Chaos Inside A Pen

  Arnold dreamed that he was in a garden with Emma.   They run across the acres of hundreds of flower-like little children savoring the years of their innocence. The breeze smells of life and all its zest and sweetness as they fling themselves in a bed of technicolor; dipping their body into the pools of petals with laughter that made the birds in the birds in the sky appear and dance above them.   It was the kind of dream that everyone, even Arnold, would wish will never end until something just shatter than a breakable wall between dreams and reality.   And for Arnold, that was when one of the flowers suddenly flaunt a red eye right in front of him the moment she looks at Emma. It gave him the look that will eternally haunt even on his waking life.   “Arnold? Arnold?”   Pain shot right through the skull or Arnold upon opening his eye with his heart skipping some of its beat upon his awakening. The first to greet him is their ceiling and the voice of Emma ...

  “We lost another dog, Arnold. Now it's our Pomeranian. Do you know how much is that dog? 10K Arnold. Ten fucking thousand.”   Diego takes another puff from his Marlboro black cigarette while fighting some of his tears to burst from his sullen eyes. Arnold reluctantly pats the shoulder of his friend who lives nearby from their home; just a walking distance in the opposite street. Diego is one of those animal lovers who become content with canine and canine companions rather than those with the modern-day bipedal mammals; treating them like their own child or somehow like their lovers minus the sexual activity.   It was the third time he lost another one of his beloved pets. Just like his other dogs, his Pomeranian he named “Becka” was found lying in one of those darkened alleyways in their compound. It was obvious that there is someone behind it all along for all of his dogs died with a common denominator: a slit on their neck right in their carotid. Effectively draining...