Cloud

Ever since I was 8 years old my dream was to have my own pet dog. I pestered my parents about it constantly. Dogs were the greatest thing in the world to me. After three years of trying to make every christmas and birthday the one where I got my dog, they finally caved. It was my mom who got to pick, and she wanted a little white maltese. Not exactly the hell hound I always imagined but I loved the little guy. I named him Cloud, after Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 and the fact that he was white.

He was a good dog too. My mom loved dressing him up and tying pink ribbons in his hair. He was always well behaved and did what he was told. Until one day he ran out the door and wouldn't come back. My mom yelled and yelled until my dad brought me outside to look for him.

We lived in a rural area. We didn't own a farm but we were surrounded by farms and forests, which made looking for a little white dog difficult. And easy to give up on too, for multiple grim reasons my dad came up with.

I was ready to accept it and go back home when suddenly we heard a familiar bark from behind someone else's property. Following the barks led us up the side of our neighbors split-rail fence and into a patch of forest behind it. As we got closer and closer to Cloud, our trail became less and less of a trail. Eventually we had to step on tree roots just to stay out of the mud.

As the canopy started to clear we heard the sound of a cow mooing. Cloud's barking could penetrate the vacuum of space and budge satelites out of position, but the cow in all it's might was muffled by the trees. "Great, he's harassing someone's livestock" my dad said. "I'm surprised that thing's not dead yet."

We brushed the last tangle of branches aside and entered a clearing. It wasn't somebody's farm, it was the middle of nowhere and a cow was sunk up to it's knees in the mud. Then we noticed Cloud behind it.

The dog had eaten all the meat off of the cow's hind leg and was gnawing on the bone, stopping just to growl and bark and enjoy it's supremacy before going back again. I was stunned and my instinct to look away didn't kick in until I saw him pluck out a nerve like it was an ingrown hair.

My dad grabbed a 4x4 out of the ground, from when this area used to be fenced off, and beat Cloud to death. On the final wack the rotten wood fell apart leaving it pointed, which my dad stabbed down into Cloud's ribs.

"He stepped in a bear trap ok? That's what we're going to tell her."

Clouds body was so mangled and bloodsoaked that the only way to recognize him was by the pink ribbons. The blood ran right off them.

The next day I returned to the mud patch with an empty 24 pack beer box. Mom was pretty beat up about Cloud's "accident" so I thought giving him a closed casket funeral would make us both feel better. When I got there, Cloud's body was gone but the cow was still there. I left it behind.