Mr. Burr was the proud owner of the oldest dog in the world.

The nervous subordinates of Burr Appliances would bear witness each hour to their employer’s stentorian proclamations: “This dog, this dog is the oldest dog in the world.”

Sporting a watch at Burr Appliances was strictly unnecessary, the declamatory pronouncements being so reliably regular, that one could simply keep track with a tally. Time in the factory, like everything else, looked askance from Mr. Burr, before proceeding. The work place beat to the pace of Mr. Burr’s proud chest.

The leather pawed workers, watched the hours slide past like Neolithic men, working flint and thinking early lapidary thoughts. The washing machine drums rolled and thundered a primal rhythm. Light dancing on the walls from their rotation. Firewood crackled on the cheap radio.

The Cro-Magnon morning shift, up since the dawn of man and learning to like coffee, threshing grass and fashioning awls from the teeth of monsters, looked on at their leader with tired reverence, gazed at him through the lined glass, standing in his office, holding in his arms the oldest dog in the world. A totem to the flint knappers, a sculpt centre of a sundial with his hourly exclamations winding around him like shadows.