overcoming dogs

Clutter was a stressor for him. Acne-on-the-forehead-,-night-sweats-,-shortness-of-breath-,-restless-anxiety-type stress. The sort of stress borne only out of a childhood teeming with bleached surfaces and museum quality living. As much as he was fascinated with early experiences and their ability to shape your entire adult life - he was sick from recognizing his own as he turned in bed worrying about what had to be done for the coming day, rubbing neosporin on his scarring cuticles, a feeling not unlike falling in his chest, and a sweat about his forehead (likely our acne source) - the filmy sort that an overweight man acquires on his pale breasts.

Staring at a baby sitting next to a dog. The baby, not more than 15 months, looking at the dog and awaiting reaction. He scratches the side of his cheek as he sips his milk, probably wondering when the dog will turn to him. The dog, not a puppy, looks only away and into the distance...like a cold shoulder to the babe...not allowing it or other unpleasantries into its vision, ever.

And so he walks past the clutter, staring straight ahead and not at the clutter and into the distance. Laughing about how smart and willing to confront life the baby was in comparison to the dog.

And blinking and not yet appreciating the irony as he blinks.

Considers then drilling a hole into the back of his skull and pouring in undiluted bleach to cleanse the dark corners and erase that which cannot be overcome with reason. "Bleach me." He would say as it was done. The smell would be too much, wouldn't it?, as the chlorine cooked through his olfactory nerves and his eyeballs turned to a milky white fog. Brain matter, less solid, pouring out of his ears..."get some gauze!" he would probably also say (though more slowly and hardly recognizable this time), realizing that he had made a literally fatal mistake. All before his organ seized and swelled and poured through his other orifices, shutting down his system.

And not yet appreciating the irony as his head and torso spill over the rest of his body. Hunched over.