"Home" - Chapter VIII

VIII.

I awoke again. I was laying on the floor in my living room. I felt strange. Almost as if I had been awoken in the middle of a heavy sleep. My mind was working incredibly slowly; I couldn’t form a full thought.

I looked around me, and discovered that I was alone.

The light coming through the window put the time of day at around noon.

I sat up and pulled my phone out of my purse, which was lying right next to my hand.  I was right; it was just after noon, so I guessed about four hours after I had left in the morning to go to the electric company.

I called my boss and told her that I wasn’t going to be in.  I felt sick and needed to sleep.

I sat down on the couch and put my head in my hands.  I couldn’t decipher whether what I remembered had actually happened. It didn’t make any sense to me.  Remembering the dog attacking me, I looked down at my arm. It was bruised and I could see the teeth marks in my arm.  So, I knew.  I knew what I thought had happened, did happen.

I dialed Adam’s number.

He picked up the phone, and I started to tell him what happened at the electric company.  I related the conversations with the employees, and paying the bill, and my anger over everything.  I then started to recount what happened after I left the office, and suddenly, I couldn’t think straight.

I was trying desperately to think.  I left the office and went to the stairwell, because I didn’t want to take the elevator. I hadn’t told Adam about the elevator!  That was important.  Then… what happened in the elevator?  Everything was becoming muddled.  I ended the conversation, letting him know that we were supposed to follow up with someone on the electric bill.

I went to lay down, remembering to set my phone alarm to make sure I picked Micah up from daycare on time.  I could hear sirens outside, as I started to drift off to sleep.  It sounded like they were close.  Almost right in our backyard.

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My alarm went off at 4:15.  I still felt fuzzy and disoriented, but was aware that I needed to go get Micah.

As I walked down the stairs, I noticed a black shape lying on the rug in the foyer.

I felt a flash of extreme happiness, and I rushed down the remaining steps to greet the dog.

I knelt beside him, and he looked up at me with his green eyes, stood up, and rested his head on my thigh.

“I missed you boy!” I said, “But, I have to go get Micah. He will be so happy that I finally got him a dog!”

The dog yawned, and lay back down on the rug.