Puppy {ONE SHOT}

Puppy

A lone puppy wanders around a deserted street. It is lost. It has lost it's sense of direction and trudges towards the closest thing that resembles home. A restaurant. It can smell the meatballs that were on special for the day.

The puppy rests in front of the restaurant waiting for someone to take notice of it. It rests it's muzzle on it's paws and waits. It waits patiently. Patiently hoping to be seen and soon fed. Maybe someone might even take it home or somewhere were it will be found. It waits and waits. It waits for the doors to open, but they don't.

What the puppy doesn't know is that the restaurant is closed. It has been closed since 8:30pm. The owner's son is having dinner with his girlfriend. Besides them couple, there is no one in the restaurant.

The puppy waits to be found and eventually the couple walks out of the restaurant hand in hand to finish off their date. It's ears prick up at the sound of the back door opening. The puppy trudges to the back to meet the couple as they enter their car.

It runs to the woman and paws at her dress. She looks down in shock. She surpresses a scream as the puppy runs around her for attention.

"What do you want?" She asks it as she bends down to get a better look at it in the moonlight. "Are you lost?"

The puppy nods and lets out a small bark.

The woman turns to her boyfriend who nods his head. She leads the puppy into the car and sits in the passenger seat. The puppy sits in the back seat in rising anticipation.

"What do you want to do with it?" The man asks his girlfriend. "We don't have enough room at my house."

The woman looks back at the puppy. She sighs.

"I don't know," She says. "I can't keep pets at my house either."

"It has to be the dump then," The man tells her. "That way someone might find it and adopt it or something."

The woman sighs again. "I guess so" She mutters not completely agreeing to it.

The man turns to her. He rests his hand on hers and he drives with one hand.

"Hey, sweetie, I would keep it if I could, but you know I can't." He turns to her for a brief second before looking back at the road. "You know what my father's like,"

The woman caresses her boyfriend's hand. She gives him a small smile. "I know, honey, I just wish there was another way."

The puppy lets out a little bark and the woman frowns again.

The man stops at the dump and walks to the back door of his car to open the door. His girlfriend walks out and takes a last look at the puppy.

"Goodbye," She says as her boyfriend leads the puppy into the building.

Just as they are about to enter, the puppy is overwhelmed with fear and it barks furiously. It pulls out of the man's grasp and runs away. It runs and runs without looking back.

"Oh no..." The woman says as she watches the small creature running away.

The puppy runs and runs until it comes to an alleyway much more gloomier than the last. It walks through a street reaking of blood and alcohol. Strong odours push up it's nostrils as it tries to find food.

It searches through rubbish bins and scraps on the floor. It sniffs between holes on the ground and bottles lying around the floor. It stops at a woman sitting by her house peeling potatoes. She looks up and gives the puppy a brief second of attention and then continues with her peeling.

The puppy gives her a small bark to regain the attention. She sighs and throws a piece of raw sausage at it. The puppy barks in delight and devours the sausage with pleasure. It barks in thanks and waits for more, but she doesn't give anymore. She gathers her equipment and goes inside.

The puppy waits for her to come back and only after a couple of hours does someone actually step out. It's the woman's son. The son throws a piece of potato at the puppy and watches as the puppy eats it hungrily.

"Go away now," The boy says. "My dad doesn't like dogs."

The puppy understanding that there is no more food, leaves for shelter. It finds an old carboard box and makes a make-shift home inside it. It rests it's muzzle down just as the rain begins to pour down. Luckily for the puppy, the box is hard enough to resist the rain and the puppy remains dry through the down pour.

As the rain dies down, the sun rises lazily over the large city. The puppy opens it's eyes slowly and observes it's surroundings. It walks to a random house for breakfast.

A couple of hours later, some left over bacon is thrown out and the puppy consumes it with an overwhelming hunger. It licks the ground where the bacon was thrown and then walks away.

It wanders around the city for hours. It searches for a way home, but does not find it, just like the day before. It finds a place to rest for lunch and barks happily as a chef throws left over bread from the day before.

Resuming its search, it manages to find other stray dogs. It tries to ask for directions to a home with green grass and a warm kitchen. The dogs laugh at the puppy. The puppy tries to show his collar in case it might help, but none of them will look at it. They just laugh and then kick him out with violent and agressive barking.

Feeling exhausted and lonely, the puppy wanders to an abandoned alleyway. It sleeps there until the sun has dropped down and no more vicious dogs are laying around the corner. They have all either been collected for the dump or found a shelter to sleep in for the night.

With great effort, the puppy walks around for food to suffice for the night. It hears a swarm of people talking, arguing maybe, in a corner of the city. When it nears the people, it hears loud yelling and screaming. It makes the puppy feel uncomfortable and the puppy avoids the alley.

Unfortunately, as the puppy is walking away, a stray bullet injects itself in the puppy's ribs. The puppy lets out a low growl as it tries to understand what is going on.

It walks to a wall and rests it's tiny body against it, trying to balance itself. Blood oozes out on its side. The puppy paws at its blood and watches as the world spins around it. The cold blood leaves a stingy and metallic smell inside the puppy's nose.

The puppy takes a last attempt at finshing its journey. It wanders into a street that has a small familiarity to it. The puppy is unaware that it is only three blocks away from home.

There are posters hung up on trees and poles. Posters informing the public of a missing black puppy. The puppy rests against a tree with a poster with a picture of him on it and watches as the crimson blood smudges against the tree. It lets out a small bark as the air slowly dissapears from it.

The puppy lays on the floor as the pain becomes unbearable. The world starts to become dark and it can no longer hear nor smell well. As the last breath is taken away from it, it lets out a loud and shattering bark.

There the puppy died, only meters away from home.