Silent Night

Chapter 1

I don't know remember much of my birth, only the warmth of my mother and the hardness of the ground beneath my siblings and I. I remember them squirming beside me, fighting to get milk for my mother by stepping on each other faces, especially mine. That is my most wonderful memory. We were so innocent, so oblivious of the world around us. After a week or so, our eyes had finally opened to the world around us.

Our space was small to the standards of my mother, but to us, it was our entire world. There were other dogs around us. Beneath us, beside us, above us, all separated by the same mesh. We would try to run around in the only space we had, but our legs were so uncoordinated and the ground hurt our paws, forcing us to play on top of mother. She didn't take very kindly to it.

It must have hurt her, our small paws pushing against her bony body. She didn't get fed that often. The man with the food only came around every so often, and he didn't feed all the other dogs around us each time. As time went on and we were weaned off of the little milk mother had, we slowly lost our puppy fat and became just as bony as our mother.

We also became as dirty as our mother. We were never bathed and when we relived ourself, we would just do it anywhere. It would fall through the grate and down into the next dog's cage. The dogs above us did the same. Our fur was matted and turning a dirty yellow brown, unlike our original golden yellow.

As we grew, we came to realize how small our space was. All together, we were seven dogs, and to go anywhere, we had to climb over each other. As we were fed less and less, we began to voice our complaints.

We would bark and bark, and then the others would join us. Crying out in pain or sadness, but whenever we did this, the man would come back. The first time we thought he was coming to feed us, or even to give us a few precious drops of water, but instead he had brought a stick. For a long time, enough for the sun to set, he had beat any dog his eyes set upon. During that time, we hid behind our mother, burying ourselves in her long fur. We thought we were safe there, in the place where our first memories were made. We were mistaken.

Reaching into the cage, the mans giant paw had grabbed my brother beside me. Mother tried to bite the man, but he just hit her back with the stick. The man set him on the ground and brought the metal stick down on his small body. I heard a crack and a whimper before everything was silent. The man picked up my brothers body and threw him back into our cage.

Our mother growled at us whenever we went near his body, warning us away so she could spend time alone with her son. Her dead son. The next morning, the man came back and took his body, taking him out of sight. I never knew what happened to him.

After that, we were allowed near mother again. I had noticed she was bleeding, the fur on her shoulder a deep red. There were flies and other insects flying around her and the cut, landing in the blood. She didn't do much to try and get rid of them.

A month or so later, one of my sisters died. I think it was from sickness, or infection. I can't really remember. My mother wasn't faring so well either. The cut on her shoulder had decreased her energy a lot, and she was starting to get sick as well. The man didn't take my sister's body. I don't even think he noticed that she was dead. She just rotted away in the corner. We tried our best not to touch her.

This was our life for a long time. As the nights grew longer and colder, another one of my brothers died. This time the man noticed and took him, but he left my half decomposed sister in the corner. Some of her had fallen through the grate on the bottom, falling onto the litter of new puppies beneath us.

Life was horrible. The snow was here. We didn't know what it was at first, but grew to love it, then hate it. It was what was keeping us cold, killing off another on of my siblings. She froze, not disappearing. There were only four of us all together, including my mother.