It's 10:03 AM and I feel like I'm going to throw up. Not 'cause I'm sick--though I am--but because of this morning. This crazy, hectic, twisted morning.
She said let's get going, we've got time.
7:15. I'm in the backseat and my mom's driving me the hour-long trip to school. Normally I'm dozing at this point, giving my heavy eyelids what they want, while my brain drifts off, planning the fictional stories I write and don't finish on Wattpad. But a mixture of Claritin and fate keep me awake.
Of course, being awake doesn't mean that I'm paying attention, so I'm not really sure why the car veers to the left, across the traffic that headed in the opposite direction, and pulls over on the left side of the road, facing oncoming traffic. That is, until seatbelts start flying off and somehow I hear that someone hit a cat.
I don't really care. The last time I wrote about death, heavy-gray death, I came to terms with the fact that I'm a sociopath and only really have empathy for those I care about.
But soon I'm leaning forward, directing my sister, who's in the passenger seat, to the location of the hazard lights, and then I'm watching Mom trek down that lonesome, gray stretch of road. She's jogging, the middle-aged version of sprinting and falling to your knees.
I check the road ahead. The traffic in the other lane is heavy as ever, but some gods or something have kept this lane clear.
She's almost to the cat. She bends down on the side of the road, a concerned comrade lamenting a fallen warrior.
I check the road again and see headlights. That's when I start panicking. Verbally. Because that car's going to come at us. It's going to chip the passenger side of the car and I'll have to watch my sister die.
She's taking her time to pick up the cat. It's 7:18 and we're on track to be late to school.
The headlights are down the first hill and coming up to the second.
She's returning. Slowly. the cat cradled in both arms, limp, head dangling to the side. It's too far to see her expression.
The headlights are ascending the hill.
She's close enough that I can see her expression. It's that same one, from less than two years ago. The one where her face is all red and her eyes are swollen and you can see the wrinkles around her mouth more clearly because her mouth is scrunched up, the corners turned downward, warping her face like the neck of a turkey.
I can see that look inside her eyes.
She comes up to the side of the car and I open the door. She yells, "Get the towel," in a tear-stained, broken voice.
The headlights arrive and pass us. They don't hit me. I'm back in the car, with the towel, and offer it to the cat.
Oh, gods, the cat.
It's limp, lifeless body hangs down between her arms, as if the bones in its body have been liquified. My eyes are drawn to the head. Its mouth is open, white little cat teeth surrounded by the blood.
The blood.
It's that sticky animal blood. It's burned into my vision. Like drool, hanging from its mouth, except it's bright, bright red, like that pink-red crayon that nobody likes because they're trying to draw bricks. Blood's coming out of other places, too, and its head is splattered all over with that sticky red blood.
Mom shifts her position and I see the cat's eye. It's looking far to the left, and it's popping out a little, and it looks like a dead fish, enough that I can smell the ghost scent of decaying fish. Gray-blue, bigger than it should be, pulled out of the head like a brain out of a mummy's nose. My stomach turns.
