I Am an Executioner (2 page)

Maharaj took his time, moving real slow, hefting his huge body through the brush, and I could smell him now—it was definitely Maharaj, so the fear and the pressure were kind of building up inside me. I was debating: Should I try to get away, and risk attracting his attention; or should I sit still and stay as quiet as possible and hope he’d ignore me?

I decided to make a move for it, but this turned out to be the wrong decision. As soon as I got up and started to walk, I heard Maharaj break into a run, and in three quick bounds—boom, boom, boom—his heavy body was on top of mine and his claws were in my back and his teeth were sunk deep into my ass.

I screamed and writhed, but he kept me pinned down for thirty seconds or a minute, during which time I heard him fart, casual, loud and stinky, as if to demonstrate how relaxed he was, how little effort it took him to keep me locked down and in pain. Finally, he released me, as calmly as you please. He got up and started to walk away. (He didn’t even look at me—just like Saskia.) He paused in front of the metal door in the fiberglass
rock where I usually got my food. He crouched down and sent out a fat stream of piss. That smell would stick to that rock for days, and he knew it.

At this point I was thinking: Kitch. I just want Kitch. I just want him to show up and salvage this day and restore it to its original promise. I want Kitch to bring me my food and wash my rock. I want Kitch to hang around for a few minutes and keep Maharaj away from me. I want to hear Kitch’s voice flattering me and telling me what a good cat I was, and telling me what to do. Actually, it would have been fine if Kitch didn’t do any of these things. He could have forgotten the food and said not a word to me, for all I cared. I just wanted him to be there. I just wanted to see his face for a few seconds, just to look at him. In fact, even thinking about Kitch’s pink face made me feel better, gave me a feeling of hope and calm, and made the throbbing in my ass and my head fade a little. He would be here soon, I knew it.

I settled down again and closed my eyes. The noise of the crowd also settled, finally, into a distant hum and chatter like it usually did, like a sonic blanket over the world, and in a little while I managed to fall asleep.

When I woke up it was gray and cool, a bank of clouds having moved in over the sun. My headache was better, but now my whole torso ached from hunger. I sniffed around the metal door, but there was still nothing there but the odor of Maharaj’s catpiss.

Kitch still hadn’t arrived. I couldn’t believe it.

At that moment, I heard a familiar noise wafting over the moat that separated me from the visitors:

Oh, God, I thought. Not the “row-your-boat” lady, not today of all days. She sat down on the bench, sweatered and stinking, hair astray, grinning with her broken teeth. I could smell her from where I sat!

I roared at her instinctively, but she didn’t shut up. In fact, she let out a whoop and a holler and sang all the louder.

I got up and paced back and forth, pausing every now and again to glare, but she wasn’t intimidated in the least. She sang and she sang and she sang. After maybe half an hour, the singing faded into soft, incoherent chatter, until finally she slumped low on the bench and started to snore.

Still, the day dragged on, and the sun had barely even crested in the sky. I felt a painful knock! knock! knock! in my head, and looked up to see the teenage zoo attendant banging his litter stick against the bench, trying to rouse the row-your-boat lady. Finally, she woke up and walked quietly away.

Kitch, I kept thinking. Kitch Kitch Kitch Kitch Kitch.

And just then, I saw Maharaj rising over the hill again, moving steady and fast, fairly bristling for another confrontation. What had I done this time? I kept repeating Kitch’s name like a mantra. My head was about to explode into a million pieces. It hurt so bad I could barely move it from one side to the other, and Maharaj was moving in for the kill, ready to carve up my rump and shit on my lair for good measure. And just at that moment, just as the pressure in my head was reaching the point where my brains felt like they would liquefy and boil and shoot from my ears in jets of steam, just as Maharaj crouched down for the pounce, just as all these things were about to happen, the people door creaked open and who was there but Kitch!

It was really him, his red face aglow in the sunlight, and I almost jumped into the air with delight. Maharaj turned and galloped away to hide. The pain in my head melted into some pink, loving bliss. Where was my hunger? Where was all the gloom and trouble of the day? It was all gone. Kitch was here!

I paced back and forth and meowed, like a lovesick lynx. I ran around in a circle and bit my tail. I peed in a long, hot
stream, with a big grin on my face. I paced up and down and up and down again, then I rolled on my back and let my tongue loll out. And then I popped upright and roared. It was Kitch! Yes, Kitch was here! And I loved him! And he was here!

Little did I know, the most horrible thing was yet to happen.

Kitch was still standing near the door. In fact, he seemed, for some reason, unnaturally cautious. He hadn’t advanced toward me at all, nor had he called out to return my greetings, and that’s when I realized there was someone with him—an older man with thick glasses, and wearing white rubber gloves on his hands. Kitch began, finally, to walk to one side of me, slowly, while trying to shield this other, nervous, man from my view.

Well, I had no time for this nonsense. Kitch was here, and I had something to tell him. I loved him, and my love couldn’t contain itself, and I wanted to make Kitch feel it, too. I pranced right up to Kitch, to just about three feet away from him, as close as I had ever been.

I’m here, Kitch, I meant to say; and I love you.

When I jumped forward like this, the man with glasses behind Kitch gripped Kitch’s shoulder hard and said something I couldn’t quite hear, and Kitch yelled at me sharply. And then Kitch did something I couldn’t believe. He had a long stick in his hand—he always carried it, but I’d never seen him use it before. Now he raised this long stick high above his head and brought it down hard on my nose.

I yowled and backed away, stunned. I couldn’t at first understand what had happened. There was a sharp, reverberating pain between my eyes; the world before me seemed to split into two or three identical sharp-edged versions of itself, then everything became clouded in hazy splotches of red.

Slowly, my senses returned to me. I began to realize what had happened, that Kitch had actually hit me, that he had hit me hard in front of this new person. But why? What had I done? I had only been trying to show how much I loved him.

Now I began to feel very bad—not just the pain in my nose,
but a different, difficult kind of anguish. Why would Kitch do a thing like that? Didn’t he appreciate me? After I had wanted nothing more all day than to see that beautiful fat face and to love him, even though he had ignored me since yesterday, even though he had left me all alone and hadn’t bothered even to feed me? All that love he could have had for the taking, but instead he’d gone and done a thing like this: he’d hit me! I was embarrassed and ashamed, and my ears began to run hot with blood. And then I began to feel angry.

And all at once the anger welled up inside me so sharp and fast, filling me like a hot liquid, and before I knew what was happening, I took a huge leap and tackled Kitch. We fell down with a hard bang to the ground, my claws holding him fast—and in a way, it felt good to hold him like that, a powerful kind of feeling. And then I bit him, just once, hard and quick.

It happened so fast, and it wasn’t at all intentional. At least I don’t think it was intentional. It didn’t feel intentional, but to be honest, it didn’t quite feel accidental either. It was somewhere in between. I was on him and I bit him—just once—and then I stepped away, all in the blink of an eye.

The old man behind him screamed and retreated behind the people door; and then I blinked and looked down at where Kitch was lying.

I had bitten him on the neck, and I saw there were two round, black holes where my teeth had entered him. And now two thick streams of blood began to spout out of those two holes. Kitch was staring at me with a concerned look, his mouth was moving up and down, and now blood was coming out of his mouth as well.

I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. Just a few seconds ago Kitch was standing up and healthy and I had been so happy to see him, and now he was lying on the ground with blood spilling out of his mouth because of something I had done. This hadn’t happened. This couldn’t be happening. I had never hurt anyone in all my life. I didn’t even know I had the power to take
a man down so deftly. The blood was spreading black and wet around him.

Now, I knew I had to put a stop to this. I had to reverse whatever this was that had happened. I ran up to Kitch, and I saw that he was scared of me now. I licked his neck from where the blood was coming and tried to make the blood stop. Kitch feebly pushed and tried to kick at me, but I ignored him and kept licking. I licked and I licked, but the blood kept pouring out, and so I licked faster.

And as I licked for what seemed like minutes, I slowly became conscious of the fact that there was no way my licking was going to stop this blood from pouring out. And yet I couldn’t stop licking. I didn’t want to stop licking, because another surprising realization was forming in the back of my mind, something that had never even remotely occurred to me before, a realization that made me want to lick and lick faster, and keep licking forever. The realization was:

Kitch’s blood was delicious.

As soon as this thought formed itself in my mind, I jumped back in horror. This was Kitch’s blood I was drinking—Kitch, whom I loved! What was I doing?

I turned around to look for help. Saskia and Maharaj were standing at a distance, staring with eager curiosity, but neither of them made the slightest move to help me. I knew they were too cautious to get involved, and I couldn’t be bothered to convince them.

I looked then to the other side of the moat, where dozens and dozens of people were staring at us and talking and pointing in alarm. One of these people could surely help Kitch, I thought. I ran up and down and roared, and tried to get their attention, but none of them made the first effort to cross the moat and help us. In fact, some of them started to throw things at me—paper cups full of soda, little rocks—and to yell. To hell with them, I thought. When I turned back around to check on Kitch, I saw
that the old man with glasses had crouched down and was trying to do something to my friend. Was the old man helping? Was someone helping at last? I ran back to check, but as soon as I did so, the old man fell backward and scrambled hurriedly out of the people door, leaving that door swinging wildly behind him.

Poor Kitch! Nobody would help him. His eyes were open and he was pale. The blood from his neck had slowed to a trickle and the ground around him was soggy like a three-day rain. His lips were moving so slightly, and then they stopped moving, and his eyes just stared up. I licked his sweet face, but he didn’t respond. Oh, Kitch! What had I done? I had to find help for him, if it was the last thing I did. I turned and ran out of the people door—I had never been outside the people door before, but I didn’t even think twice about running out of it.

There were hundreds of people outside—literally hundreds—but why wouldn’t any of them stop to help me? They all ran away, as if terribly frightened of something, everywhere I looked. What mysterious terror could have overtaken the zoo’s entire human population, on this day of all days? What could be so horrible that it would keep them from helping Kitch? Had an elephant escaped?

The situation finally became clear to me: I was Kitch’s only hope. I ran back to the door of my compound, but as soon as I got there, I saw a bright flash and heard a blast. When the smoke cleared and my ears stopped ringing, I saw that a tall, thin man had kneeled down very quietly behind the popcorn stand across from my compound. He held a long gun in his hands. He had been waiting for me, apparently, and now he fired again.

I crouched down and stayed very still. He fired a third time, and I heard a loud crash behind me. I tried to lunge toward him, but then he fired once more, and the blast came so close that my face burned with its heat, and I had no choice but to turn around and run.

I ran and I ran, and the people around me screamed and ran,
too, and I ran behind these people, and then I ran alongside them, having nowhere else to go; and finally I ran away from them. I kept running until I had no idea where I was anymore. There were no animals and no people: just a long ribbon of black, with objects rushing by, things on wheels that groaned and squawked and growled. Every few minutes I heard—or thought I heard—the crash and fire of the tall man’s rifle that had almost burned me moments earlier, and then I ran even harder. I ran alongside those fast-rolling things, and they swerved and smashed and croaked and honked. I kept running and running, not sure where I was headed, just desperate to get away from the madness at the zoo, the madness that was my life, and hoping still to find some help, somehow, for Kitch.

I ran until I could barely pick up my legs any longer, and each breath raked my lungs with sharpened claws. I slowed down and looked around me and saw that the rolling objects had grown, finally, sparse and distant. I saw wide grassy expanses, with small houses set back nicely on the neat grass. Everywhere I looked: houses and grass, nicely spaced, as far as the eye could see. And this vista, the longest vista I could remember ever having seen, stirred me with a strange exhilaration. I could run as long and as far as I wanted here, with no wall to stop me! And I did run. As tired as I was, something in my heart stirred me to run again, in great leaping strides. It was a strange feeling—to be on the run; to be worried about Kitch, whom I had hurt; to be away from the only home I had known; and yet to feel this strange and almost terrifying euphoria. On one of these great lawns, behind a small house, I was gratified to see a huge ice-blue pool of water. I stopped here and drank as much as I could hold. Then I put my very head into the pool and lifted it out, sopping and cool. And now the pull of sleep was overwhelming, so I sank down where I was and closed my eyes.