He never lets his resentment for it show, though. Even though right now all he wishes is
that it would drop dead in front him and free him of his curse, he treats it with the grudging
respect it deserves. Because, he knows it will never let him go. It wasn’t a nice animal, but God,
was it persistent.
Even as a child, he tried to tell people that the dog was hunting him, torturing him. Of course,
nobody believed him. His parents took him to psychologists, counsellors. It took him a very short
time to realise that only he could see the dog. And it took even longer for him to realise that the
dog didn’t exist in the physical world.
That doesn’t make it any less real, though.
He thinks of his family. He knows that they will hurt forever when they find out that he had
disappeared. But he is done caring about others. He is done pretending to be okay for the sake of
people. When he had talked about suicide, his “friends” had made sure he didn’t do it. Why? If
they really cared for him, they should just let him die! They’re just as selfish as he is.
It’s at this point that the harsh conditions of the desert overwhelm him, and he falls to his
knees, a silent scream of anguish lodged in his throat. He realises that death was creeping closer.
He realises that all he wants in his final moments is to take one final look at the world and not see
the shadow of the beast tower over him. All he wants is to be happy. All he’s ever wanted was to
be happy.
He’d been betrayed. Over and over again. There was never any reason for the agony that
burned him inside. Nothing bad had ever happened to him. He is just cursed. And it stings and it
burns him that he can’t find any other explanation.
The scenery around him begins to dim, his breathing slows to a low level. He realises that he’s
no longer on his knees. He’s lying on his back, looking up at the heartless black figure of the dog.
Please… just leave me. Please… Just let me die. His blinks are slower and closer together now. The
world is spinning.
It is then, at the doors of death, that he realises something: the passage of time is inevitable.
No matter whether he dies or lives, the world will continue to spin. It is then that he looks
and sees nothing. No dog. Just the vast plains of the desert. The dog’s disappearance was an
inevitability as well. The only reason it existed was because he was lost without it. Because he let
it define him. Now though, he knows that he doesn’t need the dog to live. That he can continue
existing if he just lets time pass. The desert represents to him the world as it shifts, morphs. He
could never let himself be a constant in that landscape. That’s why he needed the dog, to remind
him constantly that he wasn’t just part of the world around him.
He needed to allow himself to melt into the desert, move like every other grain of sand. He
didn’t need the dog. He never did. All those people were right. The dog was only real to him
because nothing else was. Somehow though, being close to death threw him back into survival
mode--that was the main point of living, wasn’t it? To survive, to continue.
With that thought on his mind, he banishes the thought of death and thirst and shakily gets
up. He stumbles slightly, but catches himself, adamant not to fall, and begins to walk, back to the
new life he had, a life where time passes whether he is happy or sad. He knows that he doesn’t
need to die. He doesn’t really know what he needs to do in the long run`, but he does know one
thing: right now, he needs to walk. He doesn’t look back. He knows the imprint of his fallen body
has already been erased by the Gobi Desert.
