Saving One Life

Few paid any mind to the innocuous white and grey building as they cruised by in their tricked out cars.  Only a brave few stop, but only when there is an urgent mission to complete. The exterior gives no forewarning of the loud cacophony inside, the piteous hopeless environs encased in cement and paint.  The clerks say nothing upon your entrance; tired, sad eyes might lift from stacks of paperwork, but usually not.  A visitor must follow the signs, cats on one side and dogs on the other, both areas behind foreboding metal doors.  Pictures line the wall helter-skelter style, hundreds of pitiful eyes watching as you shuffle quietly down the hall, in the vain hope of completing your woeful mission.  A draft blows as you open the dreary door brining upon you the complex scent of sorrow, death and pain.  A grey concrete floor with rusted metal grates help drain the urine of the fearful and forgotten, the bruised and the broken.  Your scent raises a chorus of loud whimpering pleas for help along the metal caged hallway.  Forlorn, dirty and hopeful; even though they inhabit a cell with a metal bowl for water, no bed and piles of their own feces.  The wretched conditions pull your very heart as your throat threatens to choke with tears.  To save every single one, a task no lone individual could hope to complete.  But you want to, you feel the need to be a savior, your heart will allow no less.  Moving down the cold, stark cages, each face beckons and begs for your mercy, your rescue.  One has been cruelly shot for fun by his previous owner, one was beaten until her face swelled to the point she lost an eye.  Puppies abandoned in a cloth bag next to the murdered corpse of their mother.  Each story more gut wrenching and vile than the last.  Then, when your soul is raw and bleeding, a bundle of fur approaches his cage door.  He quietly sits, watching as you move along, continuing to read the bitter biographies.  Silently assessing your reaction, smelling your emotions and you stop to look him in his eyes.  At that moment you know, he is the one you will save today.  You rush to the front, through the heavy metal door, hoping to gain the attention of the staff.  Tired eyes flash up in surprise at the loud slam of the door and the running of your feet.  In short breathless words you explain what you need.  Teeth showing smiles of joy light up their faces as they set to preparing the paperwork.  The clerk happily walks back to the area with you and unlocks the prison of the one brave young soul you will flee with from this Hell.  He has no name save for the one in your heart, the one your conscious whispered to you as soon as your eyes met.  For him you will provide a real shelter, no, a real HOME.  A place of Love, Warmth and Fun, in which he will belong, no longer displaced or misplaced.  To him you say quietly, intimately, “Are you ready to go home Max?”  “I think you look like a Max and I Love you already.”  Driving away from that dungeon, neither of you looks back, only forward to the future, to tomorrow.