The maze of vengeance
By Caitlyn Ng
Towering green grass, fresh, red cherries, and the endless expanse of cerulean blue sky enveloped my senses. I was eight, small enough to feel dwarfed by the daunting grass maze before me. I panicked. Palms sweaty. Eyes moist. I never thought I would make it out, but I did. I found a way, an opening, a gateway to the exit of the maze, to the warm embrace of my mother’s waiting arms. I never wanted the scent of heavy desperation to follow me again, but unfortunately, three years later, it returned with a vengeance.
At 8:00 pm, the doorbell rang. It sliced through the sound of birds chirping and the eerie silence. The sky wasn’t gloomy, nor was it blindingly sunny — it was a canvas waiting for stars. A large shipping truck sat outside my door. Standing there, indignantly, was a rather temperamental Mainland China deliveryman, clutching a cage and a few crisp, white papers. In a box set aside, a clearly undomesticated dog barked from the ripping, weakening enclosures. My eyes lit up like a radiant neon sign. For years, I wished for a dog, yearning for the day one would come, and finally, that day had arrived. I bounced up and down, shaking with exhilaration for a new member of my family to grow up with.
An exuberant Golden Retriever jumped frantically in my garden, a cinnamon cookie loaded with infectious energy. The next day, a black German Shepherd attacked me as I returned from school, leaving a slobbery, wet mess on the ground as he panted up at me, planting a wide grin on my face. Choco, as my brother named him, lay there waiting for me to rub his belly, being rather demanding for a newcomer. Choco brawled with his newfound brother Cookie, a haze of gold and black upon the cement, barks sprouting from their mouths. My exhausted mom murmured, “nī dī sǒ zyù” (these silly pigs), while shaking her head in exasperation.
As days passed, new memories were made: chasing Cookie down for stealing Choco’s food, disappointed stares directed at Choco after he started barking and biting at Cookie, playing fetch, and never getting the ball back. Looking back on it, the maze I was once in seemed elementary, drawn on the back of a children’s menu. With one swipe of a crayon, it was completed.
The sky was ominous, rain pirouetting and descending relentlessly. Choco, with his warm, amiable, chocolate eyes, curled on the carpet of his dishevelled playpen. He blinked dejectedly, lifeless. At first, we thought he was tired, but his symptoms proved otherwise: his weak back legs, his barren eyes, and slow breathing were all telltale signs of something far worse.
That night, frantic whispers echoed off the walls, and constant ‘Googling’ engulfed my family. My dad and I were resolute in arguing that we had to take him to the vet, yet my Grandfather was unyielding, saying he could ‘tough it out’.
Back then, life was simple. I could define it in a sentence if I wanted to: “I have friends and family, I enjoy art, reading, watching TV, and hanging out with my dogs," but when I held my breath for the life of another, a new reality settled in. The maze of my life seemed like an impenetrable labyrinth. I was slowly realising that traps lurked along the way, clamping shut around our feet, wrapping truculent, meandering vines around our legs, imprisoning us. All I could do was lean on my family.
10 pm. The phone rang. My knees weak. My eyes wide.
“Hey, I signed Choco in. I’m still waiting for the diagnosis. Are the kids asleep?” My Dad’s voice splattered on the empty white walls of our silence, capturing everyone’s attention.
Whispers and barks sounded from his end of the call, ringing and ricocheting. “He has several viral infections. He needs to stay at the vet for a while. We don’t know for how long. I’ll send you the document,” my dad announced. A few wordless seconds later, the call was cut.
“Go to sleep,” my mom urged softly, “He’ll be fine.”
The diagnosis sheet covered my mom’s phone; light from the ceiling reflected off its surface. One number and three words bounced on my nerves: ‘50% chance of survival’. What did ‘fine’ even mean? I was absolutely horrified. Would Choco ever recover?
Hope seemed like a pull-up bar; no matter how high I jumped, I could never reach it. Every day, a new update came: pictures of cold, white rooms where Choco received his injections, cages where he ate his medicine, and daily checkups. Suddenly, a door of frustration slammed in front of us, making us pivot, when all we had prepared for was an easy journey.
On the day Choco came home, he was ailing, the life drained from him. A white patch of skin on his arm was peeled off by the hospital band, a lasting souvenir from his visit. For three months, we cared for him constantly: putting on an oxygen mask, disguising doses of medicine and jabbing syringes full of antibiotics into his stomach. We did this every day. Over. And over. My mom persistently reassured me that he would ameliorate. Meanwhile, Cookie waited patiently for his brother to heal, staring with pleading puppy-dog eyes, as if that would magically heal his brother.
One morning, the sun shone through the windows. I woke to find a black ball of fur attacking me, leaving a slobbery, staining mess. It was then that I knew he had escaped from the shadow of himself. Gradually, he regained his strength, barely limping, his eyes bright with light again. The path of the maze seemed clear again, and the once seemingly unnavigable obstacles were now small speed bumps.
Life is not easy; it’s not always a simple labyrinth. However, if you allow those who want to support and love you to stand beside you, it becomes much easier to hope, to dream, and to thrive.
