[alansplace]

He finished his first long, shallow, almost delicate cut, lifted the knife from my flesh, and repositioned it beside the first. The whole while I never stopped ranting at the top of my lungs. I doubted it was coherent enough to understand—but it described my feelings perfectly. I screamed and I kept on screaming.

And because I did, Cassius never heard Mouse’s claws on the marble floor.

The air suddenly shook with a bellowing, damned near leonine roar. Cassius’s head whipped around in time to see my dog leap from twenty feet away and hurtle forward like a grey-furred wrecking ball.