Sometimes I just want to be my old, ugly ornery self. Use the old Woodstock typewriter Szatkowski gave me and drink whiskey and honey and write angry shit. Awful things that’ll get under the skin and make a person twitch and twist and squirm.

I believe everyone deserves to feel uncomfortable—at least once in a while. People get awfully fucking set in their ways and trained in this world. Not like sheep, necessarily, but like well-fed, rarely walked dogs. Lazy and content. Fat and slow. Not smart enough to know they aren’t on a leash and that with such formidable teeth they have the power to roam. But we’ve been spayed and neutered and shamed into our corner so many times that we’ve forgotten. We’re not human. We’re beasts. Meant to hunt and fight and fuck and run so that we are lean and quick and ready to do whatever the hell we want—chase a cat, kill a rabbit, watch from the shadows as a lonely little girl shuffles past and we breathe deep and savor her sweet scent, teetering between two worlds—the great protector, or the wolf that’ll tear her to shreds.

It’s a danger keeping a dog cooped up too much.

Sooner or later they need to escape, if only for a tiny bit, to do unsavory things.

People put up posters. MISSING DOG, it says. But the dog isn’t missing. He’s on a mission. And he’ll come back when he’s good and goddamned ready. You’ll find him one morning, curled up on the front porch, snoring, reeking of shit and something dead, with blood streaking the fur around his mouth and when you go to scold him, ask him where he’s been, he’ll lift his head, wag his tail, and go to sleep again.

~ K.J.