A Dog Who Went to Space For Your Daughter

by Isla Lader

Andrei is told that past the cenotaph shaped like a dog’s house is where the cosmonauts end and the bitches begin. After that, it’s going to get a little messy, a tad mundane–shovels are not allowed in the burial zone, so you’re going to need to use your fingernails.

You’ll have to dig like a real dog, or like a child, to find a piece of the two-hundred plus pack that made it past the last layer of the blue sky.

The soil feels cold. The soil feels concrete, compact. Your nails die in the pursuit of your goal. The soil doesn’t feel strange, though. If it does feel strange, that’s just because you think it should. You expect more danger, more magic in the remains of the program that once employed your entire village to do maintenance and janitorial work.

Now there’s just a groundskeeper who you can pay off, and a cold hill where all the dogs went when they came home.

There should be more steps to this, there’s not even poured concrete to separate you and them.

Any piece will work; skulls aren’t any better than femurs or tailbones. It will be hard to believe this could be simple. Andrei settles for an incisor. The groundskeeper nods, puts out his cigarette, and drives one of the only cars in town back to the burnt out compound.

Andrei asks what probably multiple other parents have asked, “It won’t smell, right?”

“It’ll smell like a dog.”

“But it won’t smell–”

“Dead? You’re asking if it will smell dead? You’re worried that when I bring them back that they’ll smell like soil and shit and detritus? Every dog smells like that. Every happy dog should smell like that.”

That’s the point, is left unsaid between the two men. He’s right. You should be more worried that they’ll smell like chemicals, linoleum floors, rocket fuel, and intrusive respiratory tubes.

From the tooth, the dog starts to grow. As you watch meat, sinew, and cartilage blossoming, you think of your daughter telling you about how somewhere in the world, starfish can be chopped into bits and grow back from a single spine.

When it’s too late to go back and the new member of your family is docile in your arms, the groundskeeper will give you the rundown of everything you need to know about space dogs.

They’re all mutts; they’re all petite; they’ve all survived two long winters; they’ll play really well with your kids; they like to lick your nose; they’re all women. And they love you. They all love you.

They love you enough to go to space. They love you enough to die up there. These ones, all formerly buried under the hill that’s past the bodies of the cosmonauts, they’ll love you enough to not mind at all when they wake up under your roof and in your daughter’s arms.

Isla Lader is a writer, educator, journalist, and has worked in grocery stores. You can find her fiction in Cosmic Horror Monthly and her TTRPG work across multiple venues.