Many of my stories, originate in memories and events in my life. All contain a combination of real and fictional characters with names changed as appropriate to protect the 'guilty.' They are memoirs spiced with a kinky imagination.
I hope you will enjoy my stories and comment on what you liked and perhaps didn't like to help me improve.
THE BIG BROWN DOG
Many months later Matt stood astride his 1965 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle looking at the long stretch of black asphalt ahead. It was late in the day and he was three miles beyond the highway mile marker where she said he should look for the sign and the turn.
All he could see ahead, as he had all afternoon, was the long ribbon of highway dotted by water pool mirages. He never did reach any of that water but then he was sure they were only optical illusions caused by the heat radiating off the pavement. Surprisingly the big dog named Kelly that recently entered his life gave him a reason to live, something to give, but as he stood on the highway looking at the water mirages in the distance he wondered for the first time if Kelly was even real.
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For months he awoke every night to a dream of the crash, to the sound of the impact and his daughters behind him screaming. He was the pilot of their new small plane when it lost power and crashed into the Louisiana swamp. The flight to New Orleans was to be the beginning of a vacation they had planned for a long time. Instead it was the end of their time together and he was the only survivor.
Of course he blamed himself for the accident and after he was physically healed he sold the business he and his wife had worked for years to build. He then worked for others, always in temporary jobs, sometimes helping people build their own businesses and now at sixty-four he was working as a volunteer at an animal rescue center in New Orleans. His doctors told him that this job would be "good therapy". He had to admit that it was the most meaningful work he had since the accident. Sally's was started by a woman named Cara to help animals that were abandoned or lost and later rescued in the great storm and the floods that followed. Sally's was named after Cara's beloved Golden Retriever.
The big brown dog was near death when found in an abandoned house near the waterfront. It had no collar, micro-chip, or other identification. After an initial examination the vets decided it would be best to get the dog clean and dry, keep it warm and comfortable, and start intravenous hydration. If the big dog recovered enough they would attempt more extensive examination and decide its future. In the first bath the rescue center staff discovered that the dog was not brown at all but tan and might with another bath or two even be white.
The dog was at Sally's only three days when Matt arrived to take an "animal volunteer" for a walk. Now, of course, he was the volunteer at the center but ever since his doctors recommended that he work at Sally's he thought of each animal he walked or cared for as his personal "animal volunteer," after all it was good therapy for both of them wasn't it?
On no particular day, he was asked to check on the big brown dog's hydration, something he had only recently been trained to do. When he sat next to the dog's kennel he started talking to it in a soft voice and got no reaction at all. He looked, as was his habit, at the front of the kennel for a name tag, all the while talking to the animal. He didn't know that the dog had no identification when found and that no one had yet given it a temporary name as they usually did with unidentified rescue animals.
After he changed the IV hydration bag, he opened the kennel door all the way so he could sit directly in front of it to better talk to and be seen by the dog. He introduced himself again and continued to talk to the dog as though she were a person and could understand. Matt believed, of course, that dogs understand, if not words, then feelings and intentions. He stayed with the dog for some time and tried name after name thinking he could connect with the dog if he could only guess its name.
Cara entered the area and heard him talking to the dog. She approached and sat next to him on the cold cement floor at the entrance to the kennel. They talked to the dog and of course to each other. This was the first time they had any real chance to get to know each other. The following day Cara saw him arrive and took a break to accompany him as he went about his "animal volunteer" rounds. They actually had a chance to talk about his "animal volunteer" ideas about human PTSD therapy. Cara liked him and his ideas a lot.
