Dog Day Afternoon

Desolation gripped Scott. Not the despondency of Knightsbridge or the King’s Road. Not the feelings invoked by slatternly whores who sidled up to him at ‘hooray’ parties, but a frantic sadness that stabbed into him. It began to gnaw at his soul like a colossal beast, chewing on the bones of his dead family. He sat and wept beneath the snowy moon, and looked at the billowing, Antarctic auroras, designs of celestial calligraphy, the corner of a small illuminated manuscript.

Alone, in space, the silver coloured sky crept across the world and all seemed lost forever.

The men were starved, not capable of going on, knowing that eleven miles away across the massive islands of inaccessible ice floes, there was an abundance of food waiting. In the polar darkness, no doubt Wilson would be wondering where they were. Probably singing a lullaby to the Emperor penguins, luring them into false security, before trying to cosh them over the head to give variance to his stew.

The carcass of a seal had been split into four different pieces. Protruding out of the top of each, Scott could see the tip of a large shiny knife. He had not realised that the Eskimo had been melting the ice and embedding the handles into the melted holes. The ice froze over quickly, and soon the blades were stiff and upright, like ramrods. Onto these the Eskimo had put the meat. Scott gazed at them. Baffled. He turned his head away from the rancid smell of rotting offal.

Then he heard something. There! on the very edges of silence. The faint howling of what seemed to be a dog getting nearer. Several dogs now! Suddenly! one rushed towards the meat. It was a wolf! A large, black, wolf, with gleaming, razor sharp teeth. His heart beat faster. He tried to stand to run, but nothing happened. His legs were weak, as if in some hideous dream of pursuit. He was frozen to the spot, with a fear he had never known before. He pulled his blanket up around his head like a small child, wishing the nightmare to end so that he could continue his journey home. And then he understood.

They were tearing at the meat. Ripping their own mouths apart on the razor sharp blades. Blood was spurting everywhere. And in their desperation, in their hunger, they were bleeding to death in the snow. The smell of their blood was carrying across vast distances to other wolves, which came rushing in, fighting each other to get there.

Abandoning all caution, this was one last chance to live and they did not realise until it was too late, that they were eating themselves.