The Last Days of Vincent Vega

Vincent Vega awoke in a cell

The guards were giants

when they pushed food at him, he ate

 

He stayed in his cell and heard yelling, pleading, heartbroken weeping and a silence from those who had given up.

 

Every few days, the gargantuans went up and down with a water truck; everything was sprayed:

inmates, bedding and anxious diarrhea

 

The light was on or off, the glimmers of sun shifting sometimes.

 

He became aware of himself beyond pain and hunger as his swollen eyes allowed him to see his encrusted lashes, the stained floor, the steel mesh of his confines; however, he became aware that he could smell keenly now, that he could hear things further away and he began to concentrate on the noises of the building: the slight shift in air, a shushing sound when what must have been an exterior door was opened. The ritual sounds of doors took his attention for many days. He barely opened his eyes, even when food was pushed toward him. The food was always the same, smelling of a long fermentation with decay, and often he would try to aim the ensuing fecal fluids at the single drain in the floor. It was the only time he ached himself to his feet. There were no other bodies, and the cell was small enough that some part of it always touched him.

 

There came a day when he went to scratch himself idly as he had determined it was midmorning by the daily sound of the doors, and he felt his thumb on his nose: a long, curved nail. How long had he been in this place? He opened his eyes. His hand was not his hand.

His hand was not his hand

 

He did not move, but just looked, not even, moving his gaze. There was not his hand as he had known it; instead, a truncated array of knuckles, and the hair on back had changed color and grown denser. He closed his eyes and thought about the pain and the number of meals.

 

When the water truck came through next, the swelling and crust from his eyes had cleared enough for him to observe his surroundings. He did not turn his back to the hose down.

He stood. The water truck and two gargantuans came to the mesh of his cell: the giant wheels of the machine were a third of his height. The spray came in a foaming roar that also reeked of insecticides. It was an undrinkable douche that burnt the nose.

 

That was when he found out that he was no longer a man.

He had stood

He had been drenched with a hot, foaming chemical and as he heard the fluid gurgle the drain, he became aware that he was standing but had four limbs in contact with the concrete.

What had been done to him?

Now Vincent Vega had always had pride in himself as a handsome man; he knew his hands were not the same, but he had hungered and slept and there had been a countless time of just pain that turned his dreams into red clouds.

Now Vincent Vega stood in his cell and looked past the mesh at everything he had not allowed himself to notice: the other inmates. Across from him was a dog, a toy poodle with a tear stained face and a crooked ribbon decaying around one tangled curl. He looked as far as he could through various angles of the mesh: there was a Pyrenees whose tail only moved to defecate into the corridor because the mesh compressed her everywhere.

It was all dogs.

 

 

Vincent Vega inspected himself: the amputated hands had grown over in thick white hair that was a different color at his also hairier shoulders—this was a blond color. He tried to feel if his hair had grown that much, but the long curling nail of his thumb yielded no sense of it. He opened his eyes again. His testicles were gone.

He lived as a dog in a cage, watching gargantuan feet walk past his cell: he had not been moved from his cell ever in his time there. He had no memory beyond pain, and glimpses of moments—guns, blood, cheeseburgers. He tried to mostly sleep. Sometimes he would dream of a car, or a woman, or dancing. He tried to stay as asleep as he could, but the noises of the doors and the smells of all the different shoes the gargantuans wore made him restless.

 

One day, after weeks of cold that made the littliest dogs shiver for hours after the water truck, there were boots outside his mesh that paused for a long time. Vincent Vega moved his head and smelled the boots more keenly—they smelled different, they were leather instead of plastic, they smelled of grass and dirt and horses. Vincent looked up through the mesh, traveling the long arc of the gargantuan body to see a face. He had rarely looked at the faces of the gargantuans, rarely looked at the other inmates even. This time, he looked into the face of this gangantuan and recognized that he was looking at a man.

Vincent Vega stood up

Vincent Vega sat down.

He was a dog. He was a dog now.

The man came back. A shackle was put on the neck of Vincent Vega with a chain. The man with the grassy boots held the other end of the chain. It had been a while since Vincent Vega had taken a warded walk. The man said, “C’mon, Buddy” and so Vincent and the man walked down the corridor, past the howling and weeping inmates, out of a door, and into a room with a tile floor. It felt nicer than concrete on what he still thought of as his hands, but upon which he had had to learn to walk. There, they paused, and Vincent saw the man reach for his wallet. Beyond the lobby was a window and the sun’s winter glare on a parking lot of ordinary vehicles. Vincent understood he was being bonded out, and he crouched on his hind end in the baseball-catcher position he had seen the dogs do when they sat. It felt like sitting, so he sat.

The man said again, C’mon, buddy” and he and Vincent exited the lobby. The man led Vincent to a truck and offered the passenger seat. Vincent paused. It had been a long time since he had breathed open air.

 

The man kept talking to him nervously as he drove, but Vincent just heard consoling noises, a certain anxiety, but chose to look out of the window, trying to find some recognizable feature.

When the truck came to a final stop, the man made a phone call and then reacquired the chain to Vincent’s neck shackle. They stood on a lawn, near the truck’s bumper. There was a small house and a woman came out of the house wearing a blue dressing gown. The woman looked directly into his face and Vincent Vega looked back into hers. His was a steady gaze, his eyes were still a light color and the woman saw his speculative expression. “Vincent Vega” she said. And so this became home.

 

The years passed with Vincent as a dog. He did not forget the blood and the cheeseburgers, but his new nose amused him; he could run and run like a kid for the joy of it, he could hear everything that happened here and he knew that his doggy job was to warn off predators. It was a quiet place, and he felt no need to warn of distant things and so he, too, became quiet.

 

Once, the woman walked him with the shackle chain, and he easily proved to her that he weighed more and was stronger. Her voice to him was one in which he recognized sorrow. He hadn’t ever cared much for sorrow in his life, and it occurred to him that most of his days were with this woman. The man came of an evening and they strolled together, Vincent ever in fascination with the endless messages from his nose and ears. He was eager to play silly children’s games because it made the man who bonded him out happy. He knew he was a dog now, and he thought about it when he lay in the tiger’s bed the man had made for him when he had had ripped the others to shreds. It had not been easy accepting this new life as a dog; as a dog in a quiet house with only a small woman, her ponies and cats.

Eventually, he reached a silent treaty with the woman, who would let him run madly free, chasing birds, peeing on roses and leaving his logs for the racoons. He had his own room, but listened to the woman moving in the small house, listened for the man’s truck and the man’s voice, who always called him “buddy”.

 

And so, eight years passed.

 

Vincent hadn’t been feeling right for a while, and the woman noticed soon enough—he heard the fear in her voice. Soon enough, it was just pain in his body again, and he worried. How was he to listen when his kidneys ached so much. When the woman came and they went outside together, she stared fixedly at him so much they he was shy to meet her gaze: he who had regarded her so skeptically upon prison release, felt ashamed of his pain.

 

Vincent felt his condition worsen. The man stopped asking him to play games; stopped the length of their strolls as if the displays of excessive urine and difficult bowel movements were some offense. He didn’t want to run much anymore anyway.

 

One afternoon, the man opened the truck and lifted Vincent into it—no more easy leap now.

They went to a building that smelled of medicine and Vincent endured the usual investigations while trying to smile. After a few hours, the man brought him back to the house and helped him to bed. There were two beds for him now—his days of expensive destruction now years ago.

There was medicine down his throat, and specially made food, and he slept.

 

For a few days, the medicine eased his aches and he and the man spent many hours together during weekend maintenance.

 

But B cell cancer does not dally, and soon enough Vincent Vega again lived in days of pain.

 

He remembered both lives quite clearly now, tried to hide his knowledge of them from the woman who tended him hourly now. He still heard her moving about the house—the various machines, sometimes she played music, sometimes he caught the sound of her own weeping, both so like and unlike the heartbroken weeping he had heard in the prison of dogs.

 

He waited for the man. She would come, and he rarely looked at her—though she could see the expectant face turn away from her as she offered him his medicine or a tasty morsel.

 

He waited for his man.

 

Then one day, the man led him to the place where they played most in the yard. Vincent collapsed in exhaustion. Two men came and a needle. He did not want the needle. He wanted to be Vincent Vega, the handsome man; he wanted to be Vincent Vega who loved to run, he wanted.....