Misery begets Hope

The Dead Cat

Vincent always arrives at the college way too early. He doesn't have a class for the next two hours.

There's this small bushy garden behind the department of Botany where people barely come.

It has a cement tank filled with dead leaves and Vincent sits on it comfortably not minding the dirt nor the stabbings of hungry mosquitoes.

This is Vincent's safe place. A small overgrown garden known by none.

He loves the atmosphere here. Oddly, the faint sound of students and Lecturers going on about their day calms him.

Being insignificant comforts him.

This place usually smells like something is dying but today it smells like something is actually dead.

At first Vincent thought nothing of it and tried to ignore it. But the stench of death is too strong! He couldn't help but turn around to investigate.

To his horror, there was a dead cat rotting on the pool of leaves. It looks like it died only a couple of hours ago and the scent of rotting flesh is fresh.

He didn't react, he just kept staring at the Cat's body and he keenly observed ants and other lifeforms uniformly eating away this unfortunate feline.

He glared at this awful reminder of mortality for a whole dozen minutes. Then, he hopped off and sat a few feet away on the garden's pavement.

He slouched down and placed his plams on top of his feet. He's trying to warm himself by cuddling his hands on his shoes. It was working until suddenly a drizzle of tears started falling.

The tears maybe warm, but the trail left by them is always cold.

Vincent is usually numb,
That last he cried was a June invaded by grief two years ago.

But today, he wept,
And he wept, silently.
He wept like he was mad,
He wailed until his eyes were as red as the dead cat's dry blood.

He sat on the pavement till he was sure that he shed all the tears. He got up and slapped himself with some water and irritably wiped his face.

He was late for the class so he went to the library to "study".

He sat on a seat in the last row shielded by thousands of conversations and it's loud "silence".

He put on his earphones again and opened a random chapter of his History textbook. He tried to read but he couldn't even get past a paragraph.

All he could see was that Dead Cat's image in his mind and he felt like he was about to cry again.

He thought to himself
"Fuck, not again!"

It wasn't a cold day but he was shivering, as if he got a fever. He doesn't know what to do so he just "sat" there lonely, cold and teary.

He was doing his very best to not cry again and this was no less than a nightmare.

He was barely holding on and that's when he heard a group of students coming towards his seat chit chatting.

"Ah, Nice!" He thinks to himself sarcastically, but truly there's nothing more embarassing to himself than to cry infront of a bunch of dumb youngsters who'll probably bully him his entire college life.

The chit chatting prospective bullies are now standing near Vincent's seat as they discuss what book to take from the cupboards nearby.

Vincent absolutely doesn't move a muscle, his life depended on him being invincible right now. That's when one of the guys came right next to him and started to search through the shelve labelled English literature books.

To make Vincent's worst nightmare come true, that guy places his arm on Vincent's shoulder nonchalantly while he bent down to pick up a fallen book...