I am a man who has had to tread labyrinthine constructs, suffer both illness and stillness, describe death’s countenance for criminal sketch artists (and I admit that was the height of naivety) all because there had been a dog on the road. I have been afraid of dogs since I had gotten chased once whilst riding my dwarf bicycle along with my friends. In fact, my first encounter with a phantom had been with that of a dog. I had mocked this one particular canine by means of mimicry. The filthy thing was lying with a languid posture right by the river before it charged at me. What happened next I can only describe as the whole zeitgeist of the Greek Olympiads spontaneously generating within me, a hypertensive outburst, the bloom of motor nerves within my bodily abode. I ran straight into the road up ahead, looking to see the beast right behind me mid- sprint, before ultimately succumbing to inertia and falling. totally rupturing the skin off my knee caps. I screamed with my eyes closed as I could hear the dog in close proximity, embracing myself in preparation for the bite. But upon opening my eyes, I saw no dog, it seemed my uncle who had been with me this entire episode had stopped the dog before it even got onto the road, and what I had witnessed was no more than a spectre that had germinated from my solemn fear.
April 2023
