DAVID KUHNLEIN — Leave It

The dog tried paying attention to where the man was in space. A poltergeist of vapor condensed from Mable’s throat, cough frozen in frigid air, collar garroting between leash and resistance. Feeling observed by this buoyant third party, ejected from his choking pet, the man felt bad a moment, went slack. The dog got drunk on whatever constriction was allotted. The man barked something incomprehensible. A yellow snowbank interrupted them. The man worked from home, behind closed blinds. He didn’t need to be observed by anyone, let alone his own reflection in the glass. Who’d remain sane looking in the mirror for ten minutes? He had plants. The yard was insolent with them: weeping willows overhead, juicy green baby’s tears, bleeding hearts strung against the fence – nature’s whole sorry soap opera. His wife had left. He couldn’t say when. When Mable’s face appeared, her eyes were aquatically droopy and still rather domesticated. Ten-year sentence, the man thought. Released on the recognizance of this silently gassy parole officer. Mable’s farts were a p followed by a diminishing series of f’s. The dog sniffed every contraction joint in the sidewalk. The man was easing some ice apart with his shoe. Mable confronted him. What do you want? The thing quivered. Mommy’s not home anymore. Mable recognized the word mommy, perhaps better than himself. The wife and her generation had turned love into letters on a choke chain. At least they both hated therapy-speak. How people pitted their therapists against each other. He and Mable sat on either end of the couch. Nose tucked under paws, she hotboxed her own scent. The man didn’t require contortionism to smell himself. Mable’s haunted manner bothered him. Had the fur changed colors every time she left? Her mottled scruff bristled to the touch. Marble patterns swayed, teeth present. Who had nail-gunned him to the world with this beast? The cutlery of your coat, he threatened. His toes were already tagged. He had a tinnitus for coffee makers, always enjoyed a bit of morning gurgle. She was an ache drawn and erased in his mind. The dog stared. Poison, he thought. Or was she pleading for him not to? Some killed the pets first, before trying everyone else. Did the whimpering make them relent a second? Maybe it was encouraging. The animal didn’t know. It could determine only a behavior. A notepad for to-do lists left in the car overnight, tucked into the inner pocket of his vest, made his heart feel like it had frozen over. He wished he could zoom out on reality, switch cams, pause the stream. Why had his body turned hypothermic by a pad of paper? He shut his head in the freezer to stop his thoughts and would have gone all the way to amputation if not for the electric bill. Gaskets unclean, sticky from years of grime, cheeks frostbitten. He wanted the brain gone, to live the privilege of a body lopped off. Long ago, some girl at the rival high school supposedly tasked her dog with a jar of peanut butter slathered between her legs, not realizing the party hadn’t been cancelled. His own dog ignored him on a heating vent, her patches of whitening fur blown every so often, the dry air getting to his sinuses. He hid the dog dish. Unspooled peanut butter. That lonely? He shuddered, coating a cow knee bone. She yipped and huffed, snout wedged between door and tile. A whoosh of breath met molecules with the food. This was how she processed thought, subjects sucked in by negative pressure, a labyrinthine bounce in the environment of aromas. They slipped in her drool. Life as regurgitation, never quite coming back up. There was a blood beyond words in the desire to follow. An acidic gore available from his lap. The house would not outlast it, the back of her throat well-deep and never dry, months of peanut butter in the zipper of his jeans, God’s spit within them, a long hungry tongue at the end of his prayer. David Kuhnlein is the author of Ezra's Head, among other books. His fiction has been featured in NOON, Socrates on the Beach, Hobart, and others. He hosts a reading series at Cafe 1923 in Hamtramck, Michigan. Website.