Stripe
You're Dark
Which DNAngel Character Are You?
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Dark looks really spiffy. And I guess his name really is Dark, it's not some crappy translation. Word.
It was either earlier tonight or a couple nights ago that I'd had a dream. In the dream, my dog Cracker lay on the floor in the doorway to our home... bleeding. He was either dying or he was dead. The rest of my house was a mess... the TV and VCR scattered on the floor and everything shoved aside and broken. I stood over Cracker, petting her softly. Her eye was open... but she wasn't looking at anything. She really was dead.
This isn't quite so much a dream as it is a memory. No, Cracker is still alive and my house is in perfect condition... but the similiarities this has to a past memory are interstellar. A repressed memory. This is journal entry will be looking at one of the traumatic moments of my past, so if you're light-hearted or something... I suggest you don't read further. In fact, I'm almost sure that I don't want to write further... but the past can't simply keep being repressed, I suppose.
4 or 5 years ago... I was a Freshmen in High School. My life at the time was messy, depressing, and erratic. I had few friends in school... a constant victim of bullying at the time. Being shoved around, picked on for my naivitity, and emotionally crushed on a regular basis. 'Course, I never cried at the time. Crying wouldn't do anything... it wasn't even an option. It was barely more than a year before that my father had died away from home. They'd never sent his body back to the country, so there was never any funeral or autopsy to find out how exactly he'd died. It was as if his death hadn't even happened, almost as though he just became a memory. But it was that memory that brought tears to me every time I looked into the mirror and saw his likeness, every time I closed my eyes and saw his face, every time I picked up a ball or turned on the TV and remembered him doing the same every day things with me. A cried a lot then... I cried more than I'll ever cry again. So when I got picked on growing up, tears weren't available. There were worse pains than being a loser or a victim to someone's stupid joke. Much worse things that I'd already began repressing for my own mental health. 'Course, that didn't stop me from being happy either. I had Final Fantasy, some other games, and some anime. Life wasn't totally hopeless... I also had some responsibilities. My brother had a dog called Stripe at the time. We called him stripe because he was this brownish color, but he had this white stripe going down his nose. He was the cutest puppy... he was the only dog I'd ever seen to be completely frightened of cats and he was just a fun little pet. Whenever I was in my room, he'd jump on my bed and lay with me... play with me. He'd be a friend and a companion, and at that time in my life, that's all I'd really needed. Stripe went everywhere with us... when we went camping, he was there. When we through the country side to visit our relatives, he never left our side. He was a genuine pup. The best kind of dog that you could ever imagine. And in more ways than one, he was man's best friend. He was mine too. Stripe was also there in one of the worst times of my life. After my father'd passed away, it wasn't long before my mother met someone else. They went out for maybe a month or two before he asked my mother to marry him. And she accepted, regardless of what her family thought or felt. My brothers didn't mind her new fiance, Gary. They thought he was a stand-up guy. Someone who could bring us to better things since the loss of the head of our household. I never liked Gary though. Gary always gave me this negative vibe... and on a regular basis, he would yell at me for being the disobedient "son." But I could never see him as my father... The thought of that even today sickens me. But that didn't stop him from trying. From ordering me around, yelling at me, and treating me like shit. Furthermore, I couldn't even talk about my father in the presence of him. Even though my Dad no longer lived, Gary hated him passionately. He hated him because my mom had loved him more, he hated him because my mother beared her children, and he hated him because my mother and my brothers still loved him. They would always love him more than Gary, and he simply didn't like that. But that didn't stop the wedding day when my mother and Gary were wedded. She seemed happy though, and at the time my mother's happiness was more important to me than my discontent with the asshole she'd called her husband. Gary's daughters moved in later... and when it came time for the whole "Family" to move to our new home in Aurora, things started to become difficult. Gary's daughters refused to help with the move... they refused it completely. He didn't seem to mind though, he only minded that me and my 13 year old brother weren't helping enough. I don't know how much he expected a 14 year old boy to be able to move, but that day he would constantly yell at me. So my mom eventually talked to him... she told him that wasn't right that he was making me and my brother work our asses off and that he was letting his daughters(both of which were older than me) get off without doing anything. They talked in private for a bit, until later mom simply left. She got in her car and drove to the new house without saying a word to everyone else. And me and my brother were left responsible to finish the packing under Gary's supervision once again. It wasn't until later that evening did I realize why my mother had left. I thought they'd gotten in a fight or something, that Gary would say something insensitive about my father or me and my brothers. I figured it was just some passing thing that my mother would push aside after driving for a few minutes and letting off steam. It never occurred to me that this was the beginning of the domestic disturbance that would soon become my lifestyle. So when she told me he'd hit her, I didn't believe it. I couldn't... I couldn't believe that things could actually get worse than they are. And over the next year or so, things got worse... considerably worse. My mother regularly became a victim to his abuse, no matter how hard I tried protecting her. And so did I. But my mom would never let me call the police... she would never let me protect myself. And all I could do to protect my younger brother was to tell him never to leave his room when Gary was home. And this went on for awhile. Months, really. Months I'd lay awake in fear that he'd come in and beat me bloody in my own bed. Months believing that he'd hurt my mother beyond her capacity and me and my brother would find ourselves alone with him. Months trying my hardest to hold my tears back as I stood between him and my mom, praying that he'd show some compassion. That was my life at the time... but it wasn't all bad. I still had Stripe. I couldn't obviously take Stripe to school with me. We left him in the garage whenever we weren't home. And of course, Gary didn't like Stripe just as he didn't like me or my brothers. One day we'd returned home from school to find Stripe had gone missing. I was lucky that my older brother (who'd been force to stay out of family affairs and involvement completely because of Gary) worked for the Animal Control of Aurora. He'd found stripe in the Fox Valley area, without his collar... As if it it had been removed. It was clear that Gary was responsible. He'd tried getting rid of our dog, as though Stripe didn't deserve to live under his roof or something. And everyday later, I was so paranoid to come home and find Stripe missing again. So scared that my best friend would be lost in the woods or something without being able to protect himself. And Stripe being the little terrier he was couldn't protect himself. So everyday I'd come home and I'd make sure was okay. Well fed, watered, and I'd take him out. One day, Bob was stuck at school with detention so I came home by myself. The house was empty and not a sound echoed as I set my bookbag down and stepped to the kitchen. Through the kitchen was the garage, so I eased my way inside. Stripe was laying on the floor... sleeping with drool coming from his mouth, I thought. I quitely stepped over to him and nudged him. But Stripe didn't move... he didn't jump up like he normally did. He just layed there. I pet him a little bit to see if he was sick, but there was no feeling of his breath... no rise in his chest or side. And after closer inspection, I noticed that his eye was opened a splinter... and in that eye, I saw pain and suffering that I couldn't even imagine. I immidiately stood up and stared down and realized that the drool from his mouth wasn't drool at all. It looked like such on the garage concrete floor, but my heart burst open and my eyes cut into tears once again when I realized that it was blood. Stripe was dead, laying in a small puddle of his own blood. The animal shelter came later that evening to pick him up... their autopsy showed that Stripe had been strangled. To think that someone would clasp their hands around the frail neck of an animal and choke it until it spit up blood... What kind of person would do that? What kind of person would be so cruel and inhumane? I kept asking that, and by the fact that Gary didn't come home that night, I knew what kind of person would do that. Gary murdered Stripe in our home... after attempting to get rid of the dog earlier, he went to great lengths to see that our happiness was broken. But yet again, my mother didn't call the police. She didn't tell anyone that she knew, just as I did, who the murderer was. I didn't know what to do, what I could do or what I should've done. I kept finding myself escaping to my room more often so I wouldn't have to be around people... because I was just too unhappy to care about the world. But my room wasn't a good place to hide... because whenever I layed down on my bed, I remembered Stripe jumping up and playing with me. I remembered how his doggy smell was the same scent that filled my room, and I remember how he kept me warm in my arms on those cold rainy nights. Like my father's death, I couldn't close my eyes or do anything without crying again. And even though the crying was considerably less, the pain was just the same. My best friend had been killed in cold blood... and also like my father's death, there was no actual proof of death for Stripe. Sure, we had a body and we knew how he died... but there was no justice. Gary never faced any charges for animal abuse or animal murder, because of my mother's stubbornness and her "love" for him.
The memory of Stripe will always exist somewhere in my heart. He will exist everytime I come home and Cracker or Eddie(my two dogs) jump from their resting places on my couch and welcome me in. He will exist whenever I see another dog run and hide because the cats are just too ferocious. And he will exist whenever I'm alone in bed and some warmth or joy comes over me, allowing me to peacefully rest. It's better for some things in the past to be remembered. And right now, while I so fondly remember him... it feels okay to cry again.
I miss you, doggy.
-Ben.