My Home: Disturbed The smell of flesh was seeping out from under the front door when I arrived home with a friend at 2:00 AM that night, a year ago this week. Minnie was dead and I knew who killed her right away. Her little body from her front legs to her back legs was torn wide open. She was nearly severed in half. The top of her head had been chewed all the way to her skull. The clean, white slate of bone was glistening from across the room. Long brush strokes of deep red covered the surface of the hard wood floors. Bits and pieces of Minnie decorated the walls and the white doors along the hallway like little trinkets. Bookshelves full of novels with their spines exposed were splattered with body fluids and evidence of a life that had painfully ended. Whatever occurred in my home was violent, brutal, and downright disturbing. Zoe was a pit-bull mix I had rescued six years earlier. She and Minnie, a Jack Russell Terrier, had been living together since I rescued Zoe. Zoe was not an aggressive dog and I raised her from the time she was a little, lanky, awkward puppy. I took her to work with me at the bar often and everyone knew and loved her there. Those who knew Zoe were shocked to hear that she had brutally killed Minnie. I stood next to Minnie’s body thanking the heavens that I was high as a kite. I would not have been able to stomach the scene if I were sober. My friend stood behind me in shock and confused by my reaction. I did not cry, scream, or get angry at all. Instead, I just called someone to come take Minnie’s body away and proceeded to pour myself a drink. I wiped the blood off of Zoe’s face with a rag and locked her outside away from the scene. As I was apologizing to Minnie out loud for what had happened to her, I picked up the bits and pieces of my little dog’s flesh, flushed them down the toilet, and grabbed a bag of clothes. When her body was taken away, my friend and I left and stayed somewhere else. Being alone was not an option for me that night. The next morning came and the sting of reality set in with it. I knew that losing only one pup was not the end of the tragedy. It was clear to me that Zoe would have to die too and there was no other option. The deep ache in my chest felt as though I was dying a thousand deaths. I returned to the house and everything in it had become illuminated with the light of day. The sun beamed down through windows, penetrating the aftermath as if it were glorifying something sacred. I slowly filled a mop bucket with hot water and floor cleaner and started the trying task of undoing Minnie’s demise. For the following months I walked and traced the blood-stained floors of the house and tried to figure in my head what might have happened before I got home that night. I thought my home was supposed to be a place of peace and safety but it had become a very sinister and dark place instead. Minnie’s body lay under a tree on the South side of town and Zoe’s body lay in a corn field on the North side of town. My girls died horrible deaths and I could not comprehend why. The most disturbing place in my world had been slowly surfacing right in front of me and I never saw it coming. I chose not to see the signs. I was convinced that everything was perfect and it seems to me now that turning a blind eye to the underlying issues was something I had gotten used to doing without even realizing it. Maybe subconsciously, we are all covering up the tell-tale signs of the ticking time bombs in our lives.