Covered by the Tangles of Fur

Her body was disappearing long before anyone noticed.

Long before anyone slowed down enough on that quiet Missouri roadside to truly see her, she had already been fading — piece by piece, day after day, breath after shaky breath.

Every bone in her body ached with the weight of neglect. Every attempt to move felt like scraping against a life that had forgotten she existed.

She had learned to take up as little space as possible, curling her trembling body into the roadside dust, hidden beneath a suffocating mass of matted fur that no longer resembled the coat of a dog.

She didn’t look like a living creature anymore. She looked like something discarded. Something that had tumbled from the back of a truck and been left to decay.

From a distance, she was only a shapeless bundle of filth — a collapsed shadow resting against gravel and weeds. Passing cars didn’t slow down. Continue reading…