"Sit!" She screamed.

"You are a dog. As a dog, you do what dog's do--simple things. You also do everything that I tell you to, and when I tell you to."

"Stand!" She shrieked.

My hands and legs are shaking. I slowly stand and lift my head. Facing me is a woman who looks like a large rabid animal. Tufts of hair stick to her wet forehead; a longer clump clings to the edge of her mouth. Her cheeks are blown up like red balloons. One hoof paws the carpet threateningly.

"Get down on your hands and knees and pick up the tape! I want to see you crawl around like a dog. Do you understand?"

I obey without hesitation. It is safer on the ground. If I need to, I can remain hidden beneath the tables, where most of my work lies. I comb the floor in front of me with my hands. I am in the Art Department, a place where thousands of tiny pieces of tape glue themselves to the carpet fibers. I start picking them off with my fingers one at a time.

I work at a weekly city rag magazine. The kind you find in any cafe or bar that contains the entertainment listings. I am an unpaid intern. It is my first job. I am now on my fourteenth day of my first job pretending to be a dog. Earlier in the day I had been asked to assemble several cheap drafting tables. The first one I put together incorrectly. This is when the dog metaphor took root. I was too incompetent for such a task; I needed to do simpler ones.

Earlier than this, I craned over the Classifieds table and manually pasted ad after ad onto a blue lined sheet. The rabid woman habitually came by and said things like, "You don't have talent!" And, "You don't have what it takes!" I continue to work and ignore her taunting. I don't know what else to do. I say to myself that Design talent has nothing to do with placing Classified ad boxes into rows.

The hours creep by, much like my body. It's now past midnight. The tips of my fingers are raw. I rise up from the four-legged humiliation and survey the clean floor. The three other workers in the room stare at me in silence. The beast is returning from the bathroom. We can all hear the approaching hooves. In about two seconds anything might happen.

She swaggers in, like she is towing an extra hump, in addition to her sizeable hind-end.

"I didn't tell you to stand," she sneered.

"You are F-I-R-E-D!"

The last sound erodes into a low-pitched growl.