Between Two Hands- A Short Story

We are here to leave… 

My mind was blank. My ears were fixated in the sound of raindrops hitting on the window of the room as well as the distant yet clear sound of the wind beating on the old willows in the backyard. It was a rough storm. Rain was a common routine yet; the lightning crackling through the midnight dark was a rarity of sight as well as the following thunder roars. The shelter corridors were filled with the silent echoes of the whimpers of the dogs that had a sharp increase in volume every time the thunder reached their ears.

She sighed, sitting in the corner of the office in the ground near window side, with Omi lying on her left thigh, a mix breed which was surely a half a springer spaniel but yet other half was only about our speculations. A beautiful soul yet not so much in appearance to be adopted… She was one of the oldest we had here in the shelter and although she always says she loved them equally, it was obvious Omi had been her favourite for a while, right along with Munno, the little old Basset who was also leaning against her leg at the same moment.

She had laid a blanket underneath them and one more on her  own shoulders as she leaned towards the cold wall . Never would strike you as a manager. Neither could say she looked her age. She had a small build, small and fragile. Came back from the capital as a top graduate from our best University. Yet instead of pride, she always had this sense of disappointment in her eyes. She had a shelf of research materials and papers she never ended up finishing. I always wondered why she end up giving up the life in the big city and opening this place that she called the “Carehouse.”; A shelter and a veterinary service for the abandoned and lost animals. It was a shelter of lost and forgotten, even by the residents of the town. When a lost animal was found by a random passer, when a parrot escape from the crack of an open window, when the litter of kittens wandered away from where their mother had hid them, or when they were taken away from their abusive and addict owners by the local police, they would end up here. Whoever found them, would throw them in our arms, so their conscious would be clean when they forget about ever encountering them as it was no longer their problem.

I made my way toward the cage at the corner of the office, with the green wing macaw we have received a few months back. The police found him in a shady house with two drug addicts and an ex-convict. He was most likely stolen from someone in the neighbouring town in order to sell it under the counter as he had no health card or any documents of ownership. The parrot clearly had been under stress cause of the new environment and absence of bonded owner as the parrots usually show extreme behaviour as plucking their own feathers and even los off appetite.  He was almost featherless with occasional blood marks on his skin along with obvious signs of malnutrition. The police told they would look into it but she already knew not to hope anything by the moment the officer diverted his eyes making that half-assed promise. That was a few weeks back.

“Do you believe in god?” she asked suddenly, while softly caressing Omi’s ear and gazing out of the window.

I took the macaw out of his cage. He was shivering due to lack of feathers and the blanket around the cage was not helping. He gladly accepted the offer of my warm arm and climbed on to my jumper without question. As I covered him with a small warm towel I found on the heater nearby, I saw down nearby, facing her.

“Yes.” I had grown up in a religious environment. Taught prayers by the time I could read and write, and read the book a few times along with the others. My mother was a pious one, I often grew up listening the stories and tales out of the book and talking about the god and its means.

She looked down to the face of the dog, shivering in her arms, not by cold but by fear, each time the lighting strikes. “Would you be bothered, if he did not exist?”

“He does exist.” I said without hesitation.

“I do not say he doesn’t nor that he does., but about what your reaction would be, if you found out that he did not. What would you feel?”

I diverted my eyes to the ceiling. “I don’t know. I never questioned his existence. Nor do I want to.”

“Precisely.” She said, in a subtle tone. I could hear her hand rubbing the ears of the spaniel. I waited an explanation. Nothing.

“And you?” I asked, giving up on waiting for a reply. "Do you believe?"

“No.”

“Why?”

She was scratching under Omi’s ear now, as the old dog was slowly closing her eyes. She was old. And I did not expect her to live long after the lump we have found in her lungs. She was too old to be operated. We could not take the risk. It was a matter of time. It’s sometimes hard to know whether a dog was suffering or not, as they not always show their weaknesses. She looked tired but unable to sleep due to the storm but we both knew, she also had lost appetite past day and barely have moved out of her place in the past week.

“Give me a proper answer first” She said. “Imagine if he did not exist today, what would you feel. If you do, I’ll tell you why.”

I shrugged. I gazed upon the silent macaw in my lap, snuggling in the centre of my oversized jumper and the small towel. I haven’t noticed but I was softly scratching his bald head all this time. His feathers started to regrow and he partially had feathers in his chest. He looked at peace, his eyes were softly blinking in parallel to my fingers movements as he was softly shifting to sleep. “I would probably be lost.” I said hesitantly. “I spent a life believing him, his justice, his kindness, and his love.” I gazed upon the open door of the shelter. Most of the dogs we had were in a single large compartment. She did not like the idea of caging them so she made a playroom for them to spend the night. It really resembled of a common living room, so they somewhat cosy and at home. The most of the dogs, especially the youngest ones were curled up in a corner together, scared from the thunder obviously.

“I would probably be like an abandoned dog. You know, wait entire life believing someone out there exist that will one day pick you up and take care of you. You believe he will come and pick you up one day. And yet that day never comes. Something like that feeling I guess.”

She softly nodded. “It’s exactly what it is.” She said confirming. Her hazel eyes were foggy and distant. As if she was talking to me from a different time and space. “This is the reason I don’t believe.”

“That didn’t make sense.”

She looked at me, and then showed the dog lying underneath he hands. “That depends on what you define a god.”

I lift an eyebrow. She turned against me with a bitter smile on her face. “What you call god, if it’s a creator yes, I think that exist and but that does not require to be all knowing and all powerful. It can be anything. Humans created a lot of dog breeds that did not exist before by playing with genetics. We created artificial intelligence and we even created different lifeforms from a single cell just by the use of our also self-created tools. We are clearly not gods, yet for some of the creations, we are. Doesn’t mean we are all knowing and all potent. We just create. Yes, I believe someone or something did create us. But that’s not what we seek, we do not seek the god that created us. We seek a being that is all knowing, wise, powerful and just. “

“It isn’t the same thing.” I argued. “God itself created all from nothing. We just reshape and modify his creations to make something new. It’s not the same thing.”

“That part doesn’t matter.”  She interrupted. “Again, I don’t question what he is, I am questioning what we seek in him. We do not seek a creator god in our religion, we seek a divine being.” She gave a pause to think over her words, possibly looking for a different way to put them. Her eyes slide down to the old Spaniel in her lap. “For her, we are gods.” She said softly. “And she doesn’t care if we are creators or not. That’s not why we are gods for her.”

I examined the both dogs. Both of them were hunter breeds, Gun dogs. Considered to be brave and sharp, yet they both looked scared, seeking shelter in her side, from the thunders echoing in the sky. “They find safety in my presence, as they believe I can protect them from the thunders and lightnings, the means they have no power against by themselves. For them, we are the all-powerful beings as we can change the course of their lives. We can provide protection in the houses we built, the food we produce, the artificially created heating in our spaces. Also, we can punish them for the wrongs they have done. If an unjust deed happen among them, like unequally rationed food, they seek our aid to justify, or if we let the injustice happen, they will accept, believing they had deserved such fate.  They will love us unconditionally, and will be loyal to us eternally, although they know we are imperfect, that we have ill sides within just as we have good. Isn’t that sound familiar?”

I saw her point but I did not want to admit it out loud. 
“We all believed in fate, and that everything happens for a reason, and if bad things happen for us, they happen for a reason that only god knows. We cannot create true justice ourselves as we are corrupted in heart. So, we want to know the evil will be punished, and the good will be rewarded by a divine court with no possible fault. But mostly, we want to know there is a power out there, that will take us under their arms and protect us from all the things left us powerless; time, fear, pain, death... We want to know that there is something out there that is all above the things we fear and the things we cannot control.” Her hand slowly slides to her side, losing the will to continue petting the dog. I could hear the whimpering dogs from the room next door. The cats were all silent, they were all hiding in the safest looking corner they had found.

“We seek the god, not because we believe he is the creator of all, but because we expect him to be all powerful, just and loving. We want to know we will be better in the afterlife, just like as you said.” She faced me again, her smile had disappeared and all that left was the bitterness in her eyes. “Similar to the dogs waiting to be picked up from the shelter by a loving hand.”

My mind went blank again, and my thoughts, slide back to the raindrops in the window, the consistent yet ineffective diving of the droplets to the glass, and slowly sliding downwards in silence, getting lost within the soil. I did not want to think of what she said. I believed he was out there, and that she was wrong. We did not create a concept just to comfort our minds. It was no deception. It just sounded logical considering the miracle of life. I tried to recall what my biology teacher said a while back; that the odds for the forming of life itself was, one in hundred trillion? Or Something, I really don’t remember the number, recalling it had a few zeros and that’s it. Yet it was in a number to be defined impossible. No, the god did exist I had no doubts on it still...Yet she never made a claim against his existence either, but only about his potency.

I understood. She was right, about that we wanted him to be potent. That I hoped for him to be that potent. To think, he exists did not make me budge, as I did not question his existence. I devoured every bit of biology source in our school library only to believe in the existence of the god to make more sense, given the probability of all existence. As a matter of fact, after all I have devoured, the science books were better proofs than the holy ones, on his existence as nothing seemed a mere coincidence to happen. But I never thought on the extent of his potency. We humans, have history full of discoveries by accidents. As she just specified, the dog breeds we have created purely by cross breeding. Or AI that can think without us. The counter argument formed itself immediately. Some of the dog breeds we created were faulted. Dystocia. The disorder or birth, due to the proportion difference of the pelvic canal from the offspring, as some of the small dog and cat breeds formed by the result of humanity, cannot even give natural birth, and without human intervention it can be deadly. I recall her mentioning this to me when I began working near her as a part timer. Yeah, it’s not the same.

“There’s a difference between creationism of god, and ours. We, created faulty beings, the breeds of dogs you mentioned, that cannot give natural birth by Dystocia. The AI we created cannot self-sustain. The constructs of ours, cannot exist without us.”

“And are we?”

I stumbled by her suddenness’ was confused of what she meant. And then it hit me. She was mentioning death.

"We are creations of miracle maybe, but we are not created perfect. From the moment of birth, we are in an endless cycle of decay. The diseases, the malfunction of the body, and the decay of everything of existence. If not just physical, but mental as well, we are broken beings, who damage and disrupt one another, wars, murder, injustice, and cruelty. We justify saying we were meant to be this way. No, there’s a broken rusty gear among our system, that disrupting and corrupting all our existence as well as our environment and the entire world we live in. “she looked again to the old, abandoned dog in her lap, and then to the half-naked and abused macaw on mine.

She was right in her claim. And given my education level and experience of life, I could not go into a sophisticated scientific argument about the consistency of life and structure of parasitic life forms we call diseases as her medical expertise was far beyond a high schooler like me, who simply liked biology classes. It would be tiring and time consuming to go further on factual side of the matter.

“Maybe it is not.” I said softly. 
She snorted while still looking out of the window. “It’s, just our minds searching for comfort, to justify our existence and make sure we will be safe and sound and all that hurt us, pained us, troubles us, all that caused us to suffer unjustly, will be magically solved after we die so we can leave the world in peace.”

I gave a pause. It suddenly hit me why she was like this. My eye slides down to the other hand of hers, which has been standing idly all this time behind her leg. I saw that idea flashed in my mind and  that my guess was right, she was holding a syringe. That meant only one thing.

“Is she?”

She nodded silently. Omi, was not going to last the night.

That explained her melancholical aura, as well as the questioning of existence of a creator. She was about to send her oldest companion away, with her own hands, to the creator…no, the caregiver that she was unsure that existed. This was not a matter of belief actually. She opened this care house, the so-called shelter, for the abandoned animals of the town to find a warmth of home. It did not look anything like a usual shelter, but more like a real home, each animal group had their house like rooms, with furniture that we occasionally used, and encouraged the youth to come and spend time in. We even made a small library, in the feline section of the building for kids and youngsters to come read while interacting with them. She did not want to put them on mass cages, and endless corridors of concrete and steel. We adjusted a backyard for them to roam, and each and every one took proper attention and care from us, as well as medical care. She made sure, even if they were never to be adopted, they would live a good life here. It was where she lived, and she was not their owner or manager, or a simple vet, she was their caretaker until their real owner one day appeared in the very door. She was barely funded and holding on the hardest to give them the warmest conditions. But considering the low heat of the room when it is already November, she was struggling to keep it up I knew.

All this effort, to keep them safe and sound, to care for them a life time, and she was about to send the one she started this journey with away. The first comer of her residence, was about to depart, and she was wondering, if at the end of that syringe, whether there was going to be a caregiver or not.

“It doesn’t matter if he exists or not.” I said. I was able to put a soft smile in my face and I hoped it wasn’t as bitter as I thought it would be. “You don’t need to believe in a god, or a caregiver of a divine being for something like this.”

She turned to me with a sceptical face. She had no faith in what I said, I knew it. Its usual I guess, for adults to look with that kind of expression to my age groups, it’s just that I was no ordinary teen.

“There are a million possibilities we can say about after life, or god, or creator or whatever you may call it. And, although I’m a believer, I don’t think main point is to believe in him, it is to understand the life itself.”

She chuckled.

“No, I am serious. The life, perfect or imperfect, incomplete or not doesn’t matter. Life itself isn’t something we own anyway, it’s something we rent. We borrow it for a moment, to experience it for a brief moment, and then we return it back to its place, to leave it for the next one in line. No matter what you can say about religion, god, existence, they will all be hypothesis and assumptions. But what we know, is that the life itself comes from the soil, will eventually return to soil and through the cycle it will be given back to another form to another being.”

“The cycle of life. “She murmured. I don’t know if I sounded like a dreamy boy or a mature adult, but at this point, all I wanted was to continue.

“Nothing exists out of nowhere. The energy you would say, is finite so, if you hold on to it for too long, you are stealing the time from the next creature in line.”

“Sounds like a queue over there.” She said chuckling again. So, did I.

“Yes, actually it is. It’s like a cinema hall. There’s a movie to play, and before it begins you take a seat, you watch the movie and when it’s over you leave so the next ones in line can take your seat. You can’t remain as that would be selfish, and someone out in that queue, would never get to see the movie.”

She finally smiled. Her face was still facing the blank emptiness of the window, but I saw her empty hand move back up again to caress Omi’s ear, and my optimist side wanted to take it as a good sign.

“You really don’t sound like a kid in your age.”   

“And you are hesitating when you know what to do.” I said looking at her other hand. “That doesn’t sound very adult like either.”

Her silence told me I had won the argument for now. I think her mind was somewhat calmer about what was going to happen next. As she finally lifted the hand I knew, she had given in to my words. She didn’t say a single word after, it went pretty much silent, even when she started to cry, there was not even a slight sound of sobbing. She simply accepted it. The cruelty of life cycle, is that whatever it gives, it ends up taking back, meaning you never actually end up owning it anyway. And you truly don’t know, if all you have done in this earth, is well deserved or not.  You could only hope that there is.

As I kept on thinking of my words, I knew there were a lot of matters she can argue over them if she wanted to.  But I know she didn’t. She was searching for what she claimed all of us were searching for; Comfort, that everything was going to be okay in the end.

The idea for this came onto me as I was looking for animal adoption advertisements as I am planning to adopt one in some time. Somewhat the whole conversation between the two of them formed in my mind randomly without my control. It was as if I was having an awake-dream. It usually happens like this with me and the stories. I know it’s dark. My thoughts were the same of its sadness but somehow it felt too powerful to let it slide. I wanted to somewhat record it. I had no real intention to be supporter of a side, in matter of existence of god, as I said, it all formed simultaneously, as if it was opinions of them and I’m only a spectator. So I simply wanted  you to hear them out as well.Thanks for reading  anyway