Red

Most dogs don’t read.

Or I assume so, since I have yet to meet another that can. You could say that it makes me special, but on the other paw, there are also plenty of humans that can’t read. Or don’t bother to do so, which is basically the same thing. I haven’t the slightest idea why anyone would give up the opportunity, but many seem to think that there’s nothing less entertaining than looking at a bunch of sheets of paper bound together and coated with ink… but I digress.

I seem to have begun somewhere in the middle, so let’s backtrack to the beginning. My name is Red. I’d like to say that’s because my master was an avid reader and thought it would be amusing to have a dog named Red for the sake of the book— “My Name is Red”, by Orhan Pamuk— but my master was only a first grader when she named me, and I received the name for nothing more than my Rhodesian red fur. More of a glorified yellow-orange, really, thanks to my labrador side.

Anyhow, as I said, my master— Corinne— was about six years old when she got me, and I myself was roughly the same age. Well, really I was around six months old, but it evens out to about the same when accounting for the difference in human and dog development.

Corrine was always bringing home little yellow packets of paper that they called “books”; they never would have interested me, except perhaps as something to tear into pieces as I was wont to do, but one day I saw a picture of a dog inside one and I was intrigued. I looked inside the book, but the things I saw meant nothing to me.

The book didn’t last long after that, I’m afraid, but from then on I began to be curious about these paper book things, and I would accompany Corinne as she sat with her mother, transforming the meaningless symbols into images using her voice. Well, I figured I knew magic when I saw it, so I started paying more attention to and copying the things they did and said. Eventually, something clicked and I could make the magic work myself.

From then on, I read all the material that I could get my paws on. Which mostly limited me to the simple things that Corinne brought home and the newspapers that I found on the porch; they never let me near library books with the number of papers I destroyed while learning how to turn pages with my clumsy feet. I loved it all, though, from political debates to vocabulary lists.

I especially enjoyed the stories I discovered, so much so that I scarcely remembered that I was a dog until it came to my later life. Our family seemed to be having problems, and Corinne went to school less and less. Finally, she stopped bringing books home altogether.

At first I was distraught. No more stories? Newspaper articles were all good and well, but compared to the adventures I’d been getting into lately, they just weren’t enough. As time went on, though, I think I began to understand how wonderful it could be to just be me, not a character in some fantastic story, but just Red, the Rhodesian ridge-lab. Corinne would take me on walks after school, and let me sleep on her bed at night. She whispered things to me about her life, and I learned how to comfort her when no one else was there for her. I thought that life was good.

But things continued to change. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Corinne just kept getting more and more sad, while her parents became more and more tense around each other. The familial peace from our childhoods was gone, and the next thing I knew, Corinne and her mother were gone too.

I panicked at first, when it took her longer than a week to come back— she’d never been gone for longer than that, and she almost always told me before she went anywhere. She did come back, eventually, but not for very long. It was easy to tell that things were very, very wrong. Corinne visited me and her father occasionally, but my life didn’t feel worth living without her, and I quickly fell back into the habit of disappearing into whatever reading material I could get.

Today, things changed again.

Corinne visited us for the last time— or so I believe, because she said nothing, not to me or anyone else, only hugged me tightly until she and her mother left. She smelled so strongly of sadness and exhaustion, unrest and something I don’t have a word for. She smelled like finality, like an ending. I wanted to hear what her mother was saying to her father, but I wasn’t going to leave Corinne when she smelled like that.

Now she is gone, and I have a dreadful sensation that something terrible is going to happen. Corinne needs something, badly, something that I don’t know if a dog can give her— I don’t even know what it is.

But I’ll die before that stops me from trying.

Author Notes: This is a story that I discovered in my Google Drive once upon a time. I didn't (and still don't) remember writing it, but it was definitely my writing style and it looked like it was for some kind of assignment. It was actually pretty decent, and I was intrigued, so I decided to redo it a little and leave the ending more open so that I can potentially continue it. Please leave reviews!

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