A brindled-and-white Great Dane named Lucy

[bertha katzenengel]

There was a huge fire on Post Office Road and I didn't realize it until I saw cars fleeing in the other direction - I was driving directly toward it.

"So that's why you ran away," I said to Lucy, the pet of a man I met briefly in a park. I'd picked her up moments earlier, running around in the street. She had a mate, whose name I couldn't remember for the life of me, but I'd know him when I saw him. So now that I'd seen the fire I kept my eyes peeled for him. Lucy stayed curled up on the back seat, complacent, while I searched, smoke stinging my eyes.

Home, I let Lucy into the house, and she greeted the cats, who loved her. I went to the backyard, which was filling up with muddy water. A storm was flooding us without rain. The Potomac rising? Cats and dogs were filling our yard and coming up the steps of the deck for refuge. They all knew us and we knew them.

I saw Lucy's mate and brought him in. He was limping. I still don't remember his name.

[shimmergal]

1. That's all?

Please say no, and go on. Not sure I catch everything that's going on here (is it political metaphor or parody, or just a story?) but I do like stories about dogs.

[petgoat]

2. You got my attention right away

Good images. We can all relate to rescuing endangered animals.

You jerk us around a little bit in time, though. First you do it in
the first sentence when you give us the fire before you give us the
means of the narrator's perception of it. Here it's justified because
of the arresting opening "There was a huge fire" and the economy of
the sentence--any other way you'd have to say you were driving, you
saw a lotof cars coming, and then you realized there was a fire.

I can't help wondering how you realized it was a fire--did you see
smoke above the trees? Flames shooting into the sky? Firetrucks
blaring down the road? Did you leave that detail out for a
reason--like you wanted to focus on Lucy?

The second paragraph you really jerk us around in time. Maybe it's
just me, but I like to see things in order--like a movie--rather than
"I walked down the sidewalk after I had descended the porch stair and
locked my front door" unless there's a real good reason to do it in
some other order. Here you're talking to Lucy in your car, then you
semi-flash-back to meeting her in the park, and then you pick her up.
Maybe there's a good reason to start with the quote, but did you try
seeing Lucy running in traffic before you chose that lead?

Putting the dog in the car you've skipped the opportunity to give us
more of the narrator's character--is the car clean or a mobile garbage
can? Does the narrator spread cardboard or a towel or something on
the seat before carrying a strange dog, or is the seat trashed anyway,
or does the narrator suspend normal rules of cleanliness? Or maybe
you've effaced the narrator for artistic reasons?

The detail of the flood is a surprise. Fire AND flood? What is going
on here? It suggests a disaster of far greater scope than the ordinary.

Your last paragraph very neatly closes this piece off--ties up the
loose end of Lucy's mate. If you had expanded that part--so that for
instance you went driving around looking for him, then when you
brought him back we might expect more. Like that maybe his owner
would be there. By making that part schematic, it has an
epilogue-like sense of finality.

This is really good, vivid, economical writing. I think it works very
well as it is as a "short short short," but I'd like to see
more--either fleshed out in its present form or expanded beyond these
few scenes to a longer piece that tells us more about this mysterious
flood and other things.