To be honest, the ending is such a knockout that it took me a full hour to collect myself before I felt settled enough to comment on your hard-hitting tragedy. You really caught me off guard, and only after thinking about it for a while did I realize that the ending was foreshadowed from the very beginning. I should have been more aware of your hidden clues: the end was in the last morsel of bread, it was in the poodle's eyes, and it was in the septic foot.
Loads of people are such hypocrites; they will pontificate about the dangers of allowing a poor homeless person to keep a pet just before they go home to their steak dinner while ignoring the beggar on their path.
Your story commands with its phenomenal eloquence and insight.
Hello dear @itsostylish💐,
Thank you for that generous critique. Every now and then I have to write something...call it catharsis... and that's what happened here. I really appreciate that you see the connection between the beginning and the end. It was always about the end, and then creating a logical path to that conclusion (kind of like the beggar's breadcrumbs, as you note).
People love happy endings, but they may not always get one in my stories. There was plenty of kindness there, but not enough to save the beggar and the dog.
I deliberately did not name these characters, because they represented more than themselves. I'm really happy this worked for you, as a reader. Thanks so much for reading through and commenting.