down to the eighties. There is a rule—not a rule, a sticky note that Finnian has from his first day in the room: “Don’t let them out after dark.”

When someone is only given one direction, it’s hard not to regard it as gospel.

There are two sets of buttons beside each door that both say the same thing. One button says KENNEL RELEASE and one that says KENNEL CALLBACK.

Finnian double checks the bowls one last time, trying to make them six feet apart from one another so they don’t fight too much. Making sure no anthills have formed on the large patch of grass, and lastly, checking the structure of the gates surrounding the entire area.

All good.

He props open the back door, then goes to the front. The dogs growl in anticipation, flinching against the grate as he raises his hand. Finnian obliges them. With a buzzer, the cages open electronically and in a flurry of fur and drool, the beasts dart outside.

“Bathroom. Food. Water. Problem solved.”

He closes the door, and pulls out a broom. If swept incorrectly, the entire bristle section will fall off, so he is gentler and slower than he’d prefer, but he takes this time to clean. The gold in the room reddens. The door opens. It’s Jamie.

“Oh God,” the mullet-man says, looking quickly from kennel to kennel. “Did they do it? Did they do it?”

“Do what?”

“Those things—they—”

“They’re outside, sir.”

“Bathroomin’?”

“Bathroomin’ and eating, sir.”

He breathes a deep sigh of relief. “Good, good. Good.”

He looks around a bit more, almost like a child.

“Was there something you needed, sir?”

“How’re you holding up? You ate?”

“Well—”

“There’s a gig tomorrow morning,” Jamie interrupts. “Some hotel. Should be simple—the team leader, Octavia Brigard, may need you to prep one of those…dogs. I’m clockin’ out now, but check with the team before you do.”

“Sir, I don’t have access to the [Animal Handler] database. I’m still not an [Animal Handler].” Desperation has laced his voice now. He isn’t supposed to be in the office anyway; he’s meant to be outside getting his hands dirty.

“We thought you were a team player. That’s what it says on your resume. Is your resume a lie, Finnian? Did you lie to me, Finnian?”

Of course he put it in the soft skills section of his resume. Everyone does. Team player. Good communicator. Hard worker. Problem solver. But also on the resume is a requested position: Custodian with [Field Agent] in the title.

“No, sir. I did not lie to you.”

“Then if you submit the work you did today for the county, you should get access to the [Animal Handler] database.”

“Sir,” Finnian begins, tossing the broom. He takes a moment to calm himself, remembering that although this man is unserious, he is a superior. “Sir, you told me I would be in the field. Not stuck in a room all day. Especially not a room like this.”

“What’s wrong with this room?”

“I don’t fucking like dogs!”

The silence sits between them. Finnian’s personal stance on dogs wasn’t the issue, so he didn’t even know why he said it. But all of his frustration for the last week sits in the statement. And his contract with the county has him working three weeks on, then two weeks off. He has wanted to do something else with his time and the time is ticking before his actual fear comes true.

“Just don’t want to get stuffed in a box so quickly, sir,” he says. “Especially one which doesn’t see the field too often.”

“I get that, son,” Jamie says. “But [Animal Handlers] go out all the time. And we really are in a need.”

“If they’re a [Hunter], sir. I came here to help people, and so far I’ve hardly helped the dogs.”

“You are helping people. You’re doing the hard part, the maintenance. You’re helping more than any of them because you will allow them to operate at their best. I mean one misstep out there and its…” He waves his hands in a gesture that can only fit the description of a magician casting a spell.

“Heard, sir.”

“I mean, let a [Hunter] get called back to a site because of a [Custodian] mistake. Career suicide. You’re part of making sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Heard, sir.”

He nods, satisfied. “Just keep wingin’ it, I guess. As long as none of ‘em die.”

“On your order, sir,” Finnian says. “We need new leashes.”

He sharply raises a rope hanging by a literal thread. It no longer deserves the title of rope in Finnian’s opinion and is even further from being called a leash. It is a “thing” which dangles and twists in the air beneath the weight of Jamie’s gaze, who stares as if he can will the little fibers to reconnect. He cannot, and they do not. They hang limply and lonely.

“Try a chain.”

“I’ll consider it, sir.”

When he leaves, Finnian quickly does some math. Seventy.

At the back door there’s a whiteboard. He writes on it. Seventy. Seventy more days. Seventy more days until he submits his two weeks notice and requests a transfer. Each day he would lower it by one.

“I can bear it,” Finnian says to himself.

The room’s hue shifts from red to purple. He has finished cleaning. Whoever needs a prepped dog can do it themselves; he is putting them back into the cages. But as he steps outside, the humid violence of summer tears into him. And in the distance, betrayers—those who have committed an act harsher than the sun. Some are in the shade of scattered trees, some doze their way back inside, but in the distance, a few escapees are running to freedom.

The dogs have broken free.