Monologue 6: Hero

It’s the end, but I have no regrets. I’ve faced hardships and beaten many odds, and I’ve had a good life despite my start in it. A courageous life. I have nothing to be ashamed of and much to give me a final swell of pride before the drugs take hold. 

I was so young when they took me away for training. It was tough. Very tough. Relentless. But you don’t know anything else. You learn pretty quickly to resist every natural urge you’ve ever had and to look to someone else to tell you what you can and can’t do. It’s perverse, actually. And every time you’ve learnt to control one thing, there’s some new, totally counter-intuitive skill to learn. But I learnt to please and I learnt fast. Anything I hated, or resented, I logged for later, but I got on with it and I was good. Very good. Thank god I was.

The consequences if you don’t make the grade are pretty gruelling. The unlucky ones are too clueless to get it. They spend the rest of their lives chasing their own tails, like most of the population, and they don’t even know how pointless their lives are. 

Then there are those poor bastards who know they didn’t cut it. They’ll always know that they failed in the one purpose chosen for them. And even though they had no choice, not a hint of agency, they had a job and they were not up to the task. They showed promise, but failed to deliver. It doesn’t matter how far they run or how loved (or not) they are, they’ll never escape that.  

            

And then there are those of us who succeed. We naïve, enthusiastic idiots who think we’ve won. I’ll always remember the day I graduated from trainee to fully-fledged leader. I thought I’d take off, I was so excited, so absolutely proud. I had no idea that I was walking into a situation that can only be described as institutionalised abuse!

So my first assignment was with Robert. Poor Robert. Long, lank hair so greasy, I swear it used to drip on me. Skinny little stick legs, shoulders like a coat-hanger and spindle arms, everything brittle, and then this round belly like a woman’s – like it had been stuck on him as a joke. He had cold and clammy skin, especially on his hands, and a reek to him like rancid milk. I'm sensitive, but I swear people could smell it too. He made my life hell. It’s not that he was cruel, exactly. Self-centred, blind and blinkered, but not intentionally nasty. Just very demanding, and very… graceless. 

I know it was my job to look after him, and they can teach you to care for them, but they can’t make you love them, can they? Nothing in the world could have made me love Robert. He wasn’t happy in this world. He didn’t belong here. And I didn’t belong there, so… 

One thing I’ll say for him is that he was very determined. At my cost, but nobody could tell him there was anything he couldn’t do. He would always take the stairs, never the lift, however many floors we had to take, and however long it took us. So stairs it was, for Robert. We were at his mother’s house, a wastefully grandiose place with built-in impracticalities. Robert refused the ground-floor guest room every time, so up we went, past the gaudy landing of the upstairs up the narrow stairs to the attic, past the tight bend, right to the top and… poor Robert… He’d have got away with a few broken limbs if it hadn’t been for that bend. Broke his little stick neck. The world is a cruel place. 

Sandra was my second. Couldn’t have been more opposite to Robert in physicality, but they did share some traits – their odour, their determination, and their unfitness for this world. A walrus of a woman, who would probably bounce back from any number of flights of stairs with nothing more than another reason to shout a lot. She was mostly in a chair, but wont to insist on walking from the entrance of the Top Shop fitting rooms to take me and her irritant aura into a cramped cubicle to try on neon rags and nasty, cutesie teeshirts. 

She had more to her than Robert (not hard) but she was mean. She had a tiny, hard little heart in her. She would often forget me at mealtimes – I think intentionally – and she was rough with me, even though I was only trying to help. I was at her beck and call and I served her day in, day out. I did everything in my power to make sure her every need was met, and the extent of her ‘gratitude’ was expressed through shouting, shaking me by the neck and kicking.

There’s a crossing in Leeds, just out of the station. It’s just like all the big, fast one-way streets in the town centre, but this is two-way, and a bus lane. It’s notorious – lots of accidents there – and it’s on the route to Top Shop. Poor Sandra. She had just ‘accidentally’ kicked me very hard. Shortly after, I cried out. She must have misread me. I didn’t mean, of course, for her to think the coast was clear, but off she went, lurching into the path of the 217 to Beeston. Nothing I could do. A tragedy, no doubt, and yet release. 

I was reassigned, after a short spell of respite, to Jenny, a non-descript young creature, pale as bread dough and placid. The challenge this time was boredom. I was as good as useless there. My one task was to take her shopping once a week, walking with her through the park, past the ducks (still hard to ignore - I've always loved ducks), getting her safely across the main road and to the precinct and all the way back. There’s not much purpose in a person with so little vitality. I tried to distract her, to entice her, to lead her to water, if you like, but she refused to drink. And by then, my patience was quicker to wane. So one fateful Tesco Tuesday, on the way back, it seems I became distracted by the ducks. I lost focus, went too fast towards the lake. She stumbled. She was always very weak anyway, and the cold water… pneumonia. Tragic. 

So once again, I moved. To Pete's. I liked Pete. Pete was different. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. He was autistic. Clever and kind, but he wasn’t great with other people. He liked his own company, and me. He was good with me. I found him very clear. But I’d got a taste for it, you see. I’d got hooked. Imagine my life – unceremoniously taken from my mother and into training, forced to learn a trade I had no say in and sold into slavery – paid only in food and shelter, but with no say, no choice of who or where. I was assigned and there I had to stay forever... until I discovered that I did have choice, and that I could make a difference, that I could affect my own future and make a statement for myself and my kind. I liked Pete, but he represented the oppressor. He still owned me, and decided everything for me. Yes, he was gentle, clear and kind, but by then it was bigger than him; bigger than me. I had no choice. 

But Pete wasn’t easy. He didn’t rely on me to cross the road, swam 60 lengths every single morning and was in raging good health. And he lived in a ground floor flat, so not even any stairs. I had to resort to my baser instincts and use an element of surprise, brute force and my teeth. I really did feel sad about Pete, and I hadn’t planned ahead. I’d hoped they might believe he was mistreating me, that I'd acted in self-defence, but there was no evidence so they have decided, ‘for safety’s sake’ to end my life. For whose safety? Who looks out for our safety, this army of slaves in service? 

So as the white-coat comes close with her gentle voice, stroking my hair and trying to distract me with a biscuit, for Christ’s sake, I refuse it and hold my head high. I watch her closely as she shaves a patch on my leg, and I watch the needle as she brings it close and pinches up my skin. I shall keep my dignity as the poison floods my veins. I have fought a heroic battle and left a legacy for those who come after me. I have spread the news wherever I’ve been, through parks, in the streets and on every corner. My own kind will not forget me – a hero among slaves. 

Inspiration: Service Dog Kills 4 Owners (thanks, Serin Thomasin).

Service dog, Hero, 2013-2019