CHARLIE

CHARLES

April 30, 2023

Well, I can tell you with certainty that this is not a dream. It has been roughly a week since I woke up and could not open my eyes, according to my calculations. Yesterday, I woke up and I was able to open my eyes. It was slow and they were a little sticky and at first only small slivers of light came in and I blinked a little bit and now I can tell you that my suspicions are confirmed. I am a dog. A very small dog, to be exact. I do not know how this happened but these are the facts, I am sure about that. I am surrounded at all times by other very small dogs, some of which have opened their eyes and stare at me with confusion- rightfully so- and others still have not. Somehow all of us seem to be able to find our way to the large dog that nurses us, but maybe she comes to us, so that we can eat. I understand this is our mother. The whimpering sounds make sense now, and it makes sense why I felt so small. Also, I have never been more perplexed in my life.

I don’t know how I came to be in this dog body. I know I used to say to no one in particular that I wanted to come back as a dog and sleep all day in the sun and not have to give people news that made them angry at me, even though I was just doing my job, but I didn’t know that it was possible. I had also read about reincarnation once, I stumbled on an article in TIME magazine and thought it was interesting, but I did not know that a human could be a dog. I also did not know that I would be able to remember the before times. That seems strange to me, that I have memories of a different body. I feel like I am still that man but, in this body, but that was before. That is what I have come to think of them as. The before times. Back when I was a human man in a small apartment in Ohio.

What I think is also strange, is that I have knowledge of the before times but also that I have knowledge of this new body. Humans say that animals don’t have an awareness of things and don’t experience emotion the same way but that is not true. I know that now. I very much know that I am a dog, and I know that I need to find my mother and nurse so that I do not starve. I know when I feel scared or lonely- which almost never happens because I am in a pile of other dogs, which I suppose are my brothers and sisters. I do not know how many of us there are because I cannot lift my head up or move around too much yet, but I suspect there are eleven. It is yet to be determined. I cannot see how many, but also, I don’t know if I know how to count in this body, but I remember reading once that the average size litter is one to twelve puppies, so I suspect there are an average amount of us. There is a lot of whimpering and wiggling and it can sometimes be hard to find a space to eat so I think there are a lot of us. At least eleven. I think thirteen. That is a lucky number. Thirteen.