Useless

The Boss starts patting Charlotte. She happily wags her tail and smiles.

“He is a good tall dog” She thinks.

“Seems like she likes being around humans, huh?” The man says.

“Yeah, that’s why she was so easy to capture” The mustached man laughs.

“Hmm. She has marks all over her body, looks like she likes to fight” The Boss examines Charlotte’s body, face and teeth. He notices the scars and missing incisors “Well, I think she could be useful but there is an issue”

“Oh? What could it be?” The woman asks.

“Well, she is just a mongrel. I don’t know how we could make it work” The angry eyes of the gray-haired man look directly to the woman.

“We also thought about that, boss” The mustached man approaches “Take a good look, she is just like a retriever. Her offspring could easily pass by the breed”

“Except if they are born with those colors” The boss points at Charlotte’s colored area in her face.

“Then we could only cut their ears and say they are German Shepherds” The woman touches the dog’s ears and kindly folds them making a visual example “Two races in just one dog, people won’t notice until they grow and it’s too late”

“Hhmm not bad, but we can’t give them to our usual clients. I can’t let them lose their trust in us, besides that it’s a great plan and nobody gets hurt” The boss chuckles and the other two smile.

They decide to sit for a while on the furniture inside the room, open some beers and talk for a couple of hours. In the time that passed the boss took out the wad and gave each one a few bills.

“Okay, time to do a quick checkup” The boss gets up.

“We’ll be right here if you need us, boss” The mustached man rises his can of beer, the tall woman does exactly the same.

The gray-haired man takes Charlotte by the bandana and pulls her, she follows him inside a room with a rectangular table in the middle. He grabs her and applying force is able to pick her up with his arms, is very difficult to move due to her weight but is able to put her over the table. She opens her eyes widely in confusion.

“What is he doing?” She wonders.

He starts patting and scratching her so she turns around and shows her stomach.

“That’s it, what a good girl” He uses the left hand to keep patting her and the right hand to search something inside a drawer “Here is it, stay still”

BZZZT!

He uses an electric shaver and starts removing hair on the stomach area. She opens her eyes again and tries to look at the tool, the feeling of the vibration against her skin feels uncomfortable so she tries to move from side to side.

“Shh, shh. Easy now, I’m done” He puts his hand inside the drawer again. This time he takes out a white tube, opens it up and squeezes it over the dog’s abdomen. A clear gel comes out and touches her skin.

“It’s cold!” She moves with unease.

“There, there” He moves his left hand in circles spreading the gel around her belly.

“It doesn’t feel so bad anymore” She thinks, surprisingly it feels good this new and weird massage. She smiles and starts panting.

“You liking it? Sure you do” The man smiles, then extends his right hand and grabs a white chest of drawers that moves thanks to the wheels that has in the lower part, on its surface there is a machine that looks like a laptop.

He unfolds the machine and turns on the screen, only a black screen is shown. The man grabs an object similar to a pencil but instead of graphite it has a plastic circle, from where the eraser should be there is a cord that extends and enters the laptop looking machine. The man puts the tip of the object against Charlotte’s stomach and starts moving it while his eyes keep looking at the machine.

“Hhmm, nothing” The man mumbles, and keeps moving around. He moves his face closer to the screen and this one has white lines moving from one way to another “What? don’t tell me… well, at least...” He keeps talking to himself and moves the pencil to the lower part of the abdomen and analyzes the result on screen “This can’t be… THOSE IDIOTS!” the man throws the pencil to one side; his voice gets louder and makes a movement with his right arm, covering his eyes with three fingers “Useless! I can’t believe they made me lose my time like this” He gets up, walks towards the door, opens it and shouts “YOU TWO, GET OVER HERE NOW!!”

Just a couple of seconds pass but there are loud steps approaching, soon the two people that brought Charlotte here enter the room.

“Do you have any idea of what is that?” The boss extends his hand and points to the dog over the table.

Charlotte is still laying on her back, and moves her head in order two see everyone in the room. When her eyes make visual contact, she wags her tail and starts wondering when the weird massage will continue.

“Uh, a p-pregnant dog?” The mustached man’s voice stutters for a moment.

“Are you asking me or are you telling me?” The boss interrogates.

“I am… telling you, she is a pregnant dog” The mustached man has sweat all over the face.

“Well...” The boss takes a deep breath and then starts shouting “YOU’RE WRONG! That dog is completely useless! First of all, she is not even pregnant, it’s just a fat dog. And there’s another problem, this dog has been sterilized” both, the mustached man and the tall woman look one another. The boss makes a fake smile forcing his lips and continues talking “So, I ask you again… why do you even brought this dog for!? She can’t produce any offspring and it has such a bad shape that it will also be useless in any of the fights”

“Sorry boss, we had no idea that she was that way. We’ll take care of it” The tall woman says.

“You better be, now get rid of this piece of trash. Also use this opportunity to take the dead dog’s body of the one you told me earlier” The boss approaches the table; Charlotte looks at him smiling. He puts both hands at one side and pushes her off the table, she falls and lands on her feet but now is concerned.

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

The gray-haired man starts clapping loudly near Charlotte’s hear to scare her and make her leave the room.

“Move! Move! Get out!” He yells, she doesn’t understand why that nice person that was giving her a massage now is so violent but decides to leave the room as soon as possible. The man looks at his employees “So? What are you waiting for? This also goes for you. Move! Move!” He raises his hands pointing at them while the clapping continues.

They move around the place and grab a black plastic bag; Charlotte follows the mustached man to every place he moves. The boss goes back to the first room where he came from and slams the door. The tall woman walks to the corridor with the bag and opens the cage that has the dead dog inside.

“Hmm, better leave the collar here” The woman says while taking off the collar from the corpse’s neck.

“Oh? Why would you keep that old thing?” The mustached man asks after getting closer to her.

“So we can tie up the next one, that way she won’t be able to move when a male is breeding her”

“Oh, I’ve never seen how the process goes. I’m more in the dog fighting area”

“Well, it’s not something easy to see, some of them cry very loud and move like crazy. So it goes much easier if we immobilize their heads or legs, and this model of collar is a really good one. Now help me with the bag” The woman finishes taking off the collar and moves the dog’s body inside the bag that the mustached man is opening in front of her.

THUD!

The lifeless corpse enters the black plastic and falls all the way inside it crashing into the floor. The mustached man looks at the interior after hearing the loud sound it makes after entering.

“Hmm, maybe I should have held the bag a little higher” He says “Well, let’s get moving”

Charlotte keeps following him while they move across the corridor and finally get out from that creepy house. She turns around and looks again at it thinking in the gray-haired man.

“How sad, he really looked nice. But the place smells so bad, maybe that’s why he was angry” She remembers a time now in the past, when she was called Princess, she peed over a carpet and the girl’s mother got so angry with her that yelled for some minutes. Charlotte is assuming that the gray-haired man’s actions had to be in some way similar “Maybe he hates that smell” She remembers the time she was left for days in the neighbor’s backyard and had to urinate and defecate in the same area where she slept “I hate that smell too”

The tall woman approaches the Pitbull at the entrance and pats him.

“Diablo, be a good boy, okay? We’ll be back soon” she says.

“You sure love him, right?” The mustached man asks.

“Yeah, I find that breed really cute. And this one is just a cutie” She grabs the dog’s cheeks and gives them a squeeze.

“Well, you should pray for him to be strong. His next fight is this weekend”

The woman looks at the man with an angry expression then releases the dog and continues her journey to the van “I don’t know why the boss makes his Pitbull’s fight till death, aren’t the puppies a good income already?”

“It’s just greed and pride, you know the satisfaction he gets each time he wins”

They open the van’s doors and call Charlotte; she goes all by herself inside the posterior part. After she hops in, the man puts inside the bag with the dead dog inside and then closes the door. The tall woman is driving again and this time the mustached man is at her side, the engine starts and the machine moves, some minutes later they arrived to the highway.

The trip lasted at least one hour, the two people were talking all the way, their windows are rolled down and air enters from them as the car moves, this doesn’t let them feel the rotten smell coming from the bag in the back. Only Charlotte was aware of that hideous scent and it was making her head spin around.

“There! Go slower after that sign” The mustached man points one area alongside the road.

The car’s speed decreases and leaves the road.

“Finally, take the body and I’ll grab the shovels” The woman says turning off the engine.

The vibration on the floor disappears, the doors in the front area open and just some seconds after it, the door in the back area opens too. Charlotte can’t take it anymore and runs towards it as soon as light enters the car, pushing the door and completely opening it, the mustached man is pushed some steps back.

“Woah! what’s up with that dog?” He says.

When Charlotte touches the ground, she feels it a bit hard, there are dry leaves all around the place. Her stomach and head are still spinning and then…

BLAAARGH!

She vomits over a group of leaves; her throat feels like burning and she has a hard time breathing.

“Gross” Says the man looking at her, he is already carrying the bag with the corpse inside it “Well, thanks for not doing it inside the van, I guess. I hate dealing with dog barf”

The woman closes the van’s doors, in her hands she has two shovels with clear signs of being used a lot in the past “Come on, I want to arrive early home” she says entering the forest.

“Let’s go Charlotte!” The man enters behind her and the dog follows.

They move over a rocky terrain, and arrive to a part with eucalyptus trees. Some of the roots of these trees could be seen coming out of the ground, after going down a difficult path the woman stops.

“Is here, right?” She asks, the man nods and leaves the bag on the floor.

She gives him one of the shovels and they start digging where he pointed. They don’t chat during this time; the only sound is the one coming from the shovels entering the ground and removing soil from it. After a hole was created, the man puts his tool aside and grabs the bag again.

“Well, thanks for everything” he says and throws the plastic inside the pit. Afterward there was silence again as they filled the hole.

All this time Charlotte was near the mustached man and looking at them.

“Well, another one that leaves us” The man says as soon as they finished. The soil on the area they finished has an unusual rectangular shape.

“I can’t believe this place has never been discovered” The woman says looking around, there are several spots on the ground with very similar shapes to the one they just dug.

“And now the difficult part” The man looks at Charlotte, then he extends his arm and says “STAY!”

That word comes to her body so suddenly that she freezes, memories of all the times she has been left behind after hearing it are born anew. They turn around and start walking, she doesn’t want to be left behind, not anymore, so Charlotte walks behind them… but the mustached man notices.

“I SAID STAY!” He moves his hand again. Charlotte’s body trembles by hearing it.

Again, they turn around and continue their trip to the van, the dog feels panic growing in her heart and goes behind them at a prudent distance. But after she steps on some dry leaves and they produce noise, the humans notice again her presence.

“That damn dog” The woman mumbles.

“Leave it to me” The man says, he walks towards Charlotte and crouches for a second picking something from the ground “LEAVE NOW!” he moves the right arm and a rock comes flying and hits Charlotte’s left side below her ribs.

“What? Why is he attacking me?” She thinks confused and looks directly at the man’s eyes as he crouches again and throws a new rock at her.

This time she was able to evade it but the man doesn’t stop his attack and more stones come for her crossing the air with a fast speed. Some of these projectiles hit her in one paw, others in the head. She felt something more painful than the continuous hits, and it was the sense of betrayal.

“I liked that tall dog” She thinks looking with sadness at the mustached man who is yelling and picking more stones. And so, she turns around and runs into the forest getting out of their sight.