A woman lays in bed. She absent-mindedly traces a figure eight over Jack’s lower back. His coarse curls twist between her fingertips. She holds her eyes closed despite the dappled light shifting over her eyelids and commits to mind her daily affirmations. I am strong, she thinks. I am adaptable to change. Right now, I have everything I need.
The woman consciously relaxes her brow and matches her breathing to Jack’s own deep rhythm. Jack yawns, rolls onto his back. She feels the mattress slump under his weight and the covers pull tight across her chest. She couldn’t possibly move.
Since he first came home with her, Jack has preferred to sleep with his head toward the base of the bed. He imagines himself smaller than he is, leaning his body tight against her contours. As he shifts, he lays his head over her shins and presses his feet toward her pillow. She softly rests her lips against the pads of his toes. This morning, they are softer than usual and his toenails do not scratch at the edges of her nostrils. The woman opens her eyes. There is a man’s foot in her face, a man’s head resting on her shin, a man in her bed.
Like a water balloon rupturing in slow motion, she shudders. Her body braces to scream. The sound catches at the back of her tongue—dragging low and heavy. She throws herself toward the ensuite, her mind solely on the lockable door. Her foot tugs back, knotted in the mint green flannelette top sheet still pinned beneath the man’s weight. Disturbed, he jumps—releasing the sheet and, with it, the woman.
Her forehead meets the lip of her mid-century bedside table, cracks the teak veneer. Blood lifts as her skin peels apart. Water spills from a glass tumbler she’d left untouched overnight, pools and suspends the blood in a rosy swirl. Her eyelids flutter, tears well. The room shimmers. She is sinking.
Wet and persistent, the man licks at her forehead. His tongue tugs at her broken skin. The woman groans. The pain is hot and comes in waves. She squints to focus on the gleaming circle of brass swinging back and forth in front of her eyes: Jack +61 429 873 211. The tab hangs from a worn, brown leather collar, tight around the man’s neck. She pushes him from her. He complies, sits back on his heels.
‘What the fuck have you done with Jack?’ she hisses.
He cocks his head slightly to the right and whimpers.
She takes in his appearance. The man is small—proportionately so—and covered in dense, dark hair. She averts her eyes in discomfort as she notices that he is crouched naked—his knees splayed, his penis hovering above the ground behind his muscular forearms. She can take control of this situation, she thinks.
‘I asked you a question.’
Her tone feigns authority. She rises up onto her knees and pushes her shoulders back as she deliberately carves out each syllable. For months now, her online spiritual advisor has been preparing her for a moment just like this.
This is my space, she thinks. This is my space and I will claim it back.
The man continues to stare. She watches his mouth open, anticipating an answer. Instead, he licks his lips and begins to smile, reaching his arms forward. She flinches. He places his weight into his hands and arches into a downward dog, then drops back onto his heels once more. His lower jaw hangs slack.
This guy is fuckin’ nuts, she thinks and begins to skirt around the perimeter of the room. She grabs her phone and the t-shirt dress she left on the floor the night before, turns and runs out of her apartment and into the eighth-floor hallway.
The woman hovers beside her neighbour with an ear pressed to the door of apartment 803.
‘What’s the plan?’ the neighbour asks.
‘Shh. Not so loud. We’ll lose the element of surprise.’
Both women hold heavy cast iron skillets in their hands.
‘What if he’s already gone?’
‘I didn’t hear him leave. Can you just back me up, please? I’m worried about Jack.’
‘Okay. On the count of three. One. Two…’
The neighbour turns the handle. The women charge through the door, brandishing the pans above their heads.
They see the man. At first, he lopes towards them, holding a pink plastic pig in his jaw, then retreats. The toy falls and honks softly as it bounces on the floorboards.
The man trips over his own feet and thuds onto his back, holding his limbs tight to his body. He whines and dribbles urine over his stomach. The women stop short, lower their would-be weapons, and stand in bewildered silence.
The man pants, rolls onto his belly, and drags himself forward. With every few inches of ground gained, he lifts slightly to display his stomach to the two women. His pupils flare, almost eclipsing his amber irises.
The neighbour takes in a sharp breath and gently tugs on the woman’s hand.
‘Sonia, look. He doesn’t have any balls.’
Sonia looks down at the man, supine at her feet. Beyond him, mapping his short journey, the floorboards shine slick.
‘You don’t think,’ starts the neighbour.
Sonia sits at her office cubicle and observes Jack through the computer monitor. She watches his foot kick against a metal grid. He wakes. She leans forward in her ergonomic Herman Miller replica with the end of her pencil in her mouth. Her teeth depress the red and black coating, leaving soft indents as she waits for his head to fall back down.
Yesterday, she called in sick for the third consecutive day. She travelled forty minutes by train, twenty-three minutes by bus and eight minutes by foot to buy a crate large enough for Jack to sleep in.
This, she thinks as she stares at the man in the cage, is merely a temporary arrangement. Simply a matter of misplaced energies.
Her advisor, Prudence, had warned her during their last session about the dangers of manifesting while mercury is in retrograde; how she must wait until the planets are direct before committing her thoughts to action. At the end of the session, Sonia paid the $19.90 monthly subscription fee to Prudence’s daily celestial guidance app.
‘I’m so glad to see you’re feeling better,’ comes Pascal’s voice from behind her shoulder.
Sonia hastens her cursor to minimise the open window. Jack’s stream slips from the screen. In its place is the product page for a leather chest harness. The solidly built model wears a leather cap, combat boots, and a jock strap.
‘Jesus! I never picked you for the type.’
Sonia blushes, laughs, and minimises the second window. Her end-of-year financials report appears as a welcome relief.
‘I’m not sure I am.’
‘Are you at least using incognito mode? Pete’s back on probation for sharing a video of himself in Vanuatu with Amy from marketing.’
‘And?’
‘He was wearing a thong. Can you imagine?’
‘Gross.’
‘Just be careful, okay?’
‘I’m not a pervert like Pete.’
‘Says the woman watching a man sleep in a cage when she ought to be finessing those finances,’ Pascal says and taps the tip of Sonia’s nose with his index finger.
Sonia bristles and stares at the polaroid Blu-Tacked to her computer screen. In it, she is smiling with her arms looped around Jack’s chest. They are at the dog beach. His coat is sodden and peppered with wet sand. He is staring at her. His tongue hovers millimetres from her face. In the white space beneath the photo she had scrawled My boy in black Sharpie.
The neighbour arrives earlier than Sonia is expecting. She stands in the doorway holding two plastic bags.
‘You’re a lifesaver,’ Sonia says, as she takes the bags and lunges over a pile of seasonally coloured dog clothes.
She dishes out the takeaway dal, roti, and rice, onto three plates and watches her neighbour tentatively step through the open plan living space with her hands tightly clasped behind her back. The neighbour sits on the very edge of the grey linen couch cushion.
‘Love what you’ve done with the place, Son.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m still trying to make sense of it all.’
Sonia balances the three dishes in her hands. One she gives to the neighbour, the second she places in the middle of the floor. She takes the empty seat, whistles, and begins eating from the third. Jack lopes out of the bedroom and laps at the plate on the floor.
‘Hasn’t figured out cutlery yet?’ the neighbour asks.
‘We’re still working on attire.’
Jack is the first to finish. He continues licking at the plate, pushing it with his tongue around the two women’s feet. The neighbour reaches toward the plate. Jack snarls. The neighbour pulls her hand away.
‘Sorry. Just leave it, please,’ Sonia says.
‘What are you going to do?’
Sonia stares at Jack. Today, his body hair lacks its usual lustre. A patch is missing from his thigh where he has been gnawing while she’s out. A paunch is settling over his torso.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she says quietly.
Jack whines, paces in a circle, and nibbles at the harness Sonia forced over his shoulders minutes earlier. She knows he needs to toilet. She checks her phone. It’s earlier than ideal: 12:24 a.m. The city will be in a drunken buzz for another hour at least, but this can’t seem to wait.
He’s already left a puddle in the bathroom. A puddle she can deal with. Picking up the shit of an adult human man, that’s a totally different story.
She takes the leather leash. He hops in rapid succession, turns, hops again. She catches herself smiling and forces the corners of her lips down.
Sonia walks Jack out through the alleyway behind her apartment building. A rat skitters away from the skip bins belonging to the neighbouring Chinese restaurant. Jack tugs at the leash. She yanks hard. He skids back clutching his hands to the collar.
They come to the street, she pokes her head out, observes left to right and tucks her hair into her hoodie.
‘One block,’ she whispers.
Jack zigzags from street curb to stoop, breathing in the pluming smells of the city. Sonia scrolls through her phone. Your significant relationships are up in the air. Relinquish control, little goat, and let gravity do its job.
The cement around her radiates heat stored from the day. A block becomes several as her thumb and attention span find their own cadence.
‘Who’s a good boy then?’
Sonia looks up.
A man is ruffling Jack’s hair. Sonia adopts a tight-lipped smile and tightens the slack of the leash. The man nods a staccato acknowledgement and turns back to a group of people all wearing polished leather and latex of varying modesties. They continue to talk loudly amongst themselves.
Sonia gazes from the group to the bar where they spilled from. The sign reads Kennel.
Jack pulls on the leash. Sonia allows herself to be dragged inside. The bar is dark and smells of smoke machine and sour beer. An electronic beat thuds evenly.
Sonia notices a crowd of eyes fall in her direction. Jack tugs towards the dance floor. She looks down at her patterned yoga pants and the sleeves of her burnt-orange terry towelling hoodie. Here, she is out of place. She pulls Jack to her and feels around his neck for the loop of his collar, releasing him into the crowd. He bolts and is quickly absorbed among sweaty backs and bellies.
For a while, Sonia stands at the bar and watches Jack leap and spin, unaware of the beat as others undulate in near unison. He seems happy here, she thinks and turns to leave.
She slides the leash onto the countertop and steps out into the night. She counts her footsteps, inhales through her nose and exhales through her mouth. She is breathing in acceptance, releasing possession. Car tires screech a block behind her. She feels her phone shudder with a short vibration. The notification bar tells her that mercury is now, finally, direct.