The Willowbed

Day 2

Streaks of golden rays peered down to eye me, as I laid encumbered within my burrow. Emerging from my den, I shook my coat free of natural residue. I looked around, and decided to just keep going. I started to hop-walk forward, rather aimlessly. I hadn't known where I was going to go exactly, I just knew I was going to somewhere. To a place, a place in which I wasn't sure of. I was lost, with no definite goal. 

Clouds grew thick overhead, as if they were swelling with water, waiting to burst like a sea of rushing onding on a blisteringly-cold morning. I gingerly gazed up at the morning sky as my paws stroked the dew-dusted terrain with ease. "I'm getting a hang of things now.. walking.. without my front paws.. I can do it rather efficiently." I grinned as I trailed deeper into the tunneling grove. 

It must've been countless hours later of aimless and never-ending walking, when a piercing surge of pain rushed through my spinal cord, spreading like a plague through my veins. Bellowing, I staggered, trembling, before I collapsed onto the ground. Through the overwhelming sensation of pins and needles, it hit me, like a light bulb cracking over my head. The pain, it was numbed do to how much blood I had lost, and my brain had also dealt a ton of damage.. because of the oxygen.. I couldn't get oxygen when I was.. -- this is really bad. I violently shook, starting to get vertigo. It felt like the world started propelling itself around in a circle, spinning in a constant motion. I felt lightheaded, like I was going to go unconscious. I went into a panic, the pain making me irrational. I got back up, yowling in pain as I felt like I was slowly being crushed, and that my ribs were folding in on themselves. 

Then, another outrageous sensation had hit me. I felt like I had my front arms, I felt like I could just caress the soil below with my paws, but my paws weren't there. I felt my arms going numb, and flashing in and out of numbness. It started to feel like my 'arms' were gushing blood, but all that I could see were nubs at my shoulder sockets. "What.. what? What's happening.. the pain.." I yelped in agony as I fell again. It felt like I had my two missing limbs all along, like they were visible to me, but they weren't. I still remember. They're gone, Kyoko, the woman, had gotten rid of them, and God knows what she had done with them afterward. 

Curled up in a ball on the floor, I violently shivered and trembled, bewilderingly glancing around at the trees, trying desperately to distract myself from the excruciating feeling coming from my torso and 'arms'. I had no idea what was happening to me.. they aren't there. 

My arms are not there.

Then, why am I still feeling this pain?

Is this what I was sentenced? Is this my punishment? For being a bad dog? Was I bad? Do I deserve this pain? Is this just tough luck, or is this a punishment for misbehaving..? Did I misbehave? Was.. Kyoko not wrong for her doings? 

Was I in the wrong?

I wheezed, going into shock as everything felt terribly hazy. Once again, I started to feel the vertigo, but this time, it was incredibly more intense. So intense, that, in fact, I was frozen in place. I simply could not move. All attempts to break free from this monstrous, excruciating cycle had failed. It seemed like I was stuck in a loop of miserable pain. Pain that was simply too quick for me to run from.

My mind started to race, going around countlessly in circles as I felt like I was being swallowed, engulfed. My breathing was getting gradually more shallow. "I.. I thought I could make it.." I whispered, huffing and gasping for air through every few syllables. "I'm sorry, I let you down, Mitsuo. I can't keep on going.." I rasped, closing my eyes.

There was a faint, semi-lifeless twinkle in my baby blue gaze, before my eyelids had blocked out my view. My eyelids were too heavy for me to keep them up. This was the end. For a second, I thought I could genuinely make it, that I had a chance of surviving.. that there'd be nothing else in this world that would bring me to such a deep, dark place ever again.. but I was wrong. I was, simply put, incorrect. I'm going to die. I'm not that smart, and I do not know where I'll go when I die, but if there is a spiritual paradise that I'd be post to my passing, I'd like to visit Mitsuo a last time, if they're still here, on this tangible earth, that I'm touching right now.