I woke up early Saturday morning drenched in sweat and near delirium. On repeat, all night long, I’d dreamt that the front door was opening up to all manner of strangers. They dropped their large skulls in front of my face; their eyes white circles of light. They examined me. Theirs were the distorted faces of dream people; all hallowed eyes, and droopy melting noses. I wanted to talk to them, to move to shake their hands, but my dream had forced me into a catatonic state. I only knew I was truly awake when I was able to sit up and shake the dizziness from my skull.

The front porch was empty, but the Spam had been eaten up and the water drank; or, it dried up in the sunshine. Even at seven in the morning, wavy lines floated above broken blacktop, and it got hotter with every hour that passed. I put out the last of the Spam and more water in hopes that my furry visitor would return. I kept thinking a dog is the perfect cure for loneliness, but he didn’t show himself and he wasn’t in the woods because I went near them and called for him.

I spent the first half of the morning climbing over the rusted out Chevy. I pretended I was a boy and that the Husky was my dog, and that he was trained to rustle grub in the woods. At noon, I ate Top Ramen and spooned my leftovers over the Spam. All day I kept my eyes wide hoping he would return, but he was there all along. Watching me from inside the barn. One of the doors stayed wedged open on account of a bad hinge. He lay in there, between the two doors. He didn’t have rabies. I know a dog with rabies. He’d have foam sticking to the sides of his snout, but he didn’t. He was just a dog, fearful of bigger people and just aching to take a bite out of a smaller one, just to show he could. He crept out, staying low to the ground. I met his eyes and the fur on his back shot straight up. There was a mean look in his eye, and his irises grew smaller as his bodied hunkered lower to the ground. His irises shrunk until there was just white and nothing more. It was then that I start second guessing whether I wanted a dog or not.

The Husky reared from his crouched position. His thin, black lips pulled gaunt in an elongated snarl that showed glistening sharp teeth. His face squished up, making his eyes look like two crescent moons. Before I could turn to run, he leapt up and knocked me backward. It lasted only a moment, and then he was gone; he rushed back toward the woods. I lay there under a blazing sun clutching my right arm.

It doesn’t hurt, I thought, before drifting off.

Blood lay in streaks around me like a giant Spirograph, all thin red lines and splashes. Its stickiness covered my face. Despite the sun beating into my eyes, I blacked out completely.

I awoke to find the bitter sun had left me blistered and burned. My eyes shot to the big barn, but under the glaring sunlight I couldn’t tell if the Husky waited there. The pain in my right arm radiated throughout my body, from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. My face stuck to the coagulated blood that dried up on the gravel. It stung to peel myself away from the stones and dirt. It took a great effort to pull myself into a fetal position, and pull my body around and off my right arm. I covered the wound with my left hand and began to cry. I couldn’t see the bite because there was blood in my eyes. I touched it, feeling around to see how bad it was. I fingered six puncture wounds and a gash about a half inch thick. My left hand returned covered in fresh blood.

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I felt woozier than the time I drank two Old Milwaukees in the barn with Charley. I had to pee, but I knew I could hold it if I could just get to the house. I rolled to my belly, and fought through the pain until I was kneeling in the gravel, my head toward the sun for the first time in what must have been hours. For a single moment, I felt the liberation of relief, like a battle-weary soldier steps from his basecamp; until, waves of nausea cascaded down my body and I lost control, flopping about in rubble like a fish out of water. I fought to keep myself from passing out again. I wiped the blood away, and willed my eyes to stay focused on my white two-story house with the back porch so small it looked about a million miles away.

I looked all around me for the Husky, afraid that he may come back and nip my throat, finish me off. I used my one good arm to push myself off the ground again. My right arm swung forward rather aggressively, as though it was no longer my arm to control. The bite had given my arm a will of its own, but unfortunately its pain was a never-ending, intense throb that I could feel, a pain surely all mine, and that only worsened when it swung underneath me. Despite wanting to collapse a second time, I pulled myself into a crawling position. The wound was bleeding fast and heavy, looking like spilt raspberry preserves. Despite every effort to stay in a crawling position, I fell hard, but stifled my screams lest the dog return. I lie in the dirt and gravel wincing in silent agony. More than the pain in my arm, I feared that dog. I feared it would come back to bite me again, especially if it knew I wasn’t strong enough to fight it.

I crawled and collapsed many times on my journey back to the house. I took two involuntary naps before I found myself at the back door finally reaching up for the handle. My blood drenched the linoleum in a grotesque trail of blood to the yellow polyester curtains covering the window above our kitchen sink. They hadn’t been taken down for washing in some time, so they were caked in a layer of dust and grime. I did my best to shake clean what I could from the one I’d yanked down. It wasn’t clean, but it was the only fabric I had to wrap around my wound. There was rock dust covering my entire body, but I couldn’t see the bite to be certain what exactly had made its way in through the holes in my body.

The dining room floor made my bed for the night, and I fell asleep sobbing and praying for God to ease my pain. I wished for the strength to get off the floor; to be magically whisked away to the upstairs bathroom where I could take a piss and wash my body. I wished for Charley and my mom to return, but I got no answer and no strength filled my failing body. Instead, I fell asleep in a pool of blood and urine that tormented my nostrils even in deep sleep.