After Mom got too tired to get out of bed, that man she insisted on calling my dad couldn’t be bothered to pick up the slack.

He took money out of her purse and walked with me to the store. I made friends with a little girl while he was inside. Her face tasted like peanut butter.

When he came back out, that man had a big box and he stood there by the trash can pulling everything out except what he needed. He stuck some of those cords in his pockets and a stack of paper, too. The whole time he was mad at me for making too much noise and helping too much.

Finally, he pulled the important thing out. He had to crack it out of a white shell that sounded terrible when the pieces of it scraped together.

The thing inside was metal and plastic and beeped really loud when he turned it on. I already didn’t like it, even though that man said it would be my new best friend. It had bared teeth on its face that wasn’t a face. That man played with his phone and it beeped some more. He nodded, then leashed me to the side of it like he was hanging a water bottle on his belt.

“There,” said that man, “no more walks. The robot will handle it, now.”

It did other chores, too, which I had some complaints about.

After the robot finished its weekly chirping, that first Saturday, it decided to mow me because it couldn’t tell the difference between my back and grass. That man told mom it was “an update glitch, probably a one-off”, but he still said he wanted his money back.

Mom cried so hard at the doctor’s that she started hacking the same way Cricket does right before she throws up a hairball. Doctor Carr gave me some special snacks and a shot—I hate shots but it’s OK because she says I’m a good dog—and then I woke up with one of those awful things wrapped around my head. Mom came in and said she loved me and she was so sorry. I smacked the plastic into her knee, trying to put my head on her lap, and she laughed and told me I was the best boy but then she cried even harder and it didn’t matter how fast I wagged my tail.

It was hard to make Mom feel better when she was so sad.

The next week, the robot took me on a walk when I needed to go out in the middle of the night, but it didn’t bring me back home. The neighborhood in its head must have messed up because it took me a different way than normal and then it just froze. It was hard to see with that thing around my head, still. My paws were so cold in the snow that I started crying, then barking.

This skinny old man threw his window up and leaned out from between his curtains. He yelled “will someone shut that damn dog up?” but then he squinted and his eyes moved over to the robot. He put us both in his truck, which had a lot of old smells layered on top of each other, like sweet smoke and birds and mud. The sniffing kept me distracted while he drove to a new doctor’s office.

There was a squirrel across from me in the waiting room and he was mad. He couldn’t move his legs right and he was cooped up in a little box like Cricket likes to sleep in. He said he’d claw my eyes out if I ever got anywhere near him and I believed him. That place smelled like death and everybody else in the room, including some of the humans, seemed scared, too.

The old man, whose name was Clem, said: “It’s gonna be OK, boy. We gonna find out where you belong.” He yawned a lot but he didn’t seem worried like the others.

The robot sat next to the coffee machine and tried to talk to it but it must not have liked the robot, either, because it didn’t answer.

The doctor there wasn’t as friendly as mine. He seemed kind of distracted and smelled sweaty but he did call my mom.

Mom was so tired when she showed up she looked like she might fall over. Clem made her sit down and drink some coffee. They talked for a while about that man she insisted on calling my dad and the robot and me. I got a lot of scratches behind the ear and around my neck. I always get itchy under the collar. Eventually, Mom started to look better and sound better. Clem gave me one last pat on the head.

“Thank you,” she said.

Clem said, “you have my number.”

Mom always buckles me in next to her on trips, but this time the robot took my seat. “Sorry, buddy,” she said. “Not this time.”

I had to lay in the back seat floor. At least there were some good crumbs down there.

“Stay,” said Mom. She got out of the car and took the robot with her.

When I heard the apartment door unlock, I climbed up in the back seat so I could stick my nose out. That window got stuck a few months before and the plastic peeled back when I nudged it. I knew Mom wouldn’t be happy but I really needed to know what she was doing without me.

The light went on in the bedroom and that man started yelling. I really didn’t like him. I knew I was supposed to but he wasn’t nice to mom and he wasn’t nice to me or Cricket, either. He even pouted when we paid more attention to Mom or she paid more attention to us than to him. I growled but I was supposed to stay in the car and be good, so I stayed.

From outside, I didn’t know what that man was saying but I didn’t like how he was saying it. Cricket jumped up into the window and her shadow shook.

The robot rolled back out of the apartment. I hoped it would trip on the front step, but it didn’t.

Mom went out the front door not long after and started waving her hands at that man’s car. “Get out!” she said, like how she says it to me when I try to use the kitchen at the same time as her.

That man actually did it. He had a big bag on his back and he looked so mad.

Then he turned really fast toward Mom with his phone out and I had a bad feeling so I jumped out the window. I caught my back legs but got through and landed in a puddle on the ground. When I got up, the robot was holding out big scissors and rolling toward Mom. She was backed up against a bush and didn’t have anywhere to go.

I ran as fast as I could and jumped on the robot. That man was laughing and I wanted to bite him but the robot was still moving. It rolled around so its face that wasn’t a face was grinning at me and it tried to chop me with the big scissors.

I barked as loud as I could and people started opening doors in places I couldn’t see. There was a weird wail in the distance like the robot’s family was mad.

I jammed the cone down between the blades, holding it so it couldn’t cut Mom. Cold metal scraped my nose. A drop of blood fell onto the face that wasn’t a face and I cried.

All of the sudden, I heard a loud crack and the scissors started to slow down. Another crack and they stopped.

Brakes squealed and car doors opened.

There was a thud behind me and a soft human bark. “Oof.”

Then: “Stay down, asshole.”

Someone wrapped their arms around me. I’m not little, anymore, but I could smell her. Mom had picked me up like I was a baby, again.

“I love you so much,” she said. I could smell salt. “You’re never going for a walk alone, again.” We both fell down in the grass. She said, “oh, bud, your breath.”

A few minutes later, Clem was there. He said he had a bad feeling and came when he heard the noise. Mom gave him a big hug.

She started going to work again, after a few weeks, but she never leaves Cricket and me alone anymore. It’s good because we’re both more scared than we used to be. Sometimes I have to lick Cricket’s face to wake her up from bad dreams. Then she sticks her tail straight up in the air and runs out of the room. Mom says I’m a good boy if I wake her up, but sometimes she tries to push me away and starts crying before she opens her eyes.

Clem comes over while she isn’t home, to walk me and play with us and take naps together. He falls asleep with the light box on a lot, especially watching those stories with a lot of horses and bangs, where all the voices sound like metal and everything is the wrong color.

Sometimes he stays for dinner and we watch something called Ant Eeks Road Show—whatever that means—the three of us and Cricket. There was a little flat, round robot vacuum on last week and Mom turned the light box off. Clem talked to her until she quit howling. I got her face really clean, too.

Mom did keep part of it, though. That man’s robot. It’s the face that wasn’t a face, all glued back together. It sits on the table with her keys, baring its teeth at anyone bad who thinks about coming inside.

– AJ Miller

Author’s Note: This is my first publication.