Free The Man Who Watched the World End by Chris Dietzel

it was supposed to like being petted ? Or, more likely, would it think me strange for attacking it in slow motion?
    I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a pet dog. Would it sit at my patio door, barking all day and night at the wolves and bears roaming around outside? Would it wish it was outside with them? Would it think of Andrew and me as its family? If I fed it and rubbed its belly when it lay on the living room floor, would that be enough to override its natural instincts to view us as food?
    Every once in a while I catch a whiff of something terrible in the air, the smell of sickness in the forest, and I wonder if it offends these former pets’ sensibilities the way our old dog avoided the kitchen anytime my mom made sweet potatoes or the way it slept on the other side of the house each time my dad made a fire in the fireplace. Do the former house pets avoid the awful smells in the forest, or have they forgotten what it was like to have that luxury? Surely they know by now that if there is food to be had, even if it’s near an offensive odor, they had better investigate right away before another animal takes it.
    The thi ng that bothers me about this most recent stench is that it’s not always there, which makes me wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. Odors don’t just come and go as they please. A lot has changed in the world, but smells don’t just enter when they want and then leave after they’ve outlasted their welcome. If the odor was consistent I would at least know I wasn’t going crazy.
    Yesterday I was in the living room watching Revenge of the Nerds with Andrew when I got into a coughing fit. The smell of spoiled food or decomposing trash was there as soon as I stopped coughing. Five minutes later I realized the smell had vanished again. Can the wind do that? Can the breeze send a smell my way and then retract what had been offered? Some visual proof of the wind would have been nice, but the trees outside were motionless.
    “Did you smell that?” I said to Andrew, a question usually reserved for after I’ve passed gas (no one is around anymore to tell me to act my age).
    The smell didn’t come back , but I couldn’t get the thought of it out of my head. I’ve never been to a landfill, but that’s the image that came to mind. I imagined a heaping pile of rotting trash with birds picking at the remains, bulldozers working the entire time to cover the huge pile of waste.
    This is coming from the same guy who, a month ago, was sure he smelled rotten food in the refrigerator. I barely have anything in the fridge anymore since the processor can make fresh food whenever I need it. It’s mostly used for storing leftovers. But even with a couple of bins of food stored in there, I was still sure I smelled something spoiled. Finally, I emptied the refrigerator, smelling each container as I put it on the counter. When I was done, the counter was full of plastic containers, the fridge was empty, and the smell had mysteriously vanished.
    At the same time I smelled the pungent odor today, I swore a brown bear was roaming in the distance at the edge of the forest. It walked just in front of the tree line, never coming into the open of the community, never disappearing into the forest, always content to stay at the edge of both. It was clearly too big to be anything other than a bear. But then, right as it went into the shadows under a tree, the animal’s outline combined with the darkness and vanished. It hadn’t gone into the woods. It hadn’t rested on the ground. It simply hadn’t been. My eyes created the creature, let me follow it through three different yards, then simply stopped letting me believe it was there.
    I need to get down to one of the final communities before I lose my mind and my brother is left with a ra vn my dreamedo ing lunatic. My fireplace will be going all day tomorrow. It’s a matter of time until someone sees the smoke and asks if we would like to go south with