What? Another Ficly? It’s fiction time.
The dog waited at the foot of the stairs. Once or twice that week it crept up laboriously, heaving its old, heavy body up, one step at a time, it’s distended underbelly dragging on the long beige rug that ran the length of the staircase.
When it reached the top, it would pause and sniff, lacking the energy to growl at the odor that permeated that region of the house. More than anything the dog was hungry.
He had not seen the woman in days, and consequently, he had been without food. The kitchen was empty, and the air in the house was growing staler by the hour. The dog would grunt and slide back down the stairs with several graceful thumps. The sound of claws clacking along the edges of the stairs where the wood was exposed from under the carpet was not to be missed.
Back at the bottom, the dog would turn and hold itself as steady as it could before resting back on its fat haunches.
Four days and no one had come looking for her. The dog was the only thing in the world that knew she was gone.
Originally on Ficly: http://ficly.com/stories/20143
