Pavlov’s Dogs by Eli James
It is 6pm and the bell is silent. Igor is going crazy, pacing to-and-fro, to-and-fro, one end of the garden to the other. Japheth looks up from his perch on the front porch every couple of minutes. And it seems only Mikhail is calm, blinking slowly at the evening sun.
“What’s going on?” he asks, turning his head to look at Japheth.
“The bell has not rung.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Japheth looks annoyed, but it is Igor who answers from the other end of the garden: “Hello hello we eat with the bell hello hi. No bell no food hi hello!”
“What do you mean you eat with the bell?”
“When the master rings the bell, he gives us food,” Japheth snarls, like this should be obvious, “–in our bowls.”
“Hello hi hello the back of the house I can almost see it from behind here hello hi!” Igor is excited; he is bouncing in one spot, up and down, up and down.
“But… why must there be a bell?”
“Because there always is, and always has been.”
“But why? In my old home we ate as the sun sets, and that was that.”
Igor stops, suddenly, eyes bright in the evening darkness. He is staring directly at Mikhail. “Hi hello, every evening you get food? At sunset?”
“Yes.” Mikhail says. He pauses.
And then — “Why?”
“Well hello sometimes we don’t get food,” Igor says. “Sometimes the bell rings but the bowls are still empty.”
Japheth licks his lips. “The last time that happened our bowls were empty for two weeks, despite the bell. We were starving.”
Mikhail looks at Japheth’s coat, lustrous and bright in the light of the last sunbeam, strung low across the front porch. It is a sign of vibrant health. “How long ago was this?”
“Hello hello oh three months ago!” Igor says.
Japheth studies Mikhail carefully, licking his lips as he does so. “It was shortly before you came,” he says, lazily. “We were hungry and we had to find our own food.”
“Your own food?”
“Yes. We couldn’t trust the bell. We wanted to but we couldn’t. We thought it was our friend. But for two weeks it betrayed us. We couldn’t trust the bell. So we ate the other one.”
Mikhail is silent.
“Hello hello hi poor Nikolaus hi hello he was the weakest of us!” Igor’s voice drifts, softly, from the far corner of the garden. “We didn’t want to eat him but the bell was bad it betrayed us and we were so hungry hello hi. So very hungry.”
Mikhail is about to answer when the bell rings. The gate opens. Igor and Japheth spring forward as one and they run, run to the back, eyes bright and tongues lolling and ears up and about, ever hopeful for the full bowl. Soon Mikhail is alone in Pavlov’s front yard, alone with the setting sun. But not for much longer.
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Eli James is the founder of Novelr and can be found lurking on Twitter as @shadowsun7.