It was hard to keep track of the number of days that had gone by since it happened. When one night Rio slunk miserably onto his gently used dog bed, his owner Maya angry with him over something—with time he had forgotten what it was because it had been so trivial in retrospect—and suddenly the next morning Maya was gone. Rio spent a great deal of time panicking. Where, when, how, why—had it been his fault, had the trivial something been more important than he realized, what had he done? Eventually, the brute got his head around to trying to answer those questions with logic. A search of his home revealed three things: one, all of her clothes were still in the closet, dresser, and hamper; two, the front door was locked completely; three, and most crucial of all, her apartment and car keys were still hanging on the hook by the door, and she never left without them. Still, logically, it didn't make sense that she just vanished into thin air, so the answers he got didn't really answer anything at all.
Rio was a clever dog, even though he could easily work himself up and become frazzled. At first, he attempted to keep himself calm and take stock of his situation. His human was gone without a trace which meant food would only last so long. Some foods needed to be consumed quicker than others or else they would cause trouble—a lesson he learned in his youth from a moldy piece of cheese he stole. The water bottles in the fridge didn't go bad to his knowledge; he thought it best to save those if the tin sink's water ran out. Aside from food and water, the biggest problems to tackle were boredom and loneliness and information. Boredom was solved with Mr. Carrot initially, days later leading to anything he could fit in his mouth. Loneliness was a hard one; though Maya's scent still haunted the rooms it comforted him less by the hour. Information came next.
His saving grace was his neighbor, an elderly spaniel-type dog named Violet. Within the first week she managed to leave her apartment to visit his front door. She informed him that her owner had disappeared as well; the other dogs were dubbing the apparently city-wide event 'The Vanishing'. A tad pretentious for his taste. He was assured Maya loved him too much to leave him; she'd be back. (Wouldn't she?) To put his mind off doubt he concerned himself with the old fae. He could tell the pain in her legs were worsening and her resources were all out of her reach. Violet was the reason he spent two days and three nights throwing all 83 pounds of himself at the door. A nasty liquid rose from his stomach into his mouth when he found her helplessly near death, excrement overpowering the smell of her owner's strong cologne. He brought her food and water, tore open the bottle of medicine kibbles for her, and she refused it because, as she told him, "I have lived a long enough life and I'm ready for Albalapis to take me to join the constellations." He mourned her when she left, filling the halls with eerie hound's howls for an hour.
Since then, he'd stuck to his apartment only. He longed for the companionship of Violet, a wise grandmother to many on this particular floor of Complex 53; he longed for his Maya, his mom truer than any four-legged one. Though, if she came home, she'd be pretty mad at him; anything that wasn't bolted down laid topped, ground-level kitchen cabinets had countless teeth marks and the paint worn completely away, trash was strewn about in the kitchen as well, the sofa pillows were torn to hell, he'd chewed off one of the coffee table's legs... She'd be mad. But she'd be back.
He spent a great deal of time laying on the floor in front of the door. Because of wide, somber eyes in the palest yellow color, most dogs found his appearance unnerving and didn't cross the threshold. He wasn't a violent dog but an instinct stirred in him every time a dog approached telling him to protect his home. Even if his home was deteriorating and its resources pretty much all used up. The debate went on in his mind to leave and live or stay in case Maya returned as suddenly as she left. I have to live, for her, so leave.
Rio wandered cautiously down the hall, shaking at the unknown that was beyond the safety of home. The stench of death on the floor below reached into the stairwell and was overwhelming, worse than anything he'd gotten in the field. That must've been the source of the fighting he heard on that floor as well. He stayed on the staircase for several minutes while fighting the urge to vomit. A sharp yipping caught his attention; dread flowed through him as if for the first time he wondered just how many dogs residing in this one building. Rio shakily inched toward the corner to peek down the hall, the plea for help answered by some red fae and a minute later a brute joining in. Should I go over as well, he asked himself. He didn't know what was going on but he figured the answer would come soon and listened intently.
