CONCISENESS, PROOFREADING, DOCUMENTATION


Jaws

My earliest memories are of the cold.  I remember my birth, my first breaths of life being frigid pulls of air that froze my throat and iced my lungs over.  I remember my soaking-wet hair standing on end.  I remember the deafness and darkness of the world.  I remember whimpering as I clambered over my struggling littermates.  I remember finally nuzzling up next to my mother, only to feel the warmth of her now-lifeless body quickly melt away.

My world continued to be cold, black, and mute.  My brothers and sisters tried to huddle together to stay warm.  Some of them died.  I knew this because I could feel their frozen, unresponsive bodies under my paws.

We were all starving.  Occasionally something would pick us up and force-feed us milk. But it tasted wrong, like it was missing something; it lacked the warmth of a mother’s milk.

Once I woke up and saw something besides black.  I was scared at first, but the different shades of grey I was now seeing became clearer every day.  My surviving littermates and I were living in a tiny crate, its wooden bars giving us no protection from the elements.  Likewise, the noiselessness of my world gave way to sounds—mostly barks and yelps from the dozens of other cages scattered throughout the yard.  I began to smell as well, but the waste covering the floor of our “home” clouded out any other scents.

I remember seeing the man for the first time.  His face was cruel and filled with anger.  He loved to slap me around in the crate.  The burn from the blows he struck was made worse by the sting of the cold.  Many times I wanted to give up, to lie down and close my eyes, but I was afraid of letting go.  I’d seen what happened to those of us who became too weak.

One of my sisters collapsed one day.  She lay on her side, rapidly panting with her tongue lolled to the side, helplessly lapping up filth from the floor.  The man saw her and grabbed her from the crate.  He threw her into the middle of the yard, where two big dogs were waiting.  I watched them tear her apart.  She was too tired to make a sound.

That’s how most of my littermates went, death by the yard.  The lucky ones managed to succumb to the cold before the man could spot them.  Pretty soon I was the only one left.  I was alone in my crate.  Without my brothers’ and sisters’ warmth, the never-ending frost became unbearable.  I began shivering uncontrollably and my hair started to freeze at the roots.  But my body felt strangely warm.  I knew my time was coming soon.

It wasn’t so.  I awoke to the man pinching my scruff.  He forcefully lifted me out of the crate, my first time to ever leave its confines.  I was confused and terrified.  I squirmed and he hit me so I stopped.  He took me into a bright room.  Still filled with fear, I couldn’t help but notice how warm it was.  Little did I know that what was to come would be worse than any type of cold.

The man threw me into the middle of the room.  There was another dog, smaller than me.  He was chained to the ground.  He reminded me of the littermates I once had.  As weak as I was, I was hungry too.  The man hit me and started yelling.  I understood.  I walked over to the pup and looked in his eyes.  He was dying.  He was scared, just like me.  But I knew that there was only one way this would end.  I sank my fangs into his neck and wrung his head back and forth.  Just like my sister, he didn’t even manage a whimper.  This was my first taste of blood.  Once he stopped struggling I began to feed.  The man grabbed me and pulled me off.  He made me look him in the eyes.  He had a look of satisfaction on his face.  I heard him say, “good job, Jaws.”

The next period of my life is a blur, but there were one constant: the man was always there.  He beat me and yelled at me, but I always did what I was told.  I wanted to please him, even if I was doing so out of fear.  Nonetheless, I hated the things I did. 

After my first kill, the man put a heavy collar on my neck.  It hurt to even hold my head off the ground.  It never came off.  Fear was the only thing that made me bear its weight.  When I slept in the cold, the collar would freeze and tighten around my neck.  But I was used to the cold now.  Besides, I started to spend most of my time in the room.

The man made me do many things.  They were all hard.  I tasted blood constantly, both my own and that of others.  I ran with my collar on until I was dragging my head along the floor.  The man would kick me until I got back up.  Oftentimes he would tie another dog and me to a ring.  I had to chase it in circles until it gave up.  This was how I fed myself.

As the weeks went on I realized that I was becoming strong.  I forgot what it was like to not feel pain.  I came to ignore it.  The man would stick needles in me filled with a white liquid.  It made me feel fast and invincible.  I became great at killing.

One day another man came to the room with a dog.  He was bigger than me.  I could tell that he had gone through the same torture I’d had to endure.  He growled and snapped at me as his man held him back.  A challenger.  I hated him.  I felt the familiar prick of the needle.  Then my collar was taken off.  I was surprised, but I welcomed the freedom from its weight.

The other dog came barreling at me, teeth barred and eyes filled with rage.  He crashed into me and we tumbled along the dirt floor of the room.  I kicked against his stomach with my claws, drawing blood.  He bit into my skull, but I hardly felt it.  I quickly ripped my head free from his jaws, surprising him.  He hesitated.  I pounced.  I put him on his back, my front claws digging into his neck while my haunches kicked furiously into his lower belly and groin.  I sank my jaws into his eye.  I came back down, this time ripping at his snout.  He whimpered and yelped and began to weaken.  Then I tore his neck out.  The man pulled me off while my opponent bled out on the floor.  I wanted more.  But the man forced me down, and I gave in.  The other man went to his dog and began yelling and kicking it.  He stopped twitching soon after.  My man gave me a steak for my first win.

I fought many other dogs and won every time.  Every contest was vicious and violent.  I earned my fair share of wounds, a chipped tooth here, a broken claw there.  In between fights I stayed chained to my crate, my collar rubbing my neck raw, the cold unrelenting and biting.  This was my world.  I knew no other way of life.  I began to realize that just as the man was keeping me caged, so was I holding myself hostage.  I was killing not only because the man made me, but also because I feared what would happen if I fought back.  It would be years before I experienced freedom, both from the man and from myself.

I was half-asleep in my crate one day, laying in that state of delirium that was the closest thing I got to rest.  My ears perked up when I heard the man shouting.  He wasn’t shouting at me, strange.  There were several loud pops, and then I saw the man stumble back into the yard.  More pops and the man crumpled to the ground.  Dark liquid slowly seeped out from under him.  I knew what it was.  I didn’t know what to think.  A man wearing dark clothes came walked over to the dead man, and inspected him.  Then more men wearing dark entered the yard.  They began to put collars around the other dogs.  One came over to me and did the same.  I resisted, snapping and biting at the hand that was trying to take me.  I was yanked out of my crate and forced to the ground while something was placed over my snout.  They led me to some type of machine with dogs in crates inside.  I was pushed into an empty crate.  I knew, "He was going to take [me] to the pound, a place all dogs know about in their hearts" (894).  The men in dark took me that day.

I sat in a dark cage for hours.  Then a door opened and light came rushing in.  It blinded me.  I was led out into a big yard and inside a room.  A man in black was talking to a woman.  Her voice made me feel calm.  When she took my leash I didn’t fight back.  She stroked my head and back and looked at my scars.  She slowly slipped off the covering on my mouth.  I cautiously followed her to another cage, but this was bigger than any I’d ever seen.  There was a bowl of food and a bowl of water inside.  She unclipped my leash and looked into my eyes.  She looked sad.  Then she walked away and I ate and drank and slept.

I’ve now been in this place for almost a year.  There are other dogs and we don’t get along.  We bark and snarl at each other, but are never given the chance to fight.  I welcome the reprieve.  Sometimes people come and walk me around the yard.  It’s a nice place.  There are hills to climb and grass to run in.  Exploring is one of my favorite things.  I smell places where other dogs leave their marks, taking in what they have to say.  Their stories are like mine.  When the walks end I go back to my cage.  I don’t like being inside, but it’s much better than being yelled at and hit all the time.  Gradually I’m starting to see that I don’t need to fear anymore.  This makes me happy.

Today a young man came in.  I’d never seen him before but his face was soft and his voice calm.  I liked him.  As he looked into my eyes from outside my cage I jumped up and reached for him through the bars.  He smiled and got a leash and we went on a long walk.  We explored everywhere, and when I finally got tired he scratched my ears.  I nuzzled up next to him and we sat there for a while.  For the first time in my life, my fear was totally gone.  I felt free.  I hope I see him again some day.

Saying goodbye to Jaws was strangely sad for me.  Looking at him through the gaps in his chain-link cage, I couldn't help but think that, "To him [Jaws], the world is bars, 100,000 bars, and behind the bars, nothing" (905).  Indeed, though I'd only known him for an hour or two, I felt an eerie connection with him.  As we, "...ran and never got tired, all day long" (900) and sat together in that field several Sundays ago, I couldn't help but notice how plain and grey everything about the day seemed.  I’d woken up early and never fully recovered from the morning’s grogginess, leaving my head in a greyish-feeling cloud.  I’d driven over to the Taylor shelter in a grey car, under a grey sky, wearing a grey shirt and grey shoes.  The gravel parking lot we pulled into was grey, the Taylor Shelter buildings were grey, the tombstones of the graveyard we walked through were grey, and most importantly, Jaws was grey.  I suddenly felt as though I were seeing the world through Jaws’ eyes, those of a weathered fighting dog.  I feel that Jaws' and my connection is essentially built on this color association.  Indeed, I certainly connect the cold, feelings of hopelessness and bleakness, and death with the color grey, all themes of Jaws’ tortured past.  It also doesn’t hurt that Jaws can only see in different shades of grey considering that he, just like every other dog, is colorblind.

Word Count:

w/quotes: 2094
w/out quotes: 2065