Loyal

 

It was the moment right after they had made love passionately, while they snuggled naked on the bed, Eleanor asked him to sing for her.

“Never My Love,” she said when he asked what song she had in mind. “It’s my favorite.”

And he sang it to her, while her eyes were closed.

“Your loyalty is all I demand,” she told him after he finished singing.

“If you’re scared of me leaving,” he said. “Don’t be.”

He kissed her and added, “I’d be loyal to you like a dog to his master.”

She smiled contentedly, and he understood where she was coming.

Six ex-boyfriends, all of whom she loved dearly and faithfully, all deceived her and broke not only her heart but also her soul.

A year after he vowed to love her forever, he met Michelle, who was younger, prettier, sexier, wilder—and they had an all-consuming relationship.

But one day, exactly thirty days after he had dumped Eleanor, while he was taking a shower, a strange, mind-blowing, fantastical transformation happened to him—he became a dog.

He ran and asked for help—but all he could do was bark.

He wasn’t originally a human, he later learned, he really was a dog. And through some black magic, Eleanor and a wizard transformed him into a man, hoping that loyalty and subservience, the dog’s foremost traits, would remain in him.

It did not.

All the frailties of a man devoured him.

And Eleanor, her heart and soul probably now broken beyond repair, decided he should go back to being a dog..

“Who’s a good boy?”

That voice distracted his train of thought; he looked up and saw a man and a woman, probably in their sixties and both with wide expectant eyes, standing outside his kennel inside that animal shelter.

“Are you a good, loyal dog?” the man asked him.

He shook his head vigorously.

The man and the woman laughed. “Hey, did this dog just answer me?” said the man.

“Yes, and he seems to say no,” the woman said. “But I like him, let’s take him home, I’m sure, he’d be a loyal companion to us.”

A familiar song by The Association played in the car’s stereo while the man was driving, with the woman beside the man, and him in his cage at the back seat.

You ask me if there'll come a time
When I grow tired of you
Never, my love
Never, my love

You wonder if this heart of mine
Will lose its desire for you
Never, my love
Never, my love…

He vowed to be to this couple what he failed to be to Eleanor.

Loyal.