SHEDDING The car leapt and thudded over invisible depressions carved into the dirt road. In the backseat Olive lifted her head and peered out into the night. A branch thwacked against the window and she let out a surprised yelp. Drea turned, reaching into the back to pat the head of her startled dog. “It’s okay, baby. Go back to sleep.” Olive opened her mouth wide, shuddered a yawn, and laid her head back down. She stretched out her long black legs, and her body seemed to blend into the darkness of the car. Aside from a scruff of white on her chest and tail, she was black all over. “She’s hungry,” Drea said to her father. “Me too, hun. But, we’ll eat when we get there.” “Okay.” Drea turned, pressed her forehead against the cold window glass, and shut her eyes. The motion of the car led her to the edge of sleep, and a sudden jolt took her out of it. The car lurched over several deep gashes in the road, and Drea felt her stomach drop out more than once before her father cursed under his breath and brought the car to a stop. Olive looked in from the backseat. Drea bit her lip and eyed her father, who stared bleakly ahead. The high beams illuminated nothing but the crooked branches of dead trees wrapped around the car like a cocoon. Drea wondered if they were stopping for— “Looks like we’re here,” her father said. Both Drea and her father knew they were lost, but no one said a thing, and they went on with the charade that everything was A-OK. It was a pattern they’d gotten used to this past year. Drea’s father cracked open his door. A tendril of crisp forest air slipped through the opening, illuminating the car’s stale interior. The change tickled Olive’s nose, and she erupted in a series of sneezes. “Bless you!” Drea said. “You okay, sweetie?” Olive stared up at Drea, a glob of snot dangling from the end of her wet nose. “Help me with the tent.” Drea nodded to her father and got out of the car. Olive’s ears perked up as she watched the two of them walk to the back of the car and pop open the trunk. She licked her lips. Drea’s father grabbed something that sounded disappointingly unlike the big bag of dog food she smelled nestled in the back of the trunk. The car shook as Drea’s father slammed the trunk closed. Olive pressed her nose to the window. She watched Drea and her father haul a long cardboard box around to the front of the car. As they passed, Olive caught a glimmer of something in the woods behind them. Reflections from the car’s headlights glinted off of a lone eye, which pierced against the night. Olive whined. Drea’s father pulled a knife from his brand-new multi-tool keychain and sawed open the sealed cardboard box. Olive’s whines grew louder. “Shut her up.” “Olive, stop!” She stopped, gulped, and opened her mouth in a tense pant. When she looked back into the woods, the dot of light had vanished. But the presence behind the eye remained. And grew. Until it closed around Olive completely like a wet blanket. Olive yelped and whined and clawed at the door. “I’m going to check on her,” Drea said. “Yeah.” Drea’s father dumped the last of the tent pieces out of the box and onto the ground in front of him. He rubbed his hands together. “Here we go.” Drea popped open the passenger side door. “Stop!” Olive quit barking but immediately began clamoring into the front seat toward Drea. “Hey, hey. Stop.” Drea slipped into the car and shut the door behind her. Olive lay her head in Drea’s lap and turned her big brown eyes up to stare at Drea. She continued a faint, almost imperceptible, whine. “Okay. I know. I know. It’s okay.” Drea rubbed her hand down Olive’s back, flattening out hair that stood on end. Soon enough her breathing had slowed, but her eyes remained wide open. Drea peered into the darkness. “What spooked you, girl?” Olive took a deep breath and sighed. Drea sat with her for several minutes, continuing to pet and speak softly to her. She watched her father struggle with the tent but couldn’t bring herself to leave Olive alone. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she was soon asleep, her chin resting on the rise and fall of her own chest. Drea’s father flung the mangled cardboard box into the trunk, slammed the lid closed, marched around the side of the car, threw open the door, and collapsed into the seat next to Drea. “Fuckin’ piece of shit.” Drea stirred but did not wake. Olive looked up from Drea’s lap, and her eyes met his. He rubbed her head. “S’okay. Go to sleep.” Drea’s father reclined his seat, and Olive returned to the back. She set her head down next to his and flicked her tongue out to taste his nose. Drea’s father mumbled, turned over, and soon drifted off. Olive remained awake. She watched for the single glowing eye, but it never returned. * * * “So you couldn’t figure it out?” “Damnit, Drea. The kit was missing a piece. You can’t connect B and C to Rod A, when I don’t have Rod A.” “Maybe it was—” “Drea, I looked. I set all the pieces down. I compared them to the list, and we had no Rod A, and four less end pieces than we should have.” “Should’ve checked before we left.” “Well, yeah. Next time.” “Uh-huh.” It was the next morning. Drea had woken just before sunrise, not terribly surprised to find them all sleeping in the car and the tent crammed back into the box in the trunk. They had spent the better part of an hour attempting to boil water over a mismanaged fire, before resigning themselves to a shared can of cold beans. They were tired, flatulent, and now on a mid-day walk through a forest of dead trees with Olive. The land was flat, and the trees were not just dead but charred, as if they had stepped onto the site of a recent forest fire. An aroma of smoke filled the air, and more than once they had to carefully side step a fallen log that was still burning. Olive yanked and pulled on the short leash Drea clutched to her chest. “We gotta spend two more nights sleeping in the car?” “I guess so, Drea.” Drea let out a dramatic sigh and flailed her arms, which gave Olive a chance to pull her off her feet. Drea crashed to the dry forest floor, and a cloud of ash puffed up around her when she hit the ground. Olive tugged, but Drea kept her grip on the leash. Her father helped her up. “You okay?” “This sucks.” Drea said. “Why don’t you let her go?” Her father asked. “What?” “Let Olive run and play. Give her some freedom. She’ll come back if you call her name, right?” “Yeah, but—” “Olive!” Olive turned back to Drea and her father, her ears perked up. “Dad—” “Come here, baby girl. Come here.” He bent over and slapped his knees. Olive lunged at them, barreling forward and crashing into Drea’s father. “Such a good girl. You’re a good girl. You’re a good dog.” He ruffled her fur, and his hands went for the bright red collar wrapped around her neck. “Dad!” He slipped open the metal loop at the end of the leash and pulled it free from Olive’s collar. “Dad, stop!” “Go on, Olive! Go play!” Drea’s dad slapped Olive’s butt. She spun, gave him a quick growl, and bounded over a smoldering log into the forest ahead. “What the hell, Dad?” “Look.” Drea’s father gestured to Olive, waiting for them 50 feet ahead. “She’s not going to run off.” When Olive saw them resume their pace toward her, she turned to the forest ahead and marched on, head held high. At home they made the rules, but out here in the wild she was the pack leader. The forest brought her senses alive in ways they never were back home. The dull hum of electric currents, radio waves, and Wi-Fi signals were replaced with crackling fires, burning trees, and the sound of animals fleeing in the distance. The scent of the dying forest tickled her nose. She picked up every animal dropping and every spot of urine for miles. A putrid stench of decay cut through her survey of the area. She stopped dead in her tracks, nostrils twitching. The smell was a particular sort of rot akin to a baby’s used diapers. If those diapers had been wrapped around a corpse, stuffed in an oven, and cooked at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. “Look at her.” Drea’s father pointed out, further back on the trail. “She would have been a good hunter.” “Olive!” Drea called. Olive made no movement, aside from the wild twitching of her nostrils, attempting to pinpoint— There! One red eye shined out like a beacon from a tangle of dead brush. “She’s gonna run!” Drea launched into a sprint. “Olive!” Olive took off, leaping over fallen logs, and scrambling through underbrush. The red eye’s owner, a particularly ragged looking possum, launched out of its hiding place and darted through tangles of twigs and dead leaves. Olive gained on the possum, but she felt exhaustion mounting sooner than expected. The great heft of her oversized belly was more than her legs could handle. Days of lounging on the couch and sneaking food from the pantry had not prepared her for a high-speed chase. The possum picked up speed. It wasn’t running, so much as it was throwing itself forward. Tripping, stumbling, falling, rolling, and carrying on. Olive blocked out Drea’s fading calls and continued on, each beat of her legs gave her a rush of pleasure, like a gambler trapped at the slots. Closer, closer… But the possum was not closer, it was getting further and further away, until nothing but its faint odor remained. Olive slowed to a trot. Pain surged across her hips, and she carried on for a few more feet with a limp. The world was darker here. This part of the forest had avoided the fire, and the thick cover of trees blocked out most of the sun. Olive turned around. She smelled the air, hoping for even the slightest hint of Drea or her father. Her ears perked up, hoping to catch their call. But, she heard nothing. She bowed her head, turned around several times, and laid down on a thick bed of grass and leaves at her feet. * * * A moment of confusion clouded Olive’s mind as she woke from what felt like a short nap. The ground beneath her was cold and damp, nothing like the warm couch she spent her afternoons drowsing on. The sounds and smells of the forest were strange and wild. Without Drea near, Olive no longer felt safe and secure. She was alone, and confused. The nap must have lasted longer than it felt because the shadows of the trees had grown long, and the world around Olive seemed even darker than before. A chilling howl came from behind a hill much too close for comfort, and Olive leapt to her feet. She tested her legs (in pain, but manageable) and gave the world a long sniff. The scent of the red-eyed possum was faint but still discernable. With nothing else to go on, she followed it. The possum’s trail led her much deeper into the forest, hopelessly far from anything even resembling a human scent. For more than an hour she climbed steep hills and burrowed through vegetation that covered the ground for miles. The scent of the possum rose and fell as she wound back and forth from its path. After tracking the same scent for quite awhile she wondered if it even was the possum’s, or if she had lost it some time ago and was now following a phantom of her imagination. She wasn’t a hunting dog. The longest she ever tracked anything was when Drea filled her food bowl and Olive followed the bland smell of dried pellets to the kitchen downstairs. But soon the scent picked up, much stronger, along with several other pungent, but foreign, odors and Olive swayed her tail with pleasure and carried on. She stopped and tilted her head when she finally reached the end of the possum’s path. The possum lay dead at her feet. Not just dead, but skinned. Only the pelt lay before her. Olive nudged it with her nose, and she was surprised to find how very old it smelled. Not at all like a fresh kill, but as if it had been sitting there in the forest for weeks or even months. She gave it a hesitant lick, then two more with surprise. She tasted no meat or blood, but something deeply bitter. She buried her nose further into the possum’s empty corpse, and found a small pool of the bitter-tasting substance. Olive gave it a few licks. The sludge coated her tongue with a rancid taste and her stomach turned. She darted away to clean out her mouth, gobbling up strands of twisted green grass until the taste had left and her stomach settled. The rancid black sludge stood out in stark contrast to the bright grass beneath her paws. Even with weak eyesight she was able to discern a trail of the stuff leading out from the possum’s pelt and around a bend not too far away. Traces of the sludge continued down a steep hill toward the corpse of another animal. A wild boar. The boar lay on its back, hooved feet stuck straight into the air. Two tusks curved out from its gaping mouth. Olive watched as the boar’s stomach seemed to swell in size, like a slowly inflating balloon. Wrinkles on the boar’s skin vanished as the swelling belly pulled everything taught. Olive crouched, waiting for the inevitable— BANG! A strip of flesh popped open along the boar’s side, releasing a visible cloud of gas which carried an odor up toward Olive that was so retched it caused her to gag, and her eyes watered. A movement in her peripherals made her jump back, and she almost went sprawling over the hillside. She calmed down and saw that the black sludge was creeping along past her. Globs of thick black liquid rolled by Olive and congealed with other puddles to form larger blobs which congregated around the rotting boar at the bottom of the hill. The large corpse began to seize and convulse. A soft whine escaped Olive’s trembling lips. She crouched further, until she could only see the very tip of the dead boar’s movements. The animal continued to seize for several moments before falling still. Olive waited. She heard nothing but a twist of wind rustling through the trees overhead. The boar moved once again. Calmer this time. More calculated. It lifted its head deliberately and looked around. Its right eye reflected the sunset with an eerie red glow. A tremble of fear sent Olive’s hair on end. The boar gazed directly at Olive and lifted itself to its feet. Olive knew this animal was dead. The stench alone confirmed it. And yet she watched as it stood up and took its first off-balance, after-death steps towards her. The boar disappeared from her line of sight and Olive took off like her tail was on fire. She pounded through the forest. The ache in her legs no longer registered. Branches and twigs clawed at her face as she threw herself blindly forward. She never hesitated once to look behind her, but her focus was not on what lay ahead. She cut a sharp turn, bolted forward, and ran straight off the edge of a cliff, only realizing what happened moments before she hit the rushing water below. GOOSH! She shot below the water’s surface and emerged gasping for breath and paddling like a… well, like a dog. The river’s current moved along at a blistering pace, and all Olive could do was struggle to stay afloat. The water crashed against a group of jagged rocks jutting out from the river ahead, and before Olive could make any attempt to get away she was tossed and pinned against one of the rocks. A bone in her left hind leg snapped, and she yelped in pain. Water rushed into her open mouth as the waves continued to slam into her. She struggled to escape, but one kick of her back legs told her they were useless. Olive cried and fought and gasped for breath, but the water forced her snout completely under, and she could no longer take even the shortest of breaths. Olive was part labrador retriever. A dog bred for swimming. But Olive had hated water from the moment Drea’s father threw her into their backyard pool as a puppy. He had thought it would bring out her natural swimming instincts. Instead it had shocked and terrified Olive into never setting foot in the pool again. A typical pool party at Drea’s house consisted of her dad’s burnt BBQ, one game of Marco Polo that fizzled out in five minutes, and the sight of Olive crying and whimpering at the pool’s edge for one of her toys that someone had tossed in. Only once, over a year ago, had Olive set paw willingly in that monstrous pit of water. It was summer, which meant long naps in the thick backyard grass beneath the sun. Drea and her baby brother were playing outside, and the constant shouting and giggling as the two children chased each other around the yard lulled her into a hypnotic state which was only broken by complete silence. Olive lifted her head and opened her eyes. No sign of Drea or her brother. She figured they must have gone inside, so she followed after, walking past the pool toward the crooked dog flap Drea’s father had installed in the back door earlier that summer. She stopped when she noticed something floating in the water. Without thinking she dove in and pressed her snout against Drea’s baby brother, rolling him over and pushing him to the edge. A scream rang out across the neighborhood as Drea and her mother burst out of the house and leaped toward the pool. Drea pulled her brother out, but her mother yanked the unmoving child out of her daughter’s arms and pushed Drea away. Now they lived in a small apartment without a pool, and Olive didn’t see Drea’s mother very much anymore. A sharp pain ripped at Olive’s back. The rock’s jagged edges tore fur and flesh as the force of the water pushed her free, and she was flushed further downstream. Her head breached the surface, and she gobbled in air. She flailed her arms wildly against the slowing current. Her back legs trailed behind her, useless, but she made it to a grassy shore. Exhausted and bloody, she pulled herself out of the water, dragging her legs behind her. A figure watched her from the hill above. One red eye. Two tusks. And the smell of rotten meat. The boar trampled after her, each hoof fall accompanied by a deep, guttural snort. Olive dragged herself through the grass as fast as she could, but she had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. The boar gained on her. Its snorting grew into a wild snarl. Olive pulled herself back into the water. The boar leapt in after her without hesitation. Its left eye was a deep, expressionless red, while its right eye was nothing more than a gouged-out socket. Its two tusks twisted out of the water which gurgled down the boar’s open mouth. The boar choked and sputtered, coughing up water as it continued to gain on Olive. Around the corner the current picked up. The water yanked Olive away from the boar and then suddenly plunged her deep underwater. Olive struggled to reach the surface. She could see the boar from below. Its legs floated above her, kicking back and forth and side to side without any sense of purpose. In a moment the current would plunge the boar underwater right on top of her. She spotted something on the far side of the river which looked like the entrance to a tunnel. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but she took a chance and swam for it. The boar hit the dip in the current and plunged under, slamming right into her back. She moved on, escaping before the boar got its bearings. Her lungs burned, but as she drew closer she saw that she had been right. An opening was cut into the rocks, but the passageway was far smaller than she expected. Maybe too small for her. Olive forced her head into the dark passage. She squirmed and pushed, but only her head fit. The rest of her body couldn’t squeeze through. She tried to pull back, but her head was now stuck. Panic hit. She flailed and kicked at the water. Even her broken back leg found the strength to join in. Her lungs screamed. Her vision clouded. Some of the sediment around her neck jostled loose. It was enough. She pushed, worming her way through the tight passage and into total darkness. Her eyes could have been open or closed and she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. She kicked and pushed further and further and further down the cragged tunnel anticipating her snout breaching the surface, but it never came. The tunnel drifted deeper into the water. Olive opened her mouth, gasping for air but taking in nothing but water. She fell out of consciousness. Her body seized and convulsed before it stopped moving altogether. * * * “No.” It was the first thing Drea had said to her father since Olive’s disappearance earlier. “Just one. Come on. It’ll make you feel better.” “Fuck off!” She shoved her father, knocking away the s’more he had spent the last five minutes pressuring Drea to eat. “Drea. Come on. I know you’re upset, but...” Drea stopped. “But, what?” “This wasn’t how the weekend was supposed to go.” “Oh, really?” Drea walked away from the campfire and toward the car. She popped the trunk and pulled out the tent’s box. “Hey. That thing doesn’t work.” Drea ignored her dad and dragged the box deep into the woods. In less than ten minutes she had it set up. She stepped inside and zipped the flap closed. She brought her knees to her chest and tried to take slow, deep breaths to calm down. It was about the only helpful thing the guidance counselor had taught her in all their useless meetings since her brother’s death. But it wasn’t working tonight. Her breathing grew shallow and hurried while she listened to her dad approaching the tent. He sounded like a thundering giant as his feet pressed down heavily on leaves and twigs. He stopped outside. Drea waited for him to say something, but he just stood there like a moron. “You’re not coming in.” Drea finally said. “Oh. I didn’t think you heard me.” Drea snorted. “Drea, I know you’re upset about the dog, but—” “The dog?” “Huh?” “Fuck you.” “Drea—” “Fuck you! I hate you!” Drea’s father waited a moment before turning around and thundering back to the car in a cacophony of noise. When he woke up the next morning his daughter was gone. * * * The barest hint of sunlight illuminated the tiny cavern Olive had washed up in. River water lapped at the edge of the cavern, submerging her back legs, and the cavern’s tight rock walls kept her pinned in one place. Olive’s nose tingled. Her entire body ached with pain. Her legs. Her side. Even her lungs felt sore from overexertion. But what stood out above it all was the tingle inside her nose. Something was moving. It wasn’t just inside her nose but all along her face. She snorted and raised her head. Tiny creatures scurried through her fur. Daddy long leg spiders. A swarm of them moving in one seething mass. They were inside her ears, in her nose, and she even felt one crawling in her mouth. She sneezed, blowing out a pocket of spiders which quickly regrouped and crawled back toward her. “Olive!” The call was faint but unmistakably Drea’s. Olive rose her head as high as she could and howled. The noise echoed, carrying out into the forest. * * * Drea ran. Before she realized what she was doing she ran. It was Olive. She knew it was. The howls seemed to be coming from beneath the ground close to the river. She spotted an opening in the earth not much bigger than a keyhole and bent down to press her eye against it. Sure enough, Olive was down there, not even a foot away and absolutely covered in spiders. Drea shook her head and chuckled to herself. “Oh, Olive.” Drea kicked at the hole with the heel of her boot. Each kick sent a clump of dirt down onto Olive’s head, widening the hole a little more. Olive pushed her snout out as soon as it was large enough to fit and gave Drea a few encouraging licks. They were back together. Tears ran down Drea’s face as she finished opening the hole. “Come on girl! Come here!” She held her arms out to Olive, encouraging her to climb out. Olive looked at her dismally and finally yelped. Drea kneeled down and reached into the cavern. The tickle of the spider’s legs as they crawled up her arms made her hair stand on end. She bit her tongue and carried on, wrapping her hands around Olive’s front legs and hoisting her out onto the ground. As soon as Olive was safe Drea leapt up, shaking her arms and head, flinging off each and every one of the spiders. She expected Olive to do the same, but Olive continued to lie on the ground looking pathetic. Something was wrong with her legs. Drea swatted at Olive’s coat, sending the spiders on their way. Once she finished clearing most of them off she sat down next to Olive. Olive lifted her head, lay it to rest in Drea’s lap, and sighed. They had only been apart one day, but it felt like forever. And they still weren’t home yet. Olive cried out as Drea prodded her legs. Even the slightest pressure set her off. Both legs must have been sprained, or maybe even broken. Her front legs were weak, but useable. After a long rest Olive and Drea began their trek back to camp. Olive dug her front paws into the ground and pulled. Her back legs dragged behind her body, leaving a trail of dirt among the dead leaves. They carried on this way, stopping frequently for Olive to rest, until they made it back to the car just before sunset. “Hmm,” Drea said, after she had helped Olive into the backseat of the car. “I wonder where Dad is.” Olive stared at Drea and gave her a long, pleading whine. “Aww, it’s okay, baby. You’re back now.” Olive continued to whine. “Oh! Jeez!” Drea leapt out of the car and popped open the trunk. She returned with the entire bag of dog food cradled in her arms. She dropped the bag in the back seat and Olive dug into it until her entire head was submerged. Drea laughed. The bag pulsed each time Olive crunched down on another food pellet. Drea patted Olive’s side. The light dimmed as the sun made its descent below the trees. Drea stepped out of the car. “Dad?” She closed the door. The slam of the car door jolted Olive from her hypnosis, and she lifted her head out of the food bag. She watched Drea step further and further away from the car and into the woods. Drea’s calls to her father went unanswered. Maybe he’d tripped and broken his leg, Drea thought. That’d be very fitting after what Olive had to go through. If he didn’t drag himself back tonight Drea would just have to find him in the morning. No big deal. She went to the tent, which had collapsed at some point, and began packing it up. Just as she finished rolling up the canvas and fitting it back into the narrow box it came in, she heard a rustle in the woods behind her. Drea ignored the sound at first, assuming it was just a squirrel or rabbit, but the shambling persisted and became hard to ignore. “Dad?” She said, clutching the tent’s box under her arm. Indeed it was her father. And he looked god-awful. “Oh, Dad!” Drea dropped the box and ran to him. Lines of dried and crusted blood trailed from a gash in the top of his head to the bottom of his chin. He stumbled forward with an obvious limp, and his eyes swirled past Drea, focusing on nothing. Olive’s barks tore across the forest, but Drea put them out of her mind. “What happened?” Drea asked. In the car Olive barked as hard and as loud as she could. She knew this wasn’t Drea’s father. It looked like him. But it didn’t smell like him. It didn’t even sound like him. And if she could give him a few licks right now he sure wouldn’t have tasted like he should have. Drea wrapped her arms around the thing that looked like her father. She tensed immediately. Something was wrong. She stepped back, but it was too late. Her dad’s head had already split open like a flower in bloom. Olive howled. Drea was running back to the car before she even started to process what she saw. She had felt something wrong as soon as she pressed up against him. He hadn’t felt physically right to her. He was mushy somehow. Not solid. And then his face had burst open. Right? She glanced back. Her father lunged after her. The four open flaps which once formed his head bounced up and down as he ran. The rest of his skin fluttered too, as if his flesh was nothing more than an oversized jacket. A column of writhing black sludge rose out of his open head. The rest of his body collapsed, like the bones and muscles had suddenly vanished. Drea screamed. The sludge wrapped around her left ankle. She leapt forward. It held tight. She collapsed to the ground next to the car. She pulled herself to her knees, but it was too late. The sludge enveloped her legs completely and held her down, slithering its way up her shirt. The sludge was so cold that Drea let out an involuntary shriek as soon as it pressed against her skin. The chill left her paralyzed. Drea dropped out of view, and Olive went wild, yelping, howling, and throwing herself against the car door. The vehicle rocked back and forth, but the doors were shut and locked, and Olive could not open them. She stopped. She could smell the outside air and the rotting odor of the black sludge much clearer than she should have been able to. There was an opening somewhere. She pressed her nose up against the back seat and found the smell seeping in through there. She dug into the seat, biting and clawing, until she tore through the fabric and pushed her head into the trunk. It was wide open. She could see the trees and the sky and the fading light. Olive wiggled forward, forcing the rest of her body into the trunk. She was aware of the screaming pain in her legs, but she could not feel it. She felt nothing but the overwhelming urge to protect Drea. Olive pulled herself over the edge of the trunk and collapsed to the ground. She peered around and underneath the car, but she saw no sign of Drea. “D-d-daaawwwgggg.” Olive turned to see Drea taking slow, heavy steps toward her. Each footfall seemed to take an enormous effort. “D-d-daaawwwgggg.” Her mouth peeled open and undulated as if hundreds of tiny insects were inside her lips, attempting to animate Drea like a gargantuan puppet. It was her voice, and her mouth, and her face. But, this thing was no longer Olive’s best friend. Drea was gone, and all Olive had was the fleshy reminder staring back at her with dead eyes. Olive whimpered. She was alone. The pain in her legs came back in a rush. All she could do was cry and cower as the body of her owner closed in on her, one heavy footfall at a time. The putrid stink of rot stung Olive’s nostrils. She pulled her lips back in a grimacing snarl and gave two warning barks that did nothing to stop Drea. She bared her teeth, but Drea continued until she stopped at Olive’s side. She leaned down to Olive, not with a familiar pat, but with hands clenched into hooked claws. The skin rippled along her arm. “B-b-baaaad daaawwwgggg.” Drea’s face peeled away, giving Olive a glimpse into the abyss before she lunged. * * * “Mom! Mom!” Joan’s two boys flew up the hill, stumbling over themselves to take her to the dog. It was a black lab, or some sort of mix, that she found trembling beneath a crooked, dead tree. “Stay close,” she said to her boys. The dog sucked in ragged breaths and attempted to stand when they approached, but her knees buckled and she collapsed back into a puddle of blood. “What’s wrong with her, Mom?” Joan’s older son, Tyler, asked. “Let’s go back to camp.” She grabbed her boys’ arms, but they pulled away easily. Tyler sprinted to the dog, sliding to a stop right next to it. “Tyler!” Joan yelled. “Can we keep him, Mom?” Tyler asked. Joan told her youngest son to stay put, marched right up to Tyler, and yanked him away by his ear. “Mom! Mom!” “That dog could be dangerous. You want to get rabies?” “Ah, come on, Ma!” her youngest said. “He’s just scared and hurt is all.” “Yeah, Mom,” Tyler chimed in when she released him. “Probably got abandoned or somethin’.” “You boys head back to camp. Find your father. I’ll wait here with the dog.” “Can we keep him, Mom? Please! Please please!” they both begged her. “Go!” They ran off together, skipping over branches and rocks, already arguing over what they would name their new pet. Joan waited until their ruckus had subsided before she approached the poor dog. She crouched low to the ground and took careful, slow steps. She cooed and spoke sweetly to the dog, but its eyes remained fixed on hers, wide with fear. She’s absolutely terrified. Joan thought. What monsters would abandon a dog like this? We’ll have to give her a bath for sure. Not just to clean off the blood, but to take care of that awful smell. Poor baby must have rolled over in something dead. Joan gagged. The stink of death was so thick she felt it dripping down her throat. We’ll have to give her a bath, for sure.