bone (cadaver)

          The leash, short and leather, linked the dog and its owner.  Fastened loops at each end were drawn taught around the throat of the brutalised animal, frenzied and pulling against its constraint at one extremity while at the other the loop cut across and around the owner’s fist, progressively tightening.  The sight of this disturbed her as much as his booming voice filling the room, telling her to get up from behind the desk and say something, as if she could have.  Her words were thrust back down her throat by his bellicose performance.  She sat silent and transfixed by the deranged dog, until he kicked it hard in the ribs.  That’s when she stood up and heard her own voice saying, ‘Let it go!’  He stopped shouting and allowed his hand to release its grip - a controlled gesture with a slow mean ease, in downright contrast to the hell-for-leather leash that whipped past and vanished from his palm, indeterminately. 
          The dog ran and jumped at her throat, knocking her from her feet.  Impressive canines pierced the exposed skin of her neck.  The owner backed out the door, attempted to appeal to the dumb creature but exited with his commands contracted and pointless because the dog had other ideas.  Ferocious jaws penetrated down into her trachea, split the esophagus and ripped out her pulsing jugular.
          At the very top of her vertebral column there was a string of bones - they interlocked to create an articulated attachment with her skull.  The dog tore these bones from her body.  He carried them out of the room, and away - over fences and across alleyways until he reached a distant mud-filled garden.  In the far corner, behind a dry tree stump, he kicked back dirt to form a hole in which he buried the bones. 
          Unbound from his tyrannous owner, and with the slack leash still around his neck, he exercised his freedom to dig the bones up again and to spend time developing an attachment to them.  There were seven ring-like cervical vertebrae for him to play with - each individual bone was comprised of a series of convex and concave surfaces, extended lips, lateral masses and a central cavity. 
          One of the bones was especially compelling - the atlas above the axis on which the head turned.  This was the uppermost bone of her vertebral column and it was a grave and beautiful object.  It had the widest most generous aperture making it nothing more than an ivory ring around a hollow opening. The dog loved that about it.  And subjected to his protracted attention it soon separated from the rest of the string. He pushed his tongue around its contours, slobbering and sniffing, sensing this bone was in some way very special, although he could not appreciate that such a peculiarly empty object once formed a crucial link that connected her spine to her skull. 
          He buried the bone again only to dig it up, to lick and chew on it, to suck and rebury it.  Every time he secured the precious bone in the ground, out of sight, he could not settle until he reassured himself that it was still there.  Every time he rediscovered it, infused with the scent of his affections, the sensual complexity of his treasure reaffirmed his instinct to indulge his desire.  But the dog’s repeated action was compulsion rather than choice.   He buried his bone only to dig it up again and again.

bone.m4a