The Blacks Dogs

I was ten the first time I saw them.

It’s like a lot of things; like being in a pit and desperately trying to claw your way out; like being on the edge of a cliff and struggling against the wind; but to me, it will always be most like the slow, steady pursuit of the black dogs. The slavering beasts always on the edge of vision. I think it’s the way they move that scares me the most – how casually they circle me, how predatory their indifference.

I first saw them, out of the corner of my eye, when I was ten. They scared me so much I decided - for the first time, but not the last - that I would rather die than see them again. I cried for weeks, and spoke of blood and death and knives, and made my mother cry. But I was ten, and I soon forgot what I had seen, as ten-year-olds will. The dogs went away.

But they changed something in me. Just a glimpse of their strong jaws, just a taste of their animal scent on the air; I was watched by their awful yellow eyes, and I was changed.

Once the black dogs have spotted you, and tasted your fear, you are never free.

When I was twelve they returned – no doubt attracted by the heady perfume of adolescence – and they gave me instructions this time. ‘Cut yourself’, they said, although the black dogs do not speak in a language you would ever understand. ‘Make yourself bleed,’ they barked, they whispered, they hissed, ‘Do this and we will leave you alone’. I appreciated this, and I learned to keep them at bay, simply by drawing a thin line of blood across my wrist. They taught me this trick, though I don’t think they did so out of sympathy; they simply weren’t ready to take me.

The black dogs returned, again and again –at the edge of my vision I would catch their bright eyes watching me hungrily.

The black dogs are nothing if not patient.

When I was fifteen they were closer than ever, so close I could smell their meaty breath. I drew lines across my wrist and my arm faster and faster, until there was no skin left to cut. I dragged my useless arm behind me, leaving a bloody trail for the dogs to lap with their rough tongues. I think the smell of blood became too much for them, and soon they had me circled. I swallowed pill after chalky white pill, and as my eyes closed, the black dogs slowly receded. Their lips pulled back, and I swear they were smiling.

When I was in the hospital I saw them in the corridors, I saw their yellow eyes every time a door opened, I saw them crouched at the end of my bed. There were people there like me, and I know they saw them too. It’s why the hallways echoed with our cries every night, it’s why we never slept and our eyes were wild in the morning.

The doctors called us crazy. They called me ‘depressed’, and gave me pills, and the pills worked. After a month in the hospital, I stopped seeing the dogs, and I went home. They weren’t waiting for me there, and they weren’t waiting for me at school, and I know longer saw them waiting, crouched and taut, at the end of my bed. My arm healed. I learned to sleep again.

I thought I was safe. I forgot that the black dogs are nothing if not patient.

When I was nineteen I saw them in my dreams. They stalked me at night, and the only way I knew to quiet them was to cut. My blood made them hungry, but the smell seemed to satisfy them, though I knew it wouldn’t for long. They circled me again. This time they sunk their jaws into my neck, and I knew that I needed to die, again. I took pill after pill, again. The dogs receded, again. The story repeats itself. I left the hospital, again. My arm healed, again.

It’s now been nearly ten years since I’ve seen the dogs, nearly twenty years since I first saw them. I am terrified they will return. I know them; they know me. It doesn’t matter how far I run, they will always know where to find me. I know their awful yellow eyes, and I know their hot breath, and I know what they want. They know the irresistible pull that blood and razors have over me, and they know that when they find me, I will do what they ask me to; they know, and I know, that the blood will only satisfy them for so long. They know, and I know, that the next time they circle me will be the very last.

The black dogs are waiting.