The day your dog dies you cry until your eyes smart and show a puffy red and your throat tingles and your voice rusts and then you fall sick. Even after these you keep on crying. Mucus crawling into your mouth. Your friend Amanda tries to console you but you are too mad to be consoled. When she tells you it is just a dog stop worrying yourself you can always get another one you get even madder and rave at her. Shrill yells. Blake is not just any dog Amanda. He is different. Oh God you will never understand. More tears stream forth. Agony pounds hard against your chest. You curse at the car that had run over Blake. You curse at the neighbor too and chase him out. You rue your giving Blake to that careless neighbor who had pleasurably ruffled his fluffy down and had promised to bring him back after a walk. A walk indeed. A walk to meet with death. Fucking careless. Fucking stupid neighbor. You hope he dies too and rots in hell.
The driver rushes into your flat as well and pleads with you. He says it was an accident. He sincerely requests your forgiveness. He offers you a certain sum of money. But this only wrings more tears from your burning eyes. You scream at him and strike at him and push him out and fling things at him because he has refused to leave with such indecent haste. He is deeply sorry. Please forgive him. A torchlight and a cellphone and a toothbrush and a TV remote and a sanitary pad. You fling all at him. Do you think your money can bring back my Blake? I found him dying by a dumpsite and nursed him back to life. You killed the one thing that gave me a reason to live in this shitty world. Go away. Your money can’t do anything. Get out of here. Leave right now you murderer. But the man lingers at the door. He stays there a while longer. Hands clasped in a glum attitude of prayer. Then he leaves. Amanda looks at you and hisses with disdain and says you are being childish and mocks you for spurning the money. She says that money can get you two or even three Blakes. Stop being irrational.
She calls this irrational but you call it grief. A heartfelt grief.
Left alone now memories of Blake churn your mind with a searing poignancy. You spend three days adrift in a pool of tears. Later you hire someone who helps you bank the earth and inhume him. As you watch the mound grow and grow you hope there exists an afterlife where the likes of him ensconce into the warmth of perpetual rest. Your beloved, irreplaceable Blake.
