Doggy's Distraction

The air in the grand house always felt heavy, thick with unspoken rules and the cloying scent of expensive polish. For Leo, it was the smell of his cage. He was seven, a small boy with eyes too large for his face, perpetually scanning the ornate rooms for threats, for escape routes, for anything other than the cold, calculating gaze of his stepmother. He moved through the silent halls like a ghost, a whisper of a child in a world that seemed to have forgotten how to laugh. His only true companion was Doggy, a scruffy terrier mix with a heart as big as the house was cold. Doggy’s tail, a perpetual blur of motion, was the only thing that seemed to defy the oppressive stillness.

Tonight, the stillness was even more unnerving. A knot of icy dread tightened in Leo’s small chest. Tonight was the night. His stepmother was attending a charity gala, a rare occasion when her suffocating presence would be absent for extended hours. The key, small and brassy, felt like a burning secret in his pocket. He’d found it tucked away in a dusty velvet box in his deceased mother’s forgotten dressing table, a relic from a life he barely remembered but clung to with all his might. It was the key to the garden gate, the one that led to the woods, to freedom.

He crept into the drawing-room where Doggy lay curled on a plush rug, his breathing soft and even. Leo knelt beside him, his fingers tracing the familiar pattern of the dog’s fur. “Doggy,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “I have to go.”