Jorge’s Choice
His mutt was such a vicious beast that she was less of a dog and more of a set of teeth with a dog attached. None could near her without deep chested rumbles filling their chests in kind. So alarming was this dog’s presence that the concrete slabs before Jorge’s house were a bit whiter than those of his neighbors’.
Jorge was lonely, but not yet lonely enough to do anything about it. He enjoyed soup, collapsible television trays, and the security his dog provided, though not explicitly - when his pet should eventually pass is when he’ll truly begin to appreciate her ambient contributions to his otherwise silent home.
Two bedrooms and two baths, but the bedroom not housing his bed laid empty and bare with white-dusted hardwood floors that appear solid enough to not squawk in protest should one walk across it, but with settled drywall pollenating each stripe to a bright and cheery grey. Dust floated freely before every window of his home, causing those with lesser constitutions to sneeze just from passing by them. Whether the concentration of airborne debris truly was denser in front of each window through some strange greenhouse effect having to do with heat pockets and thermal dynamics, or rather the sight of dust illuminated by sunbeams merely caused visitors to become acutely aware of the dust they were consuming to create a sort of placebo-induced sneeze was unprovable without sophisticated equipment that neither Jorge nor any of his sparse acquaintances possessed.
Jorge was lonely. He was pretty sure he knew why, but he didn’t care to spend the effort articulating it explicitly, either out lout or in his head with implicit words and figures. It was a lingering, a dwelling, a stay-place he simply did not want to stay in. So he skirted around it. Books and televisions and TV dinners and quiet evenings sitting in his dusty pink overstuffed armchair with a glass of bourbon and a single ice cube all provided near-adequate distraction from his lonesomeness. But there was always a sliver that remained uneclipsed by his idle occupations, spewing obscene and unwelcome light unto the sadder parts of his mind.
The dog had to go. The thought was sudden and unannounced and unprovoked and frankly quite startling to Jorge. He turned to look at Sophie lying next to the gold toes of his socks and she looked back at him without raising her chin. Her jowls were sedated manta rays on the ocean floor, splayed and slowly spreading. A huff rippled them and expounded a cloud slow moving dust, then her eyes returned forward and were lidded again.
He pondered the thought then, working backwards and tugging on each link of the chain that led him to his conclusion the way one does when they’re startled by their own thoughts.
The dog does not quite complete him. The dog scares away serendipitous company whenever he is home or the two of them are out and about. The dog was not enough company to satiate him. The dog was good company. He had his dog. He wasn’t completely lonely. He was lonely.
I, Jorge, am lonely.
He looked at Sophie again. She didn’t bother looking back this time.
And so the plotting to rid himself of what he very matter-of factly-deduced to be the source of his loneliness.
He heard about foxglove in a song once. He wasn’t sure where to find any, and how easily he could feed it to Sophie and have it appear to look like an accident. Do dogs regularly ingest poisonous plants? Wouldn’t that be evolutionarily disadvantageous? He didn’t even know what foxglove was, so he abandoned that thought. His mind wandered in the corner of his brain housing all knowledge of poisons, and his thoughts settled on what he was sure was a myth: auto coolant tastes like candy to dogs. He had some in his shed.
Worth a shot.
Sophie rose to her feet before Jorge did. It’s a sort of superpower most domesticated animals posses: the ability to sense when a person is going to stand moments before said person has actually decided to do it. Jorge decided then that he did not like that quality about Sophie. In his dull despair he decided, at that moment, that he disliked most things about Sophie. He stood there and watched her stupid eyes watching him, watched her stupid tail flop twice from one side to the other. He watched her sit expectantly. He watched her watching him.
He hated that.
He went to the side door and proceeded through the yard in his house slippers. The padlock hung impotently on the rung of the latch. There hasn’t been anything worth stealing from that shed in years. He pulled the door through the underbrush lining the shed’s perimeter, its hinges protesting before acquiescing - and Jorge spotted the jug of blue fluid on the ground. There was no fumbling about in the dark, no pushing aside old boxes or pulling out the ill-kept lawnmower to give himself access to his payload. He knew exactly where the coolant was.
He took the jug from the floor, then headed inside, not bothering to close the shed again. Sophie dutifully trailed behind Jorge’s heels, darting indoors just before the side door was closed again. Jorge walked across the kitchen, and with a little effort got the cap off, then poured half the bottle into Sophie’s deep blue water dish. Sophie sat on the hardwood floor, observing and panting. Judging. She looked at the bowl, whose contents appeared no less nor more blue than regular water. Not that she’d notice, anyhow - Sophie is a dog and, therefore, colorblind. She looked back up at Jorge, then turned to return to the perhaps-still-warm spot on the floor next to the arm chair, where she circled once before lying down with her chin resting atop crossed paws.
Jorge stood there for a long while, watching Sophie alternately doze and stare back at him unworriedly. He thought a lot of things as he stood there, holding a half-empty jug of car coolant in his kitchen. He decided a lot of things, too, but none of them particularly useful. Such as when he needed to buy milk next. And how long until the television show he watched came on that night. And what to wear to work the next day. The blue tie seems overworked, tired and worn. He chose not to draw any parallels to his life and the life of his necktie. It was a conscious decision.
Jorge placed the jug on the counter and walked into the living room. Sophie’s ears perked at their folds, her head unmoving from its resting place while her owner settled in the armchair above her. Jorge aimed the remote at the TV and turned it on. He sat there for the rest of the evening, watching images of people he’ll never meet facing conflicts he’ll never experience firsthand. Jorge was lonely. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it today, he decided.
