By Greta Kaluževičiūtė.
I am a dog.
I am rabid.
I bark, I howl, I bare my fangs.
Spit drips from my mouth.
I feel my anger boiling in black froth toward every living thing.
As I run, I smell the fear and dread of people.
One girl’s scent draws me in.
I sink my teeth into her soft, welcoming thigh.
I’m taken aback. The smell of fresh blood mingles with something familiar.
Could it be you?
I chew one body, then another, then a third. Girls, boys. Children. Other dogs.
I chew and spit.
Drunk on delirious fullness, I feel someone kicking me.
At last, punishment arrives.
I whimper.
I rage.
My ribs splinter under the blow.
Anger ebbs. Slowly a wish to leave—fully and finally—takes its place.
I bite.
I bite because I must.
I bite because I cannot die without one last wave of resistance.
And in that wave, I remember you.
My fangs fold in or perhaps fall out under the force of the next kick.
My convulsing body goes without dignity, without respect, without love.
Around me: strangers’ scents, their voices rising, echoing.
Girls and boys. Children. Dogs.
My death, like everything in my life, drags on.
You could have shot me. I’d die in your presence.
But every desired bullet passes by.
Until: a final nerve twitch.
Someone crying. Not for me. For the ones I tore.
I see their bodies, their slick skin, the remnants of limbs.
Somewhere among them all, you appear. You exist.
A fragment of you would be enough.
Palm, chest, or thigh.
I would curl up and rest forever.
If only dogs could smile.
One last tremor and I’m back in your embrace.
I am a boot.
Shiny black. Confident.
Too close to the ground to notice the sky.
My direction is governed by a human foot.
The foot twists suddenly off the main path; I twist with it.
I am dark and gleaming on the outside and inside. All I see is darkness, but for a glint of reflected light.
Beautiful, perhaps, but I control nothing. Neither the darkness, nor the beams.
The foot dictates my path.
I sense that I am kicking.
Not out of anger.
I strike because I am lifted, I am raised up and thrust down.
I am only a force manipulated by another.
I hear a crack of bone.
I hear whimpering.
My rubber soaks with blood.
I am a black boot.
I ask no questions.
I rise and fall until fury fades. Until there is no one left to be furious.
If I had a will, I’d wish for death.
If I could choose my death, I’d choose a bullet.
One shining, confident force pierced by another of its kind. Another manipulated by someone else, but greater still than I.
It would be enough for me and for the one who governs me.
Together we’d collapse onto the ground and never notice the sky.
I am a girl.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed. Dusky.
Smeared with tar.
Nordically reserved.
Somewhere inside me a bullet sits.
No one shot me.
I was born with it.
At the centre of my soul sits a bullet waiting for the moment I release it into the open.
I am dangerous because the bullet grows.
Perhaps it will become a proper shell, perhaps a mine.
If its growth is undisturbed, if it feeds well on my fury and hatred, it might become even greater. A catapult. A howitzer.
Dreams. Aspirations.
My dark hair and dark eyes hide a darkness like no other.
The best way to hide is to mask one matter with another.
I am a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl carrying a bullet that grows in the hush of my violence.
I tug other girls by their hair. I bite boys on the neck. I blow sharply into children’s faces. I shout at stray dogs.
Strange, since once I had a dog myself.
Tail tucked between its legs, it ran away from me.
Perhaps it smelled my darkness. My future howitzer.
In its place, I’d do the same.
I could burst at any moment.
No one will escape my siege.
While planning my artillery, I forgot to shout at the stray dog running at me.
Perhaps the dog seemed familiar, a creature that once had a home.
Warm blood slips down my thigh.
I am a girl. Dark-haired, dark-eyed. Blood-stained now.
I see the dog being kicked.
It whimpers and writhes while the boot rises and falls.
I grab the boot by its rubber, lie down in the mud beside the dog, and hold it close.
Perhaps in death it will find a home.
My thigh still pulses where it bit me.
The dog’s twitching body and head, in the wave of a dying resistance, find a way to nestle in.
Any moment now, I will let the bullet loose.
As I aim, someone cries. Girls, boys, children, every stray and once-homed dog.
All those I have harmed.
For the sake of the world’s good. For the sake of keeping the bullet alive.
The dog lies against my thigh.
None of my bullets find their mark.
I strike someone else’s bitten body.
Curl up close to me and rest forever.
Freedom. Sky. Enough for everyone.
I am a bullet.
Cold, smooth, without feeling.
I pierce, carry energy, break through tissue, bone, silence.
Once released, I obey physics without question.
I am your bullet. Meant for your enemies, your lovers, yourself.
I am the bullet that cultivated your darkness.
I am the bullet you raised.
A shell.
A mine.
A catapult.
A howitzer.
I am your dreams and aspirations.
I slice through air, part molecules, drift away.
I fly.
I graze fate’s shoulder as I pass.
I see you from above.
I see you and your dog, see the boot that struck it, see its bared fangs, see its last shiver. I see it there at rest against your thigh.
I fly past all of you.
I am a bullet and I leave you all behind.
I pass through. I miss.
Eventually I settle into the grass. Cold. Damp.
No one notices me.
I rest my against the dewy green.
I rest. I am free.
If only bullets could smile.
I am the bullet that flew past you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greta Kaluževičiūtė is a Lithuanian writer. Her prose — published under her own name and multiple pseudonyms — has appeared in Do Not Submit, Expat Press, Hobart Pulp, Plague Circus Press, and various obscure corners of the internet. She is also a psychoanalytic researcher and holds a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies from the University of Essex, UK. In addition to her writing and research, she is the author of eskimo kisses, an ongoing photography project examining intimacy through uncanny encounters.
