Limping

Adam Bignell, November 2025

I was told there would be a comet. Normally, after dinner, I sit in my dark backyard and smoke three Camels, and stare at the Monoblocs, one at full strength, the other with three legs, which still works if you keep your feet on the ground. But I’m worried the comet will skip my little patch of backyard sky, hemmed in on all four sides by corrugated aluminum awnings. Strangely, for reasons I don’t understand but which feel connected, I skip the Camels as well, as if their smoke will obstruct the starlight.

So I stand on the front porch tonight, scanning a celestial meridian, from horizon to zenith to horizon and back, pondering the light pollution.

I hear it before I see it: A syncopation of splatter and claws, dripping and clicking out of phase. Plus breath, panting much faster than the steps. Then it lurches into view, its rear driver-side paw curled against its narrow thigh. The foot juts incorrectly. Blood pours from the fold. Too much blood, too fast.

But the mutt doesn’t whimper. It just pants, fast, like its life depends on it, which it does, as it staggers, right to left across my field of vision, a distraction upstage, the curtain replaced by a chainlink fence. Nails and blood continue their symphony on the pavement, almost mistakeable for each other. I watch the animal till it passes, off to the left, behind some abandoned sea cans, which have been here longer than I have, longer than the Monoblocs. Eventually, I can’t hear the claws or the blood or the ragged breath at all.

I step off the porch, into dust. Is the dust the same on Mars? I reach the trail of blood, and look through the chainlink fence. Orange lights like cowboy campfires, each with their own mourning harmonica, flicker across the rolling, rotten, fetid, fecund city, which extends to the horizon, to the edge of the earth, which will soon be forgotten.

I must make a decision. I can follow the blood and find the stray curled up among the abandoned shipping containers, where I will watch it die. Or, I can retrace my steps, fetch a warm towel from my home, and provide the animal some comfort as it passes. If I hurry, I might even be able to save it.

I turn right, where the dog came from. It began bleeding somewhere. The trail of blood winds through rubble and debris. Through trash and around abandoned automobiles, their tires long-looted. Eventually, I need to crouch through a hole in the chainlink fence.

I’m in a yard, a bit bigger than my own, with a bigger patch of sky, more grass, less dust, no Monoblocs, littered with more butts. The blood is a straight shot. The screen door is open, and ectoplasm roils inside.

I stand on the threshold and peer. The blood proceeds, reverse chronologically, across tile, then carpet, to a woman in a living room. She is sitting on a plump, stained, sunken couch, watching television, which I can’t see. It’s saying something in a language I don’t understand. She slowly swivels, and returns my gaze.

Her eyes are like a goat, or an iguana, or the city birds which allow themselves to be crushed by buses in the southern squares. She is not angry. She is not shaken. She is not sad. The light of the night news flickers across the crags in her varicose face, casting deep shadows into her sockets. She will die here. And so will I.

I return to the yard, and kneel where the grass is worn away. I press my thumb into a splatter of blood, but it’s already dry.

The comet passes overhead.