The White Knight

It was spring time. It was spring time, and he was dying. Like the closing of one season's chapter, like a predator closing in on its prey, death crept his way in discreetly. First, he smeared a milky haze over John's eyes, glazing them over so that the poor canine kept blindly stumbling into walls and furniture pieces, once-familiar ground now foreign in his peripheral glazed vision. Next came the strokes, striking after midnight when the house rested in still unsuspecting darkness, and the aftermath discovery of blood mingled with vomit dragged by the ghost of the night across the kitchen quarters.

A new routine came over the old routine of 'being clean' outside. A once personal affair, it now required the aid of onlookers to ensure that John wouldn't step in his own faeces, nor in his tremors that built themselves in crescendos come to a climatic fall. Tears fell by the hydrangeas on the wayside as I watched his feeble mind battle with the ravaged body Death, the ruthless tyrant, now dwelled in.

Such an example as his of the proverbial dog's life. A never ending misery, constant even when attempting to savour his favourite dog biscuits and having more crumbs fall out than into a mouth taunted by scents of delectables, out of sight from mist-ridden eyes.

"This can't go on, for his sake. We need to put him to sleep", Mother declared one day. Sleep, a final resting we all must come to, when life's pace outsteps our own and eventually, loses us beneath a white slate of immovable stone. But the housekeeper, Neela, protested. According to her Buddhist principles, this was a blatant violation of the sacredness of life. More so, in John's case.

"An animal that is white in its lifetime will become a human in its next. Do not kill him, let him die a natural death. He is very lucky, also madam, he has an extra toe behind each of his legs which dogs used to have in before times, but lost through the ages. The few that still have them are said to be Wise ones. Let him be."

In every superstition there is a grain of truth, and Mother acquisced to Neela's words. Within the month of June, among the uprising of sunflowers and magnolias heaving their eager heads up to join the biggest yellow flower in the sky, John slipped down into the cool sanctuary of the earth. Before he went, I stole a few snippets of white hairs from his sweeping tail curved like a scythe which by wagging ferociously time and again drew in people's hearts. Surrounded by soundless earthy matter, nothing disturbs the resting sleeper as he passes from this earth, his life source yielding itself back to the earth.

And time passed, with John's remnants finally preserved only in photo albums and in nostalgic references back to the old days. The tangible bodies of those once loved, once held close, inevitably turns to ashes, scattered over places their feet no longer tread on. Or so it is thought. For sometimes I'd imagine his footsteps on the stairs performing his nightly rounds of the house, but before mortal ears can confirm a sound difference between fiction and reality, the lines blur between them and truth is somewhere lost.

On this particular night well frosted over and my hands desensitized, I fell into bed after a long evening out with hardly a second's thought about bolting the doors. Now, I found myself in wonderland, amidst an interesting troupe of talking animals including a burlesque giraffe, a cat in a top hat and donkey with a face resembling that of a childhood friend called Penelope. Butting heads of fantastical shapes and forms together, they interloped tongues in excited whisperings of a tea party close to begin to the hour. A prim meerkat in a sleek black suit with all the trimmings, pulled out of thin air a list of invitees. In the cacophony of babbling voices, my name was not forgotten. With each title, the persona revealed himself present and took his place at a table reaching down, down. Further than my human eye could see. Green pastures rolled on all sides, the sky tinged a pink cotton candy and I wondered the taste of its rain.

"Sir Timothy Pigeon the Pompeous! Dame Dorothy of Nightingales! Sir John the White Knight of the Ages -"
Before my head could whip around at the sound of a familiar name, he was already seated beside me, grinning from ear to ear. Expecting this surprise to fully jottle me out of my red and gold cushioned seat. The wonder of time and its effect on changing people. Or dogs to people. Transfused somewhere down the middle of the two, his head of old sitting on a fine strong body, dressed in the grandeur and immaculate robes of a real knight. He looked contentedly at me, I could detect no traces of smugness at this newfound elevation of status from four-legged beast to a man of rank.

"Pardon me, but would you be please, please, please, pass me that plate of dog biscuits?"
I laughed. Nothing was changed. Then again, perhaps he didn't need to change a thing about himself. Always comfortable in his fur, never feigned a self of pretence, constantly in quest of a back rub.

"Are we in heaven right now? I-I'm so glad to see you! But where are you going from here?"
John looked earnestly at me with his big chocolate brown eyes, now clear of cataracs, and I knew. Death had lost his leash over him. He was alive.
"We are in the Land of In-Between. At this point, I am in strengthening for the next world, which I do not know of as yet. I am told I will have forgotten all memories once I'm there of the past life as your pet, and within my first year or two lose all memories of this Land of In-Between as well. But the instincts they are teaching me here I will take with me to the next world. Such as walking like this, how funny it looks doesn't it?", and he mischievously smiled down at his only pair of human legs.

"There are rules, even here though. Just like 'being clean' must be reserved for outside, back in the old place", he chuckled, his laugh sounding closer to a bark.
"For instance, I cannot go back to the First Land, on any accounts. Shadows of incomplete spirits will roam it, in search of what they are lacking to come to the Land of In-Between. Those who are brought here must look forward; to return to the First Land is like taking one step back. It alters the natural process. By going back, I don't know the consequences, but it would be a long, long time before I am again ready to return to the In-Between. It makes sense for you to come here instead on accounts of me, ah it is so pleasant to have you here!". His head bobbed excitedly, his tongue slightly protruding from his ever-open canine mouth. I laughed, reaching for behind his ears to scratch his favourite place.

Suddenly, Sir John's ears perked up in alert, amidst the laughing around the table. He looked grave and distressed, muttered a quick "one moment, please", and swept up and out of the tea party. He was gone. Nausea hit me suddenly in waves, I felt something nearly knock me out. A blackout was creeping over my eyes, and all the others were oblivious to this horrible sensation churning within. Nobody could know, would ever know. The bile filled my lungs, my gullet, up to my throat, but although I desired a good retch under the table, it wouldn't come. If this was the Land of In-Between, why did I feel like I was... was I dying? A whimpering. My mind flung itself out of its distress to find the source of pain.

Bobbles of colours and sharp pains shooting out of me, in reawakening. I was in bed, the intrusive sun beams beating down on my face through the open windows. From my slightest movement, it upturned the arousal of several voices. Initially believing them to be inside my head, I closed my eyes once more, but was shaken gently back by a pair of arms. My neighbour, Kate.

"She's well, thank gosh – someone fetch a glass of water", she called out to the blurry room, absent from my mind's collective vision. All I could see was Sir John leaving me in a flurry, and his whimper. "Kate, what on earth... what's going on?"

"Dear, you were mugged last night. I'm still trying to figure out the missing pieces of this, but don't you worry; the police have taken away the burglar, he's answering their questions in custody right now, but I mean what were thinking, dear, you didn't set your alarm?" She looked ready to scold me, but her expression softened as watched my eyes, bobbing around like two life buoys vacant at sea.

"Don't you worry dear, anyway - this is how much I've got, and it all stumps me. Something woke me up in the middle of the night, I'm a sound sleeper but I felt – how crazy is this – a nudging at my hand on the bedside! I woke up, and something – told me to check up on you. May be call it a sixth sense? Anyway, I get around to your backdoor with my extra pair of keys and hey, looks like I don't need it, your door's flung wide open! For all the street to come and loot." I ignored her admonishing tone, bobbing my head as a sign for her to carry on.

"And you know what I saw, never in all my life! ...It was like a true horror film, dear... I saw a body, at the bottom of the stairs. It was him, the bastard who'd tried to murder you. He'd fallen down the stairs. And near broken his neck, he was in a coma but I last heard when he came around, he was in hear hysterics with fear. Talked about something moving in the darkness and lunging at him. He goes and wipes you out with chloroform and then talks about being frightened out of his skin! Pfft! That's a real coward, hope he gets a good long sentence."

I waited for the throng of visitors to leave, til the room was an empty shell of the chorus of sounds, all indifferently distant to my ear. Then, tear taps opened and guilt and remorse washed over. Reaching over into the bedside cabinet, I retrieved a sandwich bag which held a few trinkets of no material worth. One may describe me as a semi-hoarder, with the inability to let go of objects of sentiment. The sentiments of which implant themselves firmly into the solid ground of dreams. And at the bottom, long buried from sight like the body itself, I pulled out the tuft of fur from the White Knight. He who saves without being saved, had given his life for me, even in death.