Knives

Chapter 12

We turned to a corner, following soft call of a furry shadow. Cassie walked slowly toward it, careful not to frighten the small creature. She picked it up and her it in her arms, whispering to it soothingly.

"Is that what you were chasing here?" I asked.

"Yeah. We saw this little guy along the side of the road and I just couldn't let it die there." I went over to where she held the kitten, watching curiously.

"May I?" I held my hand toward it. She passed it from her cradled arms to mine.

I looked at it's tiny face, petting it's whiskers. It purred in my arms as I played with it's ears.

"We like cats?" Light questioned. I

fell back onto the matt on the floor, holding the kitten above me with one hand and tweaked it nose with the other. I held it under it's arms with both hands and swung it from side to side, smiling with innocent amusement. The kitten grew more and more uncomfortable. It lashed out, slicing a line across my face. I froze, clenching it tighter.

"You just scratched me.." I said, hurt. My eyes narrowed as a thought occurred to me. "Well, I can scratch you too!" Losing all sense of myself, I grabbed a short knife and plunged it into the cat's soft stomach, dragging it upward, a spray of blood covering my upper body.

"What are you doing?!" Cassie shrieked, holding my scythe in a defensive pose.

"You want to scratch me too?!" I shouted, flinging the corpse off of the knife and standing up. She shook her head, her face overcome with fear. I pulled the scythe from her feeble grasp holding it about halfway down the staff. I held it against her neck, my arm stretched over her shoulder.

"Wait." she pleaded, her eyes watering. "Stop. You're not a monster. You don't have to do this."

"Yes." I told her, all the light leaving my face. "I am. I do." I made one swift incision as she stood still, embracing her death. She fell to the floor bleeding and hyperventilating. Gradually, her breathing slowed and eventually stopped altogether. All was silent in my head as I cleaned up, dragging the corpses to a hole in the wall. I pushed one in after the other, remembering the unconscious girl on the floor above. I went to check on her, bringing a cleaver with me. She lay there, bleeding lightly from where I struck her. I was in no mood to drag out her death. Her pain held no interest for me. I raised the cleaver and chopped off her head, watching the blood pool on the cement floor. I carried the pieces of her body back down to the hole. By the time I was done, it was dark out. I lay on my bloody mattress, hands behind my head as I stared at the ceiling.

"I learned something today." I thought. "I like kittens."

I lay there for the rest of the night, bathed in blood and all alone.

All was right with the world.