‘It was a black dog, though the first thing Diego said was, “It’s a horse.” No sooner did he finish the word, the dog barked, and the bark filled the afternoon and we could have sworn it made the surface of water in the quarry pool tremble a little. It was big as a pony, completely black, and it was clearly about to come down the hill. But it wasn’t the only one. The first growl had come from behind us, at the end of the beach. There, very close to us, three slobbering pony-dogs were walking. You could see their ribs as their sides rose and fell — they were skinny. These are not the owner’s dogs, we thought, they were the dogs the bus driver had told us about, savage and dangerous.’
From ‘Our Lady of the Quarry’ in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez.
Absence Club 