A Dog/slave Weeend

70

The car was still idling when Valerie could be heard speaking. Car doors again. Female voices. Happy tones. Randy said something. Then Frisky heard the word 'kennel,' from Valerie.

Footsteps came closer as their voices became clearer.

"...until we talk first," Valerie was saying. "Another few minutes aren't going to matter to him."

The unrelenting intense beam of a LED flashlight lit the kennel area up.

"Ashley..." Valerie said from behind just as Ashley rounded the trees and shrubbery into the kennel area with the flashlight of her phone.

"John?" she said into the two short lines of cages to either side of her. The other two dogs became animated once again.

Ashley was looking for 'him.' That guy named 'John.' Well, he wasn't here and as much as Frisky would like to see her it would be better if she just left.

"Ash," Valerie again called from behind to her sister to wait.

Determined footsteps displaced the gravel in the path bringing the floating, bright light right up to the gate of his cage. It hovered in the air blinding Frisky as to what or who was behind it.

"John!" Ashley's voice blurted out of the obscurity of the darkness.

Frisky flinched and turned away.

"Oh," Ashley said as the light dipped upward to highlight a few of her own features. "Sorry."

Valerie appeared next to her. "Ash," she said, "we need to talk first."

"What are you talking about? You've left him chained down on all fours the whole time he's been here." Ashley reached out and opened the gate. She made two long strides in to reach Frisky.

She knelt down and put his face in her hand as she bounced the phone flash light off of the ground so as not to blind either of them. Her thumb wiped away at some dirt from his cheek. Hazel eyes glanced from Frisky's right to left eye and back again. "Are you okay?" she asked dropping her gaze to the hair growth on his face and around his mouth. "His mouth!" she exclaimed. Ashley's fingers pulled Frisky's lips apart to see the canine looking teeth. "What did you do to his mouth?"

"That's part of what I want to talk to you about," Valerie said from outside the cage.

Ashley reached down and lifted Frisky's paw. The round metal mitt was dirty along with the chain and the two padlocks on both sides keeping the mitt securely locked around Frisky's hand. "Give me the keys. Let's get him unlocked," Ashley said to her sister.

Something clicked inside Frisky. Something did not match his own mental construct of reality. Ashley asked Valerie for the keys to the locks and mitts. He brushed off his worldview as that of a stupid dog.

At the mouth of the cage Valerie shifted her weight uncomfortably. Light reflected in her eyes as she knowingly looked at Frisky. "They're in the house."

"Well, go get them," Ashley demanded.

"Can we go talk about this first?"

"No."

Valerie shook her head and disappeared into the dark.

There was a long moment of silence as Valerie's footsteps filtered into the other distant noises. "I tried and tried to get here to pick you up, John."

Frisky twitched and turned away from Ashley.

"Why?" she asked. "Are you mad?"

No. He wasn't mad. He turned his head back.

"I didn't leave the keys at home like you asked," she admitted. "I couldn't do that. I'm sorry. What if there was an emergency?"

Frisky listened.

"There was a few emergencies," she laughed. "Huh..? But I was able to leave you chained down and handled it without you. I left the keys on the counter of Val's vacation house when I left for court." Ashley put her arm around Frisky's neck. "I told her about them when I asked her to come and pick you up."

Frisky didn't even have to ask himself why Valerie didn't release him from the shackles the entire two weeks. He knew. He already knew. Frisky had never felt such warmth of being loved.

"We need to get you out of these and in the shower," she said brushing dirt from his short, stubby hair. "I brought you clothes," she added in an upbeat, almost sing song voice as a way to break through the barrier she felt between them.

Instead of standing to relieve the pain in her knees, she knelt down on the ground, her jeans protecting her skin.

Frisky kept his eyes low, looking at his mitts imagining what kind of mutated, alien appendages were locked away in there. The restraints had become a crutch his weary soul had been able to find refuge behind. Without them there would be insurmountable expectations to act like a real person, a human being, one of their equals of which he was not.

"It's been a long two weeks, hasn't it?" Ashley asked him.

Frisky nodded his head slightly. The last two weeks have gone by too fast, but in some ways seems like a lifetime. Two, special weeks he couldn't relive or recreate if he had to. Two weeks that were now slipping through his paws. Anxiety, his old friend, began to take up residency in the center of his belly and chest as if returning home from a well deserved vacation.

"Did you miss me?" Ashley continued to try to get him to talk.

Again Frisky nodded. He had to respond. He had no choice but to respond to the presumptions of his humanity. Seeing her once again he had in fact missed her.

"What's the matter, John?"

Again Frisky's impulsive reaction trembled his body.

Ashley stayed kneeling for a moment longer then stood up. "Ah, Val calls you Frisky," she stoically said waving her hand in the air. "Huh..? You want to be called Frisky now?"

In the light of the cell phone's flashlight Frisky nodded his head again, this time a little more enthusiastically.

"So, two weeks with my sister and she has you answering to a dog name she gave you?"

This was not a question Frisky wanted to answer instinctively knowing it could lead to trouble he wasn't in a position to take a stand on.

Ashley stepped toward the gate of the cage and asked, "Do you wish I hadn't even come to take you home?"

No, no, no... That was not in anyway what he wanted her to think. He looked up to study the facial features of Ashley he had slowly began to forget. Hints of Valerie were there along with her own unique, cute look. Brown straight hair and hazel eyes. Frisky shook his head 'no.'

"Are you mad at me for not being able to get off work to come and get you?"

Again, no.

"Then why won't you talk to me? Are you mad or not?" Ashley asked, flustered. "Or do you want me to leave you here so you can live as my sister's pet dog?"

Her return was silent unlike her exit. "You can't leave it here," Valerie said with a giggle. She rattled the keys to Frisky's freedom in the dark behind Ashley. "It's not a bother out here. But in the long run..." Valerie turned on a proper flashlight allowing Ashley to turn her phone light off.

Ashley took the keys from her sister. Instead of eagerly unlocking his, she stood silently, holding the keys with both hands in front of her looking Frisky over. "You just seem so..." she said looking for the right words, "...so calm."

Valerie was silent for a very long moment allowing her sister to come to her own conclusions. She then said, "I want to go in. Are you going to unlock it or leave it chained down?"