Down to the Dirt by Joel Thomas Hynes Page B

when someone should happen to slam a ten-pound boulder onto his face. Some new strength at the face of death gets his hind legs twitchin’ and scrawbin’ at the inside of the bag, howlin’ and savage.
    I can’t stop now.
    Can’t let him live like this.
    I slams the rock down onto his face again. His front legs reaches out of the bag and aimlessly latches onto the hem of my dress. Natasha’s good dress. He dangles there for a split second before the horror of it reaches my brain and I swings him off me, his claws shreddin’ into the fine fabric of the dress. Still only half out of the bag, he spins through the air and lands with a thud against a rotten tree stump. I goes over to him. Can’t look him in the eye as I pulls the bag back over his head. I looks up to the sky and blesses myself. Then, with all my strength, I laces the rock down on top of him. His eyeball pops out through the bag and he twitches for a bit. Nerves.
    Catshit on my forehead, splattered all over the inside of Tash’s dress. Blood under my fingernails. Fuck. I goes back to the house to clean up a bit and get a new plastic bag, a proper coffin. Natasha is watchin’ some talk show.
    —Is he dead, Keith?
    —Pretty much, I s’pose.
    I washes the dirt off my forehead, off my forearms, searches the cupboards for a bag.
    —How’d you do it then? You never tortured him, Keith?
    —Tortured him? No I never fuckin’ tortured him…I drowned him in a bucket. He never even knew what happened, girl. Any garbage bags?
    Natasha starts cryin’ again but I won’t hug her. Her pupils are still dilated. She’s still stoned. Compassion is pointless. Ileaves her standin’ there in the middle of the kitchen, starin’ at her feet, tears streamin’ down her cheeks.
    When I makes it back out to the woods the cat is nowhere to be seen. The cat is gone, the old bag bloody and foul where I left him. This is impossible.
    —Here Puss. C’mon Puss-cat. Here Puss Puss Puss.
    Something rustles and fidgets over in the bushes to my left. I checks it out but it’s only an old strip of plastic tangled in a bush. I does a little search of the area, knowin’ that he can’t have gone far without something draggin’ him away. A cloud passes in front of sun, the woods goin’ dark, branches like fingers reachin’ out at me from the corners of my eye. I starts to get real spooked out, thinkin’ that maybe something in the woods is after takin’ the cat.
    I finally finds him staggering off into some shrubs a good twelve or fifteen feet from where he should have died. His eyeball is hangin’ out of his head and his skull is crushed and matted with blood. White stuff drippin’ from his ear. He topples over onto his side and meows with about the same level of urgency he uses to be let out of the house in the mornings. I goes back to get the rock but it’s coated with cat filth and my hands feels too clean from the wash. There must be some other way. I paces again, and when I goes back to him, so help me Christ, he’s purrin’. Lying there on his deathbed with his face bashed in, purrin’ away. Given the circumstances, it’s one of the creepiest sounds I’ve ever heard.
    So I stomps him into the ground with my boot. Stomp. But he won’t stop twitchin’…stomp…howlin’…stomp…scrawbin’…stomp…squirmin’. Tooth and nail he struggles on. I finally have to grind the heel of my boot into his neck until his head lets go from his body. Fuck. My bootscoated with cat sludge. Natasha’s good dress ruined like she said it would be.
    I holds my breath and scoops him into the clean new bag. He’s a mess. A bloody, matted lump of fur and grizzle. I ties a knot into the top of the bag and slings it out over the tops of the trees down into the pit below.
    Nobody ever thought to give that cat a proper name. Just called him Puss.
    Natasha looks me up and down when I comes back into the house. She sees the state of the dress and we’re right back where we