Thomas Desanto / Fly, howling

Fly, howling Thomas Desanto

I watched as a dead man was stabbed seventeen times in the hills of Colorado. He was lifeless, unbreathing: the Russians still decided to pock his skin with the screwdrivers they carried in their back pockets. I don't know how he died. I caught them in the act.

I was on a stroll through the woods with my dog, whose fur was a blackened brown. His name was Fly. He howled when he smelled the blood. He panted heavier with each jutting stab, pulling me South, South-East, until eventually we stood directly in front of the Russians.

They didn't speak a lick of English. They were howling too, in their foreign tongue. The dead man was suspended upside down from a tree.

His body dangled (it swayed) in accordance with Newton's first law of motion: the force of a human arm (screwdriver in hand, or not) making contact with a body (dead, or otherwise still) will set that body in motion. So I watched physics unravel as the man spun slowly in circles from the rope tied around his ankles, bobbing clumsily back & forth, like the tilted wobble of a planet. His flesh sagged towards Earth. It looked like each wound had its own drooping mouth that spat blood.

Their eyes turned to me. They were mad, lunatic. I watched as their warm breath turned to fog & particles of snow. I ran home, taking Fly up in my arms, as he howled into the crook of my neck, his fur now stained with blood.