The Outcast Hours

by Mahvesh Murad

  By the time the dark red-brick building came into full view, like some kind of modernist castle squatting amidst the commercial hinterland of Terminal Ave., sunset had turned dark blue, the flames doused from mountain ice and glass. She turned into the lot that held the hotel, the storage terminal and, bizarrely for the location, a 24-hour Tim Horton’s that was a haven for homeless customers because of its isolation. The mountains had gone out like lamps switched off, the slopes dark and dotted with light from North Shore houses and the ski resort. Clouds were tumbling towards the city over the peaks, smudging evening to night.

  Kris rushed towards the wrought-iron gate into the dog hotel complex, which looked like the barred entry to a minimum security prison. She felt droplets dot her head and fumbled with the keys to the gate, hurrying into the arched enclosure of the entrance as rain began to patter on the concrete. Kris locked the gate and used the fob on her keychain to open the glass doors to the little lobby. Blessed warmth gushed against her, tainted by the smells of disinfectant and air freshener. The hotel was closed except for night clients, so the lights were dimmed and there was no one at the reception desk (a sad plastic jack o’ lantern basket sat on the desk, half full of dog treats). It looked like the lobby of any mid-range spa, lime green and white cushions decorating the spartan waiting couches, framed pictures of happy dogs with lush coats instead of humans with cucumbers on their eyes on the exposed brick walls. The brick walls gave it a comfy feel that still couldn’t get rid of the reek of bleach. Kris signed in on the clipboard and took a look at the list of tonight’s dogs and their medications, diseases, allergies, behaviours. She heard footsteps scuff the floor behind her and took a shuddering breath.

  “Oh my…goodness. You scared me,” she said, with a slight laugh, face gone rosy from embarrassment and coming in from cold to warmth.

  Her co-worker Brendan raised his hands as if caught in a crime. “Sorry, Kris. Too used to being sneaky around sleeping dogs.”

  “It’s okay, spooked myself… I was thinking of all those dogs going missing, and here we are…”

  “In a dog hotel?” Brendan flashed his perfect teeth, untying and tying his long chestnut locks as he often did in front of her. Kris restrained herself from rolling her eyes. She’d felt a lightness in her chest when she first met Brendan and his tight jeans on her first night shift, considering how hard it was to date in the city, but once he’d offered to teach her yoga at his place because she ‘looked exhausted,’ her interest had withered. “It’s probably coyotes. Or junkies. You know how panhandlers often have dogs with them. Like, where do they get them from? You gotta wonder, right?”

  Kris raised her eyebrows in lieu of a response.

  “Anyway, I think this place is pretty secure. Just don’t forget to shut the yard door before you put the dogs to sleep, and make sure none of them get stranded out in the yard before you do. You gonna be okay here alone?” he said. I’ve been working here four months, don’t tell me how to do my fucking job, Brendan, thought Kris.

  “Ah, yup, no worries. All quiet on the western front?”

  “Sure, it’s a small bunch today. Shouldn’t be too rough. I’ve given them all their food and meds, just give the listed ones their night snacks and they should be good for beddy-bye.”

  “Awesome, thanks Brendan. Got plans for the night?” Now why’d you ask him that?

  “Yeah yeah, gonna jam with some peeps at the Du Soleix, open mic tonight. You should come check it out some other time.”

  “Cool cool,” Kris said, cheeks aching from fake smiling and temperature fluctuation.

  “Alright, have a good one.” Brendan grinned again, his ponytail bouncing newly tied as he took out his own keys and left via the front door out into the city, to the far off revelries. Kris shook her head and went through the hallway leading out of the lobby. Behind another glass door was the Nursery—a hall, filled with doggy beds and toys, with a garage door that led out into a walled-off concrete exercise yard. The hotel only took medium and small sized dogs for night shift. She could see them lying lumpen across the open room, curled into the doggy beds scattered across the floor, some choosing to sleep on the floor. She saw several heads pop up in unison as they registered her approach. She opened the door. The dogs scattered like autumn leaves in a gust, exploding into a chorus of claw-clicks and barking, surging against the door in a wall of scrabbling paws and glossy eyes and urgent muzzles and teeth, while others hurtled to the corners with suspicious snaps and coy looks. Kris entered, palms out to give them her scent, taking care not to let any of them escape through the door before shutting it behind her. The dogs surrounded her in worship and terror, begging for guidance. They loved Kris. They feared Kris. They asked only that she love them like their human families once had, only to abandon them here for who knew how many forevers, in this unhomely place where strangers could sink fangs into throats at any moment, where the playful potential of the dog park was turned upside down, where they were all alone amongst the smells of other fearful dogs; and fear made all these new assholes twitch with sickly scent, fear made menace of these masterless companions—so they looked to their one Master, Kris, their savior, their goddess, to get them through the Long Dark Night. She felt their tongues (warm) and noses (cold) wet against her hands, their nails hard against her oldest and most worn pair of jeans, their paws stabbing her rattiest red and white converse. In a loud, clear voice she barked out her sharpest Hey! And Quiet! as she slowly walked around the room, matching dogs to the names on the list using their jingling metal tags. The pugs rolled after her like a pile of slugs, the lone French bulldog making googly eyes from afar, a daschund yapping at her feet. She pitied these dogs in a way she had never pitied dogs before, for being so helpless to humanity’s whimsical absurdity, shuffled night after night into this garage where once dead horses were chopped and sorted before being boiled (maybe), entrusted to a pack leader they were forced to trust and a pack they didn’t know or trust, the freedom of grass and beach and forest and mountain far, far away.

  Kris would adopt a dog and hold it close every night if she thought she could afford to take care of such a companion. Tabby—who taught ESL classes and worked at a bookstore on Commercial, much to Kris’ envy—had often suggested they get one because they were lucky enough to have a landlord who didn’t mind pets, but Kris always refused. She barely had the money to take care of herself despite, she always reminded herself, of her unmistakable privilege. Kris often felt guilty about that, about the homeless people she saw panhandling by the Tim Horton’s next door, sometimes with their loyal dogs who’d never see the inside of this dog hotel. The sight of a homeless person who wasn’t white would send her into a veritable well of guilt, emptying all her coffee change into their Styrofoam cups and Tupperware bowls. But white homeless people reminded her of herself and the fact that, despite her whiteness, Kris was doing night shifts at the dog hotel because she was a millennial stereotype, struggling to make rent while towing around a humanities degree (Creative Writing) like an artfully taxidermied albatross. With her parents and education and support system, she had a one-up on those wandering souls sleeping on the streets with their faithful beasts, and she was somehow still barely able to pay her bills. So no dog for her, she told herself.

  Punishment, or perhaps caution at another potential source of loss.

  Dogs left even quicker than humans.

  She’d had a dog once, or her family had, in the small town of Dardenne, British Columbia, where she’d grown up. She’d taken Demon (Dee for short) out for night walks as a teen, secretly relieved when she scratched and whined at her bedroom door at ungodly hours, Kris already awake by the aquamarine glow of her computer monitor writing sincere short stories about Canadian witches to her mother’s CD of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love or scouring Napster for Alanis Morissette MP3s. Dee’s anxious bladder gave her an excuse to dig up the rumpled pack in the deepest recesses of her school backpack (she bought them off Clara, an eleventh-grader with a fa
ke I.D. who didn’t mind making a small profit buying booze and cigs for her schoolmates), go to the park next door and smoke on the swings with a clear view of her house in case her parents emerged. Even out in the dark in the middle of the night, with the hills glowering black over the low suburban houses of their neighborhood, she felt safer all alone with Demon by her side than she had ever felt anywhere else in her life. She knew that people were scared of Dee, with her sleek and monstrous body and long snout steaming, her ears pricked sharp as devil’s horns, her eyes like black marbles. In school, Kris was powerless. No matter how much like armor her baggy red hoody felt, it wasn’t. It couldn’t turn the words fat, nerd, lez or girl into mere truths instead of poison spat from the mouths of her peers. But with Demon by her side, leash tied around her hand like the reins to some great and heaving mount—that was something else. With Kris, Dee was as well-behaved as she was unruly with others (including her father, who often threatened to get rid of her if Kris didn’t stop her barking at passers-by all the time). Dee sat still as a statue as Kris smoked on the creaking swings, panting softly and looking to her human now and again.

  One autumn day, Dee six and Kris fourteen, the two had been walking along the hedge at the edge of the park when Kris heard the metallic crunch of cans being crushed in hands. Three boys loped across the park towards her as she blew smoke towards the stars. There was a cruel hunger in their faces painted in shadow and yellow by the streetlamps. She couldn’t smell the beer on their trailing plumes of breath, but it was there, no doubt.

  “Whadyoo doing out here all by yourself, Little Miss Muffinface,” said Aiden, grimace crowned in a woolen toque. He was a tenth-grader whose taunt of Little Miss Muffinface was familiar from lunchtime at school. I don’t even like muffins,Kris thought for the hundredth time. His companions were familiar, if nameless to Kris. She felt a stab of horror as she saw them surround her, ready to play out whatever bullying scene they’d gotten hard-ons over in some movie they’d watched in their basements.

  “Don’t you know smoking’s not for little g—” Aiden turned his head.

  Then the slack leash in her hand moved, and Demon, old Dee of the Shadows, so black in the dimness that she’d blended into the hedges, turned her streetlit eyes and growled deep in her throat, her muzzle unfurling beautiful fangs. In an instant, Aiden and his stooges’ faces turned to those of little boys, and with a huff of an abruptly cut-off taunt he staggered back. Demon saw this prey-like movement and charged. Kris saw her leap on Aiden and pulled the leash. The boys ran. Kris ran too, carried by Dee’s muscled velocity. She gripped the leash and tugged, putting all her mocked heft into restraining her companion. Demon yelped and scrabbled in the grass, pawing up clods of earth, but slowed and reared, barking after the sprinting boys as they ran down Otter Drive. Her sneakers sunk in the soil, cigarette butt flown off somewhere, Kris had pulled and pulled, sparing the lives of her enemies, soaring with benevolent rage. She remembered Demon hot as an engine, dark as the night sky above her, panting as Kris embraced her in boundless gratitude. Shhhhhh baby Dee you’re all mine. Kris was Diana goddess of the hunt, arm aching from restraining her hound. She was a witch with a demon summoned as her familiar, queen of the night. No adults to pull her cheeks or tell her to watch her eating, no kids to poke at her softness with words and fingers, no friends to disappoint her with gossip churning behind their smiling faces—just the stars and the hills dwarfing the slanted rooftops, and her own monster made of darkness.

  It took Kris a good hour of playing with the dogs to settle them down. She placated the scared barkers—a Russell terrier named Al and an unhappy little Pomeranian named Powder—with chewtoys offered from a distance, without making eye contact, keeping her hands clear of their bodies so they didn’t nip out of fear. She mopped the streaks of piss from the scuffed floor and refilled the big water bowls in one corner, bleach scouring the air. She went to the yard where the sky, the glowing sign of the Tim Horton’s, and the elevated SkyTrain tracks were visible over the corrugated steel walls. A plane pricked the sky with its lights, scudding through the dark violet clouds. Kris listened to the distant, soothing rumble of the passing trains (scrolling windows full of Halloween revelers on their way downtown) as she scooped the last turds from the yard. As she marched through the Nursery with the turds piled in the metal scooper, she shushed the dogs away from their shit. “Thanks for the gifts, guys, but they’re going down the toilet,” she said to the dogs, whose noses quivered. Using the scraper, she emptied the scooper of shit into the toilet in the supply room and flushed it all, fighting her gag instinct as always (tossing Dee’s poop in trashcans hadn’t been so hard). She turned up the heat, dimmed the Nursery lights and rolled down the garage door to the yard with its rusty chain, shutting the place for the night. This done, she unfolded the flimsy metal cot in one corner against one wall, and unpacked her thin blanket from her backpack (other contents: a dog tag that read ‘Demon’, the black lipstick she’d worn as small concession for her missing pre-Halloween celebrations, a compact, eyeliner pencil, hair ties, tampons, Tylenol, cigarettes, a YA novel about werewolves to roughly match the theme of the night, and earphones). Her backpack served as a pillow. Barking out a periodic No! to keep the dogs from jumping on to the bed (it hurt her to see their pleading eyes and anxious nose-licks, but she couldn’t risk having them piss on her while she slept), she sat cross-legged on the cot (shoes still on, because they might get chewed or, yes, pissed on) and read her book. Feeling bad, she looked up to say, softly: “You’re all good dogs,” leading to hopeful eyebrows and ears twitching.

  She got a page in before Oswald came to say hello. Oswald was a regular—a grizzled, elderly black pug she had seen at the hotel every night shift. He never barked, never made a fuss, just quietly snored in one of the beds in the corner. That is, until Kris got on her cot, at which point he solemnly presented himself, fussily licking his white-bearded jowls. Oswald was the only one allowed on her cot, though he was too old to get on by himself. Kris bent down to pick him up, grunting in unison with him as she laid him in her lap, where he curled up with a sigh. She bent down to kiss him on his raisin-wrinkled forehead, and got a lick on the mouth for it. Grimacing, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve with a laugh (Kris was something of a germophobe, and had also seen memes making fun of white people mouth-kissing dogs). Oswald was the opposite of Dee of the Shadows. Helpless, soft. Kris was the protector, not Oswald.

  She’d never seen Dee get the little white hairs on her jowls from age like Oswald, because Dee’s fangs had scratched Aiden’s arm when she jumped on him that fall night. Aiden complained to his parents, and despite Kris’s furious pleas to her parents, a tide of tears flooding her eyes and nose as she held clueless Dee who sat there smiling wide with tongue out, they had taken Dee to the vet. She hadn’t gone with them because she couldn’t believe the cruelty of it, thought her parents were bluffing and just wanted to scare her so she’d take control of Dee better. Dee had never returned. Kris never got to say goodbye.

  Her mother came by later and slipped Dee’s dog tag under Kris’s locked door. “I’m sorry, honey. We thought you might want to keep this.”

  Kris waited for her mother’s shadow to vanish from under the door, and took the tag. She never lost it.

  Kris got a text from Tabby: Missing u, we got congee not pho. Yr fave, let’s go soon. Have a goodnight at doggy nightcare <3

  Tabby had often taken Kris to her parents’ place in Richmond for her Taiwanese mother’s impeccable chicken congee, but it was the Congee House on Main and Broadway where she’d first introduced Kris to the dish on their first night out in the city as university roommates. Kris had drunk too much at the bar they’d gone to and thrown up in the toilet. Tabby had insisted hot rice porridge a couple blocks down was the best thing for her empty stomach. Kris remembered the harsh glare of fluorescents washing out their drunken faces, the flayed ducks lined up red in the windows, her nausea turning to hunger at the smell wafting from the bowls
. They’d spent that afternoon at Wreck Beach surrounded by nude sunbathers, Kris feeling like she’d entered a new and decadent country far from Dardenne, B.C. Holding quiet, old Oswald, she recalled the dread she’d felt coming down those wooden steps to all those nude bathers on the sand, how her heart had raced when Tabby casually took off her top and bra. Waiting for the familiar, underhanded It’s okay, you’re not that fat. But Tabby had noticed Kris keeping her clothes on and said nothing, waited about ten minutes, and put on her top again. “It’s getting kinda cold,” she said. They shared a joint and watched the sunset, talked about being bullied as children (Kris had been Little Miss Muffinface, Tabby had been the Chink or the Dog Eater), flipped the finger to a perv sporting an erection ten feet away. When September cool descended with the dark, they’d gone back up the steps, walked their new campus, taken a bus to Main, to beers and late night congee, heads aching from dehydration and intoxication.

  Eventually, Kris had gone topless on Wreck Beach, months later. Tabby had been there that time too.

  Listening to Oswald fall into a gentle snoring, Kris texted back: <3

  Kris looked in a mirror: she saw the shaggy black dog’s head staring back, eyes like burning drops of honey, muzzle steaming. She was doggess of the night. She ran through the city, nabbing rich people’s dogs from their glittering new condos and West Vancouver mansions, putting them into a bottomless sack with her clawed hands. Like a canine Santa she leapt through the night sky, bounding into the streets of East Vancouver, of the Downtown Eastside, reaching into her sack to give the dogs to the homeless, the junkies, the ones who needed protectors and friends. The underdogs of the city cheered for this crypto-superhero, and the underpasses were spray-painted with elaborate murals of her, murals whose colours ran when you stared at them. The letters shifted, but always read Dee of the Shadows. Vancouver was filled with the triumphant barking of all those underdogs.