I loved Seattle. I loved the rain and the way it was overcast and cloudy all the time. We were very near the Canadian border and Granny's daughters house lay on the border of a wild area. When we showed up, Granny's daughter Denise was talking a mile a minute. She was lumbering around her pregnant belly to show off her little home. Wanting to impress Granny she showed her the converted garage that her husband Floyd, had finished. It was a few minutes before Granny told her daughter about me, but Apoc had slipped off into the forest before she got back to the truck to unload her bags. I didn't see him go, but I could smell which direction he headed.
Denise was too involved with her pregnancy to do more than remark that I was a very unusual looking dog. Granny chuckled and told her daughter that she had no idea how special I was. And before Denise could follow that thought any further, she was off again on a baby related topic about jumpers and onesies and I just tuned out. The son-in-law Floyd was nice enough, but he was a mixture of exhausted and hyper-focused on Denise. His life had become work and then back to the baby on the way so he didn't pay much attention to Granny and I was a distant fourth or fifth. I'm not sure he knew I was there most of the time.
Most days she spent the whole day in the main house while Floyd was at work. Granny would leave the television on in the converted garage to help "keep me company". I didn't see Apoc for almost a week. Floyd had added two large floor to ceiling windows to the back of the garage which looked out into the forest. I would sit behind the couch in the garage and just stare out into the misty green or watch the rivulets of water trickle down the glass.
I worried about Apoc. I wondered if he was okay. Mostly I just watched the trees in the gentle wind, and the misting rain. I sat in the evenings and watched the grey light turn dark. I saw him once in the twilight, still as a tree watching me. I nodded to him and he was gone.
Granny even expressed concern about Apoc. When she asked if I'd seen him I nodded. "Well I've been leaving food out for him, but it's been untouched. So I was just getting a little worried. I guess he's a wild'un so he can fend for hisself." I nodded. She let me outside a few times a day, but I couldn't smell Apoc there anymore. I went to where he'd been standing, but could find no trace of him. Maybe my eyes had played a trick on me after all, maybe I'd only seen what I wanted to see. I knew he didn't want to live inside, it probably reminded him of a cage. Sometimes it felt like that to me to, it reminded me of my captivity with Shen and how after the initial feelings of fear under the great wide sky, how I'd come to feel free and even safe with no walls or roof over my head.
A strange sense of loneliness settled over me in those days left to myself and my thoughts. I realized that I had no one. And Apoc wasn't really mine, even though he seemed to understand me, a fellow victim of Shen. He understood better than anyone what I'd gone though. I felt our connection stretching thinner and thinner. I wondered if I would ever see him again. After all this was my world, a house, a family... or at least some sort of warped in the mirror version of it. And Apoc, he wasn't from this world. He really was a wild one.
Mostly the television faded into the background with it's endless meaningless chatter and jingles, but on one night my ears perked up.
"Making the national news tonight is a video from controversial internet fringe "conspiracy theory", uh, journalist Alex James. His special report that has been downloaded and viewed over ten million times and reposted and altogether is one of the most watched videos in his show's history even though the video has since been removed from VuTube for a violation of the terms of service. According to the web video which we will show in a moment, Alex claims to have found a dog, who after government experiments has an understanding of the English language. Alex claims that this dog was "manufactured" in a secret lab, by evil scientists. Never one to miss an opportunity to grand stand and make wild specious claims this video has certainly grabbed the imagination of a nation. This video has been shared over and over. One group MediaForTruth has put together a video that makes a very convincing case that it's all a hoax orchestrated by James' tinfoil hat militia to try and make him relevant again after VuTube's banning. A large number of deniers still believe that the video footage is authentic. But truthfully, I'm hard pressed to believe that conspiracy nut about anything, but oddly enough there seems to be coincidental corroboration of some of the story by the local police and the squatters illegally camped out next to Alex Jones and his "dream trailer" in the California desert. Tonight the topic of our special report. Is this talking dog real? Or just a hoax created by a media whore? Join us after the break as we delve into the story of a talking dog, and surreal life of the man known as Alex James."
