Have you ever seen nothing? Like, true absolute nothing. Not, I opened up the curtains and nothing’s changed since 1953 nothing, like actually nothing. No trees, houses, grass, birds, squirrels, treats, cars, roads. Just endless nothingness, dust stretching infinitely in all directions.

My name is Max, and I’m a fictional dog. It might be a bit ridiculous that a dog still exists so many million years after the collapse of civilization, but, well, I’m writing aren’t I? I mean sure, by writing I mean drawing what I vaguely remember letters to be in the empty canvas of dust that I’ve lived in for only three hundred thousand years now, but I still have something to say.

The question I would ask looking in on the situation is: How did a dog survive the sun devouring the Earth? Well, it’s pretty easy. My author didn’t have the balls to kill me off. 

 

Neutering joke.

 

It’s too sad. She was told. Why does the dog always have to die? Her stupid friends would ask. Isn’t it a bit cliched? Her editor remarked.

Man. Screw them.  

To Her it probably meant nothing. I lived! I wasn’t a major contribution to the story either way, and I stop existing at the end of the book, right? Because there’s nothing left, right? The last words is the end of the universe. A happy ending is smiling as you slip into the void.

Well, I would beg to differ.

My owner, who nearly watched me die (I lived starting in the third draft of the story), passed about forty five years after the end of the book. He died happily, the wife he worked hard to impress over the course of the story was there by his side when he left, and he seemed happy. She died a few year later, but she also seemed ready to go. She became really sad after he left, like her whole world was with him.

In a way, the world only ever existed for those two to find each other.

I’d never really thought about it until she left, but the fact that I was alive and hadn’t aged was strange. I thought dogs were supposed to live for 12, maybe 15 years I thought. I’d seen the neighbors’ pets age and die while I just took my eternal youth for granted.

For awhile, I embraced the life of a stray. It was pretty exciting, and I got to travel a lot. I did the trip across America a few times, once on foot. During a particularly painful trip across New Mexico I discovered I didn’t need to eat or drink. I thought I was a god amongst dogs, someone must have crossed the letters. I still ate all the time of course, food was delicious!

I miss food.

 

The world evolved very slowly around me, but people came and went rapidly. It took a few thousand years for humanity to reach its peak. I remember seeing a show called the Jetsons back when I was first written, and it’s laughable what they thought the future would be. Flying cars, automated sidewalks, robot maids, all that hilariously trivial stuff. The peak of technology still never quite nailed flying cars, but they were unnecessary. How do I describe it? People moved around in these elevator-like things, on quick copper rails.

I suppose the robot maid thing wasn’t too far off. They didn’t have a body, though, it was more like a living house. People grew comfortable in them. Hell, I grew comfortable in them. It was nice. I didn’t have to go outside to walk, I didn’t need to wake anyone up to be fed, life was all right.

She had quite the imagination to dream a world where that future could happen.

 

I lost my ability to smell a millennium ago, give or take a few decades. It wasn’t my body shutting down the way that other dogs’ had, though. I lost my scent to a lack of stimulus, there was nothing to smell any more. Dust was dust, there was nothing else. Even the rocks smelled like dust.

Some days I wish that the same would happen to my eyes too. I could imagine I’m once again in the lap of my owner without waking to a cruel reality.

I was once a Christmas present. I was a puppy in chapter three gifted to my owner from his parents (before, of course, they divorced) and he loved me so much. We used to play for hours on end. In the time between chapters I’d find endless joy in the warmth of his lap. He’d stroke my ears and ruffle the back of my neck, right at that spot I could barely reach with my legs. I would’ve taken a bullet for him.

Not that taking a bullet means anything when you’re an immortal, unkillable beagle.

I could have meant something. My author chose to let me fade into obscurity,  I could have been a symbol in Her story. My death could have represented the change in my owner’s life. I could have died saving them, or trying at the least. They might have gotten together if she had to comfort him because of my loss. I could have been the lynchpin of the story. I could have mattered if She had let me, but She couldn’t kill me off.

 

Your story is so good.

They said

But don’t kill the dog.