Either that or eat me alive ’cause it was a big mean dog, from the sound of it.
The lady didn’t like it when the dog barked. She’d tell the man to shut it up—either you shut it up or I will—and then one day the barking and the scratching disappeared just like that, and now the dog’s gone. I never did lay eyes on that dog, but I imagined it was a dog like Clifford, big and red, on account of the gigantic bark.
Inside the dog bowl is something mushy like oatmeal. I take it back downstairs. I sit on the cold, hard floor, lean against a concrete wall. I offer some to Gus but he says no. He says he ain’t hungry. I try and eat, but the mush is nasty. My insides feel like they might hurl it all back up. I keep eating, anyway, but with each bite, it gets harder to swallow. I have to force myself to do it. I do it only so that my belly don’t hurt later on, ’cause there’s no telling when the lady will bring us more food. My mouth salivates, and not in a good way. Rather, it salivates in that way it does right before you’re about to throw up. I gag on the mush, vomit into my mouth and then swallow it back down. I try to make Gus eat some, but still he won’t. I can’t blame him. Sometimes starving is better than having to eat that lady’s food.
They’ve got a little toilet down here for Gus and me. It’s where we do our business in the dark, hoping and praying the man and the lady don’t come down when we’re on the pot. Gus and I have an agreement. When he goes, I go in the other corner and hum so I can’t hear nothing. When I go, he does the same. There ain’t no toilet paper in this place. There’s no place to wash our hands, or any other part of us for that matter. We’re dirty as all get-out, but things like that don’t matter no more, except for when our filth makes the lady mad.
We don’t get to take no real bath in this place. But every now and again a bucket of soapy cold water arrives and we’re expected to strip down naked, to use our hands to scrub ourselves clean, to stand there cold and wet while we air-dry.
It’s damp down here where they keep us, a cold, sticky wet like sweat, the kind that don’t ever go away. The water oozes through the walls and trickles down sometimes, when it’s raining hard outside. The rainwater pools on the floor beside me, making puddles. I walk in them puddles with my bare feet.
In the dark, I hear something else splashing in them puddles sometimes. I hear something scratching its tiny claws on the floor and walls. I know that something is there, something I can’t see. I got ideas, but I don’t know for sure what it is.
I do know for sure that there are spiders and silverfish down here. I don’t ever see them, either, but sometimes, when I try and sleep, I feel their stealth legs slink across my skin. I could scream, but it wouldn’t do any good. I leave them be. I’m sure they don’t want to be here any more than me.
I’m not alone down here, not since Gus came. It makes it better, knowing I’m not ever alone and that someone is here to bear witness to all the things the lady does to me. It’s usually the lady doing the hurting, ’cause she don’t got an ounce of goodness in her. The man has maybe an ounce ’cause sometimes when the lady ain’t home he’ll bring down a special treat, like a hard candy or something. Gus and I are always grateful, but in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder why he’s being kind.
I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how long they’ve been keeping me here.
All the time I’m cold. But the lady upstairs couldn’t give two hoots about that. I told her once that I was cold and she got angry, called me things like ornery and ingrate, words that I didn’t know what they mean.
She calls me many things. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my name was just as easily Retard or Dipshit as it is Delilah.