Journal: A Dog and a Barbed Wire

Awaken by the hot breath of decaying sausages; I look up to find a panting dog, its drool patting my face, as if it were consoling me. With the realization of a dog resting on me sinking in, I jumped against the tree for support, resulting with sudden recoil on the dog’s part. It scattered away, the claws scratching the lonely surface of the earth with each tread. A crazed infatuation in following that dog overcame me. Instinct won over and I had to quicken my pace to keep up.

Silence, nothing was heard except for the random bullets that whipped past and died on impact. Every now and then a leaf would fall and wake the Jews, even the dead ones. The continuous scratches of claws were deafening. The barbed wire attached itself onto my clothes as if decorating it. ‘Where on earth was this Dog taking me?’ Before I finished thinking that, the dog disappeared, stealing the last words away from me.

I ran as if to keep up with the nothingness that surrounded me, and an empty vacuum pulled me beneath the surface. A bloody hole, when on earth did someone put a hole here? The annoying fact that a hole without my consent, had just been dug up, distracted me from the reality that I kept falling, a really long fall. Even the adrenalin was blocked out as a result of my frustration with the ‘hole’ issue.

‘Whoa’ this feeling overcame me, first my feet were reaching a warm light, then the air turned me around and I was tasting the yellow with my tongue, still falling. I felt ‘lovely’, as if the dog’s breath had acted as an anesthetic, a natural high and I landed with a dumb smile on my face. I turned around dreamily; everything was so abstract and yellow.

I wanted to eat it all up, and then a gaseous stench started to grow and inflame my lungs. Choking on my thoughts, a cloud started to fill up the tunnel, a tiny door is spotted further up, and beyond is a wall clothed in weapons, there’s two to choose from. The obvious one is the smaller one; the larger one would result in my death. I reach for it, take the pick out and throw it at the entry. The explosion splinters my eyes with dust and gas. I barely crawl in.