CULPEPPER CIRCLE

Madison Brown

Augusta University

There is an abandoned cul-de-sac across the street from my childhood home. I used to visit the pale, yellow house of a nameless dentist and play with his dog, a black Rottweiler named Megan. I remember the day I found her body-foam fizzing around her lips, a perfect semicircle of flesh torn from her throat. I watched the river of blood run down her body, a thick-copper halo blossom around her head. She could have been sleeping if not for the smell, if not for the way her tongue lolled out of her mouth, dryer than the red Georgia clay underneath her. I showed him her body and listened as his sharp sobs pierced the quiet, autumn afternoon. We looked into her eyes—two black mirrors staring endlessly skyward—as sweat dripped down our fingertips. Sometimes, I still hear the sound of the dentist crying. Two weeks later, the EMTs found him in bed, skin sloughing off against bloodied, Egyptian cotton sheets. He had Megan’s collar in one hand and a pistol in the other. When he died, he took the neighborhood with him. We all left, unable to forget the sound of a bullet piercing flesh, unable to escape the stench of death that permeated every corner of our homes. The pale, yellow house was abandoned when they discovered that no amount of bleach could clean the blood from the walls. Before we moved, I drew a picture of Megan on a piece of pink construction paper and slid it under the dust-caked door.