Blading the Dog Goddess, by Derrick Martin-Campbell
“The blood had always been the only part that moved her.”
Fiction by Martin-Campbell
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One morning, when she was a very old woman, so old that nearly everyone who knew the secret that she was still alive had already died themselves, a 200-foot-long, ruined monolith washed up on the beach in front of professional wrestling personality Miss Elizabeth Hulette’s private San Juan Island beach home. As the dawn paled to grey, she eyed the thing suspiciously through the window for nearly half an hour, watched it until, finally, her coffee cold, she gave up, gathered the dogs, and headed out to investigate.
Liz was the only one who lived on the island, who even knew it was there. The dogs, about forty of them, had all once been wild, island dogs and they smelled like it, like salt and fur, smells she knew well. Her retirement, like so many of her comrades, had been severe. The dogs adored her easily.
“Wait, I don’t understand, describe it to me.”
“It’s like a city block,” she said, squatting on top of the thing as the dogs ran and sniffed circles around it, “it’s made out of - I don’t know - cement, seaweed. There’s enough metal that my hands are covered in rust from the pipes I used to climb up the side. I’m on top of it now.”
The voice in her cell laughed softly in admiration, said, “Oh Miss Lizzy, oh miss Lizzy Lizard.”
“Laugh all you want,” she said, “but I really don’t know what to make of this. We both had so many enemies ...” She stared down the length of it, out towards the receding tide of the sound, no opposing coastline visible. “I just don’t know.”
But that deep, old voice was too grateful to hear from her. “Miss Lizzy the Valkyrie,” he went on, “the dog goddess,” and so she said no more for a very long time. She had long stopped enjoying her emotions, had built her life here to be a reprieve from those things, but still she called him sometimes. He knew better than to ask anything of her when she did, but hearing the concern in her voice was too much for him that day, the feeling that she might yet need him, for anything, and he risked, “I miss you so bad sometimes, Princess.”
She pressed her lips tight and flat together, like the horizon.
After dinner, she decided the best thing would be to assume no message or intent, even as its physical presence lingered, even in the dark. She was not sure it would wash out with the tide. Just to be safe, she cut the thin skin of her old-lady arm several times, bled into several buckets filled with seawater, and placed them on and around the thing. The dogs loved it when she did this, tipped two of the buckets over drinking from them, chased her flashlight over the sand and even out into the waves.
The blood had always been the only part that moved her.
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Derrick Martin-Campbell is a writer living in Portland, OR.
His work has previously appeared in Metazen and Thought Catalog.
More information and links about Derrick Martin-Campbell can be found here.
And if you liked reading "Blading the Dog Goddess" by Derrick Martin-Campbell, you might also enjoy reading his meditation on Akira Kurosawa entitled, "The Filmmaker in Forest Park," here.