Alpha

by Alexei Raymond

What will happen when she dies—no, after she dies? It was a late, uneventful night, and Dmitri was lost in thought while his hand rested on her warm, soft belly. The man and the dog were on an unmade bed, surrounded by twisted blankets. He could feel the old stitches left there, somewhere below the surface of her belly, from when they had her castrated all those years ago. Whatever the vet used to tie her up on the inside never dissolved, nor was it ever taken out. Perhaps it was never meant to leave her sterilized abdomen. She would turn eleven come June. The fact that she’d never have puppies of her own bothered him. Her being an endpoint seemed inordinately sad.

She sprawled on his bed—a grey‑white trace of primordial wolves—drawing every ounce of comfort from the mattress. She was growing older, and the telltale signs of age were showing up. With some distaste, Dmitri noted the numerous fatty lumps that had popped up under her skin throughout her body. His mother would always say that they are benign, and so did the internet. He recalled how their previous family dogs also got the same lumps in their later years. It seemed to be a natural part of a canine’s life cycle. Alpha had been an unexpected addition to their life, at least to Dmitri. They brought her home one weekend while he was on leave from the military. A small, dark, sock-puppet of a puppy. His sister chose it out of a bunch born at a local farm. She chose the quiet, sleepy one and named her Alpha. He never expected them to have another dog after the strange case of Tom: his ill-fated, ill-fitting greyhound. His father unexpectedly gave Dmitri the peculiar greyhound as a gift for his eighth or ninth birthday. They never could get Tom to be comfortable in their small apartment, and Tom suffered for it. There was simply no space for such a large, active dog. Leaving him alone in the apartment while everyone was off to work and school would result in damaged furniture and knocked over appliances. Fortunately, the decision to give Tom away came rather quickly, before a true familial bond formed. Dmitri sometimes thought about how Tom lived out the rest of his life and fondly remembered how that brown whirlwind of a racer used to run at him and swerved away at the last moment. He felt ashamed about not remembering their final day together.

Alpha was a smaller, more manageable mutt of some kind, and the space they lived in was more spacious. She fit into their lives easily. Offhand, Dmitri realized that his sister was the same age he was when Tom arrived. In a way, it felt as if Alpha had come into their lives to be a keeper of a period of time, the way all pets were. He momentarily wrinkled his nose, feeling self-conscious of the thought. He supposed it was something all people came to think about at some point in their lives if they happened to share them with pets. Such musings come with age, and at twenty‑nine he indulged them—perhaps too severely. Alpha wasn’t the first family dog he’d known, but she was certainly the first one he’d known with an adult’s perspective, heart, and mind. The emotions he’d felt and has been feeling as of late about her made him feel pangs of guilt over how drily he regarded their previous dogs. His heart wasn’t big enough then; he hadn’t the faculties to comprehend the gravity. But his parents did—that much was always evident by his mother’s open tears and his father’s hidden ones. He recounted the pet deaths he’d experienced—those within his family, and those of past lovers and friends. Most of them never punctured his heart for too long. The longest he ever felt sad was for a day or two when an elderly dog his mother adopted ended up dying from an illness. That happened when he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight—he couldn’t be sure. But even then, most of the sadness came from how brutally that death hit his mother. It was her sobbing, heaving response that brought tears to his eyes and made him silently cry for a brief moment while away from the others.

He ruffled Alpha’s soft, fragrant fur. It was too short—a result of a recent trim done to ease the chore of washing mud from her fur. She was fast asleep and softly snoring. He wondered whether she would remember all the people she’d ever met. Would she get excited again if someone from years ago suddenly knocked on the door and entered with their once-beloved scent? Time for questions was running out. He thought that Alpha’s death would bring unto him a reckoning that was a long time coming. For all the past pets he either wasn’t properly equipped to mourn, or didn’t allow himself to. Some nights, when the dark turned his mood particularly maudlin, he whispered to her. Through his whispers, he tried to atone, to stop time, to express, and to love the way he couldn’t in the daily flow of life. Her death would mark an end of an era she’d already outlived. Dmitri’s sister had already finished school, his mother finalized her divorce from his stepfather, Dmitri himself had ruined the relationship he had for most of Alpha’s life. Alpha outlived, in her nearly eleven years, every major event in that era of their lives.

She stirred—dissatisfied with the mattress—turned over on her back, then curled and lay with her white ribcage and paws facing the ceiling. Dmitri took one paw and examined it. Her paw pads, once smooth and unmarked by trails, pavements, and roads, were cracked and harsh. Her claws had gotten long, and he made a mental note to trim them, though he wasn’t sure he’d stick to it. Alpha casually took her paw back and continued to lay there, as Dmitri looked up at the darkened ceiling of his minimal, temporary room. He retreated to his mother’s apartment after two recent failures in love. It was an indeterminate period during which he floundered and didn’t know what to tell any of those close to him, whether parents or friends. His only constant those days was his daily work and the walks with Alpha. He made some half-hearted attempts at looking for another job somewhere abroad, and more eager attempts to apply to graduate schools abroad, but so far that year he hadn’t succeeded on either front; his floundering continued. The only one he owed no account and no plan to was Alpha. Though he did discuss with her in those whispers one contingency.

“Alphachka, if I won’t be here when you pass away, will you understand? If I’m somewhere else, and I won’t be able to make it, will it be ok?”
He looked at her inky black eyes which were a luminous brown when seen in the sunlight. She glanced at him, then looked away. She would listen without maintaining eye contact and Dmitri couldn’t help but feel silly for expressing incomprehensible monologues at her. She was just resting, the little wolf.

“You’ll understand me, right? I know you will.”

He leaned in and kissed her furry forehead. Her head smelled either of soap or some perfume from when his mother or sister kissed her in the same spot. They all pressed their love into the same spot, aimed at her loyal mind. Presently, Alpha seemed to ignore the kiss and continued to lay there like a black-eyed plush. He sat with his thoughts and in the silence and her metronome breathing reached a vague, unstructured depth within himself. The thought that cohered in his mind was simpler than the previous ones: he floundered in indecision because he was merely waiting for her to die first. It made sense. Once she dies, then…

It made sense. She kept an era, and she siphoned most of the love in the apartment toward her. She was a nexus of love, a manifestation of it. Through her, love flowed between the apartment’s inhabitants. By taking care of Alpha, the members of the family let each other know of their love for one another. I’ll go out with her. Look at this cute photo of her. I bought her treats. I’ll clean her. I taught her a new trick. I’ll open the window for her. I’ll take her along with me to the beach. She’ll go with us to the forest. She was the proxy by which they expressed everything they didn’t express as much directly and the icebreaker they unexpectedly needed. On languid days or weekends, when the apartment would be quiet, they mostly talked through their addresses to Alpha. She was their way of getting through the otherwise sagging silence—one fraught with questions, discomforts, and unknowns. Dmitri questioned with some sadness whether his sister or mother would have any reason to enter his room and sit there for a while had it not been for Alpha’s presence. She always provided the easiest excuse by simply laying there on his bed out of force of habit. Those small moments in which they’d linger in one another’s room, saying little, simply stroking Alpha’s soft fur. The slight underlying tensions in those moments where Dmitri waited to see whether his sister or mother would say or ask anything, when mostly it would just be a few words of affection towards Alpha, and then the resigned retreat from the room. Unresolved silence.

Alpha broke his reverie by getting up, as if in further frustration. He watched her, expecting to see her jump off the bed, stretch, then open the door with her small teeth to seek a more comfortable spot elsewhere in the apartment. Instead, she began to pace in a circle—once, twice, three times. Once her concentric movement reached its peak, she lay down again, but instead of sprawling, she made herself into a compact bun of fur: her limbs, folds, and curves all easily fitting into one another to allow the balling up of her. He felt like her circling did actually prime either the bed, or her, for maximum comfort. With her settled, Dmitri allowed himself to run his hand over her curved back, appreciating the smoothness. He hoped she would stay that way for the rest of the night.

The April night blew a cool breeze through the blinds into Dmitri’s room and turned his mind to the dark outside. Out there persisted wars, a nearly insurmountable sense of estrangement, and questions larger than anything in his unremarkable life. Everything weighed heavier in his state, all that which was already daunting even in the best of times, with him knocked out of life’s flow and romantic love’s grace. Among his peers he alone seemed trapped in stasis. Everyone else kept moving forward, and no one else seemed to be waiting for a death to usher in a new age. He chided himself for the thought, which minute by minute began to feel more like an excuse than some profound uncovering. Besides, Alpha was a spry, energetic hound, and her movements were still as swift, precise, and fluid as they’d ever been. He’d seen how gracefully she jumped over garden fences, daringly onto low walls—as if just to be taller—or just hopped through tall grass with a hare’s graceful spirit. Her advanced age did not seem to catch up with her energy, and there was no reason to think that her end approached anytime soon. He instinctively reached for the bright wood of his bed frame and knocked three times. Tfu-tfu-tfu. He figured that to hold off on leaving his room or to wait until making strides into the ever-intimidating world would not be correct or understandable.

With the idea being almost exorcised from his mind, Dmitri still couldn’t help but pause and think further about how her death would either unleash the love harboured within her or take all of it with her into… Where? Where would she go? Where would her small, familiar weight be taken, and by whom? Thoughts of the bureaucracies and technicalities of death soured his already darkened mind. He never had to deal with death’s bureaucracies directly by himself. It was an office he’d been kept out of by his parents; a part of life he would inevitably come to know in time—a part of life many his age had already known all too well. Each new, compounding thought came to roost on his neck, on his shoulders, and by the weight lowered his head until his gaze oozed into his lap. His spirit wriggled there like some unearthed worm, feeling the biting cold on its pink flesh and grasping for the safety of dirt. He imagined either crushing it in his fist or placing it onto Alpha’s back to see if she noticed it.

What would happen to the love that flowed through the nexus? Dmitri already experienced how quietly connections frayed—connections of any kind, whether familial or otherwise. The quiet kind of dissolutions were far more common than the tumultuous ones. They crept up and fed on inaction and silence. Sometimes, such disconnections felt like a natural inevitability, as if that were the only way for such ties to go. For if something becomes untangled, then wasn’t it simply meant to do so? Surely, whatever was meant to last eternally would persist through any silence or decision to not reach or speak out. So, when Alpha goes, the crutch will be gone and introduction of a new one soon after would be unlikely. Alpha, in her death, would have to transform from a nexus to a catalyst, and the love that is easily expressed toward her—which emanates from her—will have to find a way away from her warmth and soft fur. To persist in the chilled air unaided. In any case, he has to be prepared to face the necessary questions and steps even before her departure.

Then, before an unexpected, intrusive thought could make a foothold in his mind, Dmitri rushed to dismiss it, pretending he did not think it or notice its direction. Unimaginable—Imaginable, but thankfully, I would never—could never. Why even…? He got up from the bed to close the blinds, then picked up one of the blankets to throw over Alpha’s balled up form. Once she was pleasingly covered—her dry, black nose purposefully kept out of the blanket, to allow ease of breath—he lay down beside her. Despite the late hour, there was no sleep anywhere near his mind. It was kept awake by the knowledge of all the correct thoughts to have, all the positive courses of action he could—should—take, all the words he should say. He lay silent and still, as if close to paralysis. The only sound in the room came from Alpha’s muffled breathing under the blanket. He placed his hand on the heaving, small mound beside him as his eyes darted across the room’s darkened items—each a yawning void in the fabric of the room, each one an escape hatch to be lost in.

Alpha, we are small, and the world is too much with us. I have to choose to wrestle with the viscera of living while you live, rather than be forced into it—weakened—when you die. Sleep eventually found its way into him through the palm he lay on Alpha’s sleeping, covered back.

He never noticed how softly she slipped away.

BIO: Alexei Raymond is a writer whose work explores post-Soviet diasporic lives, moments of threshold, and fractured identities. Originally from the Middle East, he is currently based in Belgrade. His stories appear in The Bloomin’ Onion, Lowlife Lit Press, and The Crawfish. Connect with him at x.com/enemyofcruelty.