[FICTION]

[03/27/26]

The Breakthrough

by Dylan Ohryu

I was not embarrassed when my boyfriend came home to find me naked and tearing the fitted sheet with my teeth. I wanted him to see me in all my frustration. He had Steven's sour on him, and something else too. Cheap candles?

“I present to you,” he sang, a child trying to distract from a broken vase, “your new teacup dog.” He thrust a hairpin wrist into his breast pocket and pulled out a tiny furball.

It was the size of my palm, with coiled, caramel fur and jet-black eyes. When it spoke it made shallow bubbling noises like the intestines of an upset stomach. 

My mind was still on Steven. 

The teacup dog snarled at me. Then it did a hard blink. When it reopened its eyes they were sweet and histrionic like those of an anime character. Glassy nasal drip soaked its snout area.

My boyfriend said, “This dog will be our baby.”

He put the teacup dog in my hand and I wrestled with the idea of compressing it like lemon over white fish. 

“No more surprises,” he said. 

“Everything’s all out there now,” I replied. 

Later, during sex, he told me Steven had grown his beard out. “I told him to do it,” he grunted. “Makes him look all crazy-like.”

The teacup dog was panting on the floor, listening to him pump inside me. “Why do you care what Steven looks like?” I said. 

He was looking around. “Where’s the dog?” 

One night Steven came over for dinner. The teacup dog followed me around the kitchen while I cooked, making its pleading, wet sounds. When we sat down to eat, it positioned itself under the table, pressing against my ankle. Its fur felt damp and fevered.

If I squinted, the teacup dog was an impressionist painting. A smear with two black comma eyes. Cradling it, I felt like a painting too. I pictured a medieval icon of a saint stabbed in the neck and rolling her eyes about it.

I told myself the teacup dog would live in our home not as a pet but as an indelible fixture, like the waist-level fist hole in our bedroom drywall. Something I would acknowledge and eventually delete from my eyesight. 

“Does he bother you?” my boyfriend asked. “Steven?” 

“I’m not bothered by anything,” I said. “Nothing gets under my skin.” The teacup dog made a wet sound from the corner. 

“We're twins,” he reminded me. “It’s just normal twin stuff.” He laughed.

I had a job at a video store downtown at the time. An electrician came to install blue lights in the bathroom after the owner had walked in on someone shooting up. During my breaks, I stood in the bathroom, inhaling the smell of shit and bleach, and looked at myself in the mirror. The blue light illuminated my acne, all my blotches and bumps. This was upsetting at first, but I did it so regularly it stopped having an effect. 

The teacup dog could not make up its mind about me. I tried to play with it, but it hated recreation. Tennis balls were too big for its mouth, so I tossed glass marbles at it. The teacup dog was mostly interested in other games, like flinging itself down the stairs then rolling teacuply around the house. It found the chair where Steven had sat during dinner and fell asleep under it. 

My boyfriend was crestfallen when I told him the teacup dog seemed to have an overactive death drive. He shifted to blame, to accusations.

I said, “I think it's depressed.” 

“It’s depressed because of you,” he said. “You haven’t been yourself in a while.”

What is normal twin stuff? I’ve seen the way they look at each other. The way they hold their breath.

I dreamt once of the teacup dog growing to the size of a normal dog, then expanding larger and larger until it filled the bedroom and forced me out of the window and onto the grass outside from where I watched its humid dogbreath fog the glass. 

I woke up to find my boyfriend curled against the small of my back, asleep, his fingers deep in my pubic triangle.

One morning, when I picked up the teacup dog, it ragdolled in my grip. This was fine. Then it moaned orgasmically. This was not.

I put it down immediately and washed my hands. 

My boyfriend left for work and called me three times before lunch. He kept asking, “How's our baby?"

I said, “Our baby is eating its own fur.” 

I went on an internet dog forum and made a thread about teacup dogs. I asked the online community how long teacups usually live. The responses were grim. A few years, if they’re lucky. Most don't make it past two. 

This made me happy. 

An hour later, a text from my boyfriend: “Going away for the weekend with Steven. Can you watch our precious child while I’m gone?” 

I got down on the floor and asked the teacup dog, “Are they fucking, yes or no?”

It oozed an indecipherable, wet reply. One eye rolled up towards the back of its head and stayed there. The white of the eyeball sent me into a flying rage. I wanted it to look at me. 

I opened the door and kicked the teacup dog out into the street. 

My boyfriend overturned the house when he came back from work. “Where?” he wailed. “Where’s my sweet baby?" Furniture went loudly around the rooms. He went smaller then, shaking drawers off their metal tracks. His head swiveled toward me, slowly, like a great stone statue. His mouth formed the shape of a quiet, breathy, “You.” 

We didn’t speak for several days. Then he packed a duffel bag and went to stay at Steven’s. 

I had to admit, the house felt less ensouled without the teacup dog. It grew quite unbearable. 

I stood in the blue light at work, closed my eyes, and inhabited the teacup dog’s corporeal form. I trotted through the neighborhood, avoiding potholes and skateboarders. A hawk tried to snatch me up, but I dodged its talons. Breathing was difficult. I was hungry, but I couldn’t ingest food without choking. When I went to Steven’s apartment I was too short to see inside. I curled up under the bedroom window and moaned. I couldn’t help being a gross and aberrant animal.

I logged back into the dog forum and made a new thread: Where to buy a teacup dog breed in San Clemente, California?

All of the replies sidestepped my question completely and insisted teacup dogs weren't real breeds, and the ones that existed were often genetically deformed. 

Little monsters, essentially. 

The forum users attacked me for perpetuating inhumane breeding practices. They said I was complicit in animal cruelty and told me to kill myself. 

I didn't really mind. 

I told them I could live with a teacup dog.

It smelled like piss and lavender Febreze in the breeder’s apartment. Three dogs slept on one tea towel. I picked up the smallest. “That one’s sick,” she said.

I looked down.

“It’s perfect.”

DYLAN OHRYU is a writer in Orange County.  Instagram: @dj_shoppingcart.