Dogs

Holly White

1—

You wrote to me on gchat:
it was acknowledged that one would entail the fall of the other
and the choice was made
what is the status now
one has been wiped out by the choice and the other one finished?
can you revert to pre-choice moment and choose the other?
i don’t think it is possible

A week later you texted me: Want to have breakfast with me?
Me: Not today, I’m sorry
You: I think dogs are going to be a huge problem after the apocalypse, can’t stop thinking about it.

2—

The beach was deserted and getting dark and it was going to rain soon. There was a pack of sleeping dogs nearby. A local man had put out three shishas and three tables and the two of us sat down and shared a shisha. We had chosen apple flavour. We faced the sea but I kept an eye on the pack of dogs.
Then we walked down the beach and came to a makeshift restaurant on the sand. It was dark now so we couldn’t see the dogs anymore but we knew they were there so I held a stick in my hand. We sat down at the restaurant and there were candles and I ate chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was made of something weird, it wasn’t real cake.

3—

We all lived in tents arranged around a blacksmithing fire. There was a geodesic dome made of plastic tubes further up the hill and a woman who only ate raw food and some stone ovens used for baking bread. There was a dog owned by the man who lived down the valley from us. I never saw him but everyone said the man was English and had a knife.
One night our group was walking up the path to our camp and the dog ran at us and barked and it bit someone and wouldn’t let go. The person couldn’t get the dog off their hand and they shouted at the rest of us to run ahead, so we did.
Every night after that night we carried sticks and shouted into the pitch black as we walked home, just in case.
A week later we went to a full moon party at the meeting house at the bottom of the valley. I left a bowl of pasta in my tent. I got back in the morning and my tent had been torn apart and the pasta was missing. Everyone asked if I was okay sleeping there alone and I said I was.

4—

The alleyways were narrow and the town was empty of people and it was dawn. There was a display of socks in the window of a shop that was shut. We ran through the streets and came around a corner and suddenly there was a pack of dogs standing still and staring at us. They started barking all at once. We turned around as fast as we could, bumping into each other and screaming but also laughing. We ran in the opposite direction until we were out of the town and running through the desert.

Holly White is an artist living and working in London, www.holly-white.com