After the hurricane – Sheila Kannappan

Time jolts forward as the roar leaves my head. I start to hear splashes, cracks, howls.

I push my nose deep into the twigs and leaves lying on the damp bed they left for me. There’s a wet and rotting cacophony in my nose, but the soapy smell of humans pierces through. Humans are the only animals that don’t smell like themselves.

I raise my head, and the promise of poultry meal wafts from a torn-open bag on the other side of the porch. I panic as I understand what it is. A beacon for predators.

I run over to try to hide it. Eat it, vomit, try again, vomit. Give up and poop as far from my bed and the food as I can, lie down, can’t sleep.

Two flights of stairs with a sharp turn and thick vines hide me from sight, and a heady-sweet steam from battered vine-flowers masks my scent.

In green shadows then darkness, green shadows then darkness, I guard my stash, snarl and bark like a grown-up. Sometimes I lick wet leaves and stairs, just down to the first landing. No one can see my small size.

My ears track every sound in the silence.

Something buzzes high above the quiet of my lair. Sweet poison joins the suffocating confusion in my nose, burns my tongue.

Others like me come by, barely held off by my loud act of viciousness and the high, dark stairs. I smell one of them give up and become rot.

Time blurs. I bury my nose, replace poison rot with soapy rot, try to remember my mother. Her smell. Try to imagine my damp bed is her soft warm fur.

A human voice calls from below. Time jolts forward. Stairs creak. I hear myself barking in a torrent of fury, louder as a second human calls, softer as both move away.

Time dissolves into heat. Thirst, voices, heat. My fear scares time away.

I fight sleep, but my nose dozes for seconds at a time, letting memories in. I sharp inhale now-smells, cling to wet-sweet-rot-soap-poison to stay awake. But I am so tired.

When she comes, I am tired of timelessness. I bark, but she climbs. She still climbs.

So I let her see me.

She throws something near me — soft, meaty, not rotting. I am too tired for fear, can’t stop myself. I eat it.

Goodness fills my mouth, my nose, my throat. My lungs fill too, then fall.

I let her give me water, let her touch me. Notice she does not smell of soap. Try to remember my mother, let memory-smell mix with now-smell. I let myself be gathered, limp in this human’s arms.

Time begins again, where it left off. The last time the world smelled safe.