16
He awoke to someone shaking him madly. His mouth felt funny. John did not know where he was. His mind was in a fog as he tried to fight his way to the present. He tried to touch his head when he remembered that he was chained; chained on all fours. Someone jerked on his collar with a leash.
"C'mon, Frisky, wake up!"
He recognized the woman's voice.
He was shook around once more. A woman couldn't rough him up like that.
John tried to piece together the disassembled images of the past several hours. The Mexican knelt looking at him tied to the back of the cage in a curious manner. John was terrified. He held his breath. Nothing happened.
The leash unlaced through the chain link fencing that held his extremities in place. Valerie took the leash from Manuel and clipped it to John's collar leading him out, past Manuel's legs and down the path to the SUV.
"Oh, he's gay alright," Valerie told him as she drove him to this mysterious appointment that he had. "He is gay, I assure you," she promised John. "I guess he just didn't like the looks of a dirty dog."
John remembered that laugh. Valerie's wicked laugh! He sat in the back of Valerie's SUV. She watched him in the rear view mirror.
They apparently arrived at their destination because she pulled into a parking stall and shut the vehicle off.
He remembers Valerie scrutinizing his filthy appearance as she led him down a dirty alley. "You are disgusting," she said before opening a door that lead down into a dark interior.
In a dark room she was met by a short, stocky man. They began discussing money issues as he looked John over in his curious bondage arrangement. Then Valerie brought up drug abuse and the revoking of a dental license. John sat on the leash as they argued even more.
The images were still vague, lost in the depths of his memory. At the time he remembers being scared but now he looked at it as a comical moment. He remembers the man complaining about the chains keeping John's limbs close to his balls.
John was maneuvered onto a dental chair that was low to the floor. Then he rose into the air as the fat man pumped the chair upward. Valerie reached over and flipped a switch that activated up a surgical that he was rising to meet.
The needle fit right into his arm. "Count backwards from ten," he was told. John chuckled behind the ball gag. The room began to tilt. How can a dog count backwards?
Then nothing...
The short stocky man physically insisted that John wake up. All John wanted to do was to sleep some more. Valerie tugged on his leash until he voluntarily followed her on all fours. He hoped that when she took him to where they were going he could go back to sleep.
In the SUV, the cool air of the air conditioning helped revive him. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Something was wrong. He sat up.
After awhile Valerie, looking at him in the rear view mirror, said, "Smile, Frisky."
John looked at her and did as he was told.
"Oh, nice," she squealed. "Perfect!"
Perfect? What was perfect?
"Here," she said as she flipped down the rear view mirror for him. He sat in the back and looked at the face looking back at him.
"What have you done to me?" he asked.
"Nice, huh?"
"No!" John said. "No, it's not nice!" His words slurred with the strange formation around his tongue. His reflection showed four long canine teeth on each corner of his mouth, top and bottom. He opened and closed his mouth a few times as if trying on a pair of false teeth.
Valerie laughed again.
"How do I get them out?" he said.
"You don't. They're permanent."
"Oh, God..." John sat back so that he could not see himself in the mirror. The next words he was about to speak gave him reason to pause. He thought long and hard about it. Then he said, "Valerie, I don't want to be a dog."
