The Willowbed

Terrified

I am Palette. I am a Shiba Inu. I was born a stray on the streets of Japan. When I was a small puppy, I met a beautiful, cunning young woman. Her name was Kyoko. Kyoko was a giving, kind, and generous woman. She took me in and nurtured me back to health. She cared for me and gave me food and water. She saved me from a short and troubled life on Japan's streets. However, it must've been at least 6 months, when something changed. Something horrible changed in her. She would become very violent and lash out toward me. She would smack me, kick me, throw and shove me around. 

Why did she change? 

Why did she have to change?

 I wanted her old self back, this just wasn't her. She always had these outbursts whenever she drank from the bottles. She brought them in whenever she could and drank them until she became drowsy and tired. It frightened me, she frightened me. She got worse and worse, and more aggressive as the days went on. One day, she snapped. She completely lost herself. She was frothing at the mouth, twitching and trembling, slurring her words as she drearily ran around, incomprehensibly shouting and bellowing in confusion and anger. I was terrified. She was in the kitchen. I quickly staggered to my paws and left my usual spot behind the couch and hid in the bathroom, nudging the door closed with my nose. Kyoko started to hysterically laugh, running back and forth from room to room, slamming each door open and closed. In her delusional haze, she swung the bathroom door open. I yelped in anguish, cornered against the shower stall, backing up until my tail was against the tile wall. I whimpered, absolutely mortified. It felt like everything was collapsing in on itself. The walls were closing in and the air became thin and cold. My breathing went shallow. Then, I couldn't breathe. Kyoko yanked a cord from an outlet above the sink, grabbing onto my neck. I froze. She wrapped the cord around my throat, tightening it into a knot, and hung me on the shower curtain rod. She stood there, laughing. It seemed as if the laughing wouldn't stop. It kept on going, in a loop. My vision went blurry. All I could see was the bright bathroom light and the vague outline of her sinister face as she widely smiled and stared into my eyes. I violently shook and wiggled my front and back legs, gagging. I was choking. I was going to die. Then, she left the room. I had to escape, now that she was gone, but I was completely trapped. I didn't know how to escape. My movements slowed. My time was up. I wasn't going to get out of this. I had accepted my fate.