Her body was disappearing long before anyone noticed.
Long before anyone slowed down enough on that quiet Missouri roadside to truly see her, she had already been fading — piece by piece, day after day, breath after shaky breath.
Every bone in her body ached with the weight of neglect. Every attempt to move felt like scraping against a life that had forgotten she existed.
She had learned to take up as little space as possible, curling her trembling body into the roadside dust, hidden beneath a suffocating mass of matted fur that no longer resembled the coat of a dog.
She didn’t look like a living creature anymore. She looked like something discarded. Something that had tumbled from the back of a truck and been left to decay.
From a distance, she was only a shapeless bundle of filth — a collapsed shadow resting against gravel and weeds. Passing cars didn’t slow down. Continue reading…