Two Eyes Cenote Rattlesnake

There was nothing behind his frantic eyes but the look of a beast trapped in a cage set ablaze. The world around him dissolved into a chaotic blur, the only sound the relentless, droning hum that garbled his thoughts and made his skull vibrate maddingly.

When the buzzing abruptly ceased, the dog collapsed, his body going limp save for the heaving of his chest as he sobbed. His once tense frame lay crumpled over the half-wall of rough stone.

Moments passed before he could regain even a semblance of composure. His weeping gradually subsided into shuddering breaths, each inhale and shaking exhale a struggle to reclaim some fragment of control. His fur, damp with tears and sweat, clung to his mess of a face like a funeral shroud.

He could not bear to look into the mirror of the woman's gaze, all he would have to offer her was the churning of furious betrayal and confusion. His heart pounded against his ribs, each thud a painful reminder of the trust he had misplaced.

It had been his gravest mistake to offer her vulnerability before, and yet here he had made the same one again. He slid down the wall to the floor of his cell, the thin body tucked out of sight from funeral pyre eyes. The hoarse voice came as nothing more than a whisper— a question that he did not expect an answer to, Why?