Contrary voice monologue for my script writing class (February 2025)

 

I’ve never been squeamish, I was never phased by paper cuts, or skinned knees, I picked every scab no matter how tough the skin was, I would just dig and dig because I liked the way blood trickled then gushed, but that was normal, I guess. Kids pick at things. The first time I remember feeling like I was wired a little differently was in the third grade. My father was bringing me to a dentists appointment, I was getting five cavities filled. We were on the I-35. We were driving behind a silver pickup truck, and in the bed of the truck was this pristine golden retriever, it looked straight out of a purina commercial. Its canine’s were grit, its eyes were squinted. People always say they can tell when an animal is happy, I’ve never seen it, they just sit there, but this time, I don’t know, this dog was smiling. My dad was cursing the guy out for having the dog in the truck bed to begin with. “The fucker’s gonna go flying!” “Everyone on the I-35 drives like a jackass!” I never took my father for a prophet, prophets don’t chew tobacco on the way to their kid’s dentist appointment. I guess he wasn’t betting on losing dogs this day. I Suppose someone did lose his dog though. Sure enough a minivan cut in front of that pickup truck, the dog barreled out, hit the pavement like wet lard and got flattened out by two or three following cars, it was a couple lanes over, they’d moved from in front of us to about two lanes over. My father’s crass but faint of heart, he started retching into his tobacco tin, bits of his Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich, and black bile. I’m sure this all transpired in around five seconds, but my brain took this mental snapshot, of the puddle of golden retriever, the way the red blood waxed maroon on the asphalt, the fatty intestines and stringy tendons you could pluck like the strings of a harp, bones jutting out of the mush, all different lengths. I wanted to pick the slop apart, keep all the teeth of the smiling dog, make a xylophone from its ribs, I bit my lip so hard I busted it open, the dentist had to glue it back up. I guess I knew, when my father gagged on the steering wheel, when the prosthodontist came in to seal my sliced face, i sucked up the blood and wished it was the dog’s. I guess I knew then, that something was just a little out of alignment.