The Stray Mutt

I was born in a box car, color-blind, pigeon toed, pock-marked. Twisted figure, broken heart they'd fixed up with monkey parts.

[thestraymutt]

A curious thing, to see your reflection. Something about seeing yourself reflected back at you as others perceive draws many of us in, even for a moment. Some even look for it, anxiously, eagerly, as they pass by the windows and shops along the street. They don’t set out that day, with the goal in mind, but when they know the mirror is coming, they can’t help but look. So how transfixing would it be, then, to see yourself not in a mirror, a silent image trapped to follow your movements, but in a living thing? An independent, autonomous, living and breathing creature. Not a clone, but still a copy of you, and someone else. Such was the mesmerizing effect the thief had as he stared at the little infant, no bigger than his head, weighing only a fraction of even that. Her eyes—His eyes—occasionally blinked open and stared at him for a moments before the closed again. Never comprehending, but certainly intelligent.

His lips pursed, and his head cocked. A pitiful thing, a helpless and weak, soft and small creature that had no hope of survival should anyone around it decide to leave it. Her. Not it. The notion, though, brought many questions about his own infancy to mind. Questions he’d rarely ever dared go near, and never entertain. The streets had raised him since he could remember, but what about the years before? No one cared for a newborn only to usher them out when they were gangly little toddlers. That was where the disturbing questions stemmed. Who, why, how, where? He had a notion, instinct from his upbringing perhaps, that he should replace them back into the corner of his mind he got them from, lest he find the answer. The answer was always worse than the question itself for streetrats like him.

The infant moved, head lolling from one side to the other. Perhaps the future was where he ought to look. But that voice, that worried, nagging voice that told him of everyone’s ill-intent was roused when that happened. The world was a cruel place for someone who could defend themselves. He’d rather not let his imagination wonder what it could do to someone who couldn’t. The present seemed to be the safest place to be for now. Sitting in the hospital, staring at the infant through the plastic bubble that housed at her. Each movement, infrequent as they were, only enraptured him all the more as he caught a glimpse of her eyes—His eyes. A curious thing, to see your reflection.

@privatetrashqueen

[privatetrashqueen]

When I was a child, I heard voices Some would sing and some would scream You’ll soon find you have few choices I learned the voices died with me When I was a child, I’d sit for hours Staring into open flames Something in it had a power Could barely tear my eyes away All you have is your fire And the place you need to reach Don’t you ever tame your demons But always keep them on a leash When I was 16, my senses fooled me Thought gasoline was on my clothes I knew that something would always rule me I knew this scent was mine alone When I was a man, I thought it ended When I knew love’s perfect ache But my peace has always depended On all the ashes in my wake All you have is your fire And the place you need to reach Don’t you ever tame your demons But always keep them on a leash

– Arsonists Lullaby (Butch Clancy Remix) | Hozier

[thestraymutt]

Those sweet, metallic, harmonious clicks filled his head, and brought with them a small measure of comfort. The smell of oil and gunpowder, brass and iron. It steeled him for trouble ahead, even if it would be his eventual doom. He would die as he had lived in this world: Violently, with a gun in his hand, and a bone to pick with the world for some great wrong it had done him just by letting him be born.  One...Two... Each shell that dropped from its snug chamber and fell still, dead to the world, but still primed to kill. The soft, silken desert sand at his feet took each one greedily, and left only the dull sheen of the brass to eek out from between the grains. The howling wind whipped mists and clouds of it around him, but despite the near-deafening noise, he took none of it in. He was in a bubble, a small piece of the world where he felt he could control the swirling chaos he so often fed on. Let the world burn. In here, in his head, he would be king, if only for a moment. Three...Four... And then he was ready. A process he’d done a thousand times, an old habit that haunted him from his youth on the streets, where the next moment’s hesitation might bring starvation. It gave him conviction, the single-minded, bull-headed desire to pull the trigger, to push on and accomplish whatever goal needed to be done. It wasn’t just about street-politics or maneuvering for a better place in the hierarchy. It was survival.  Five...Six. He snapped the cylinder shut, and tucked his piece away, back into its holster. A do-or-die moment, perhaps literally. But that was life, wasn’t it? “One hour, motherfucker.” @privatetrashqueen @zaaraskaldvarg

[thestraymutt]

[thestraymutt]

The tavern lay nearly empty and quite, and the thief-turned-mercenary stood watch over it all. Arms crossed over his chest, an indignant scowl, his neutral expression, sat over his scarred features. Two patrons by the bar were all that remained of the night's crowd, and both were fixated on him. Two women, both with red hair, but near opposite each other. One in armor, with cropped hair and a soldier's standing; the other with longer mane and flowing, purple dress. "So you just stand here?" Asked the soldier.  "Yep." He replied. "And nothing else?"  "Not unless I have to. " "Do you enjoy this work?" The noble interjected. "Not really." His answer quirked the woman's brow, as if the thought of doing work she loathed was a foreign concept. "Then why do you do it? There are better ways for coin, surely." That brought a flash to his mind, a memory of life on the streets and the consequences it brought; a dark crypt, illuminated only by the flash of pain behind his eyes; an anger never before felt, a kind of impotent rage quelled only by driving his thorn deeper into her side; of quiet moments in the night, huddled together, not for warmth but still a need; of fires started that drove them apart and together; of arguments that circled the same topic again and again; of love, and loss, matrimony and betrayal at her hand; of every moment of time, every drop of blood and sweat that he'd fed to that bottomless pit; of a quite grave, forever to sit as a marker for a child he'd never know. All this flashed before his mind in the briefest of moments, one blink of his eye to the next. His shoulder rolled in a half-hearted shrug to mask the fires behind his eye. For once, he was grateful he only had one. "I just do." The reply was flat as any he'd given that night, but the depth behind it was felt only by himself.

[thestraymutt]