Write On Press Presents: The Ultimate Collection of Original Short Fiction, Volume II
Page 22
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We saw the posters for the missing cat the next day. As soon as I did, I realized instantly that I hadn’t been Gizmo’s only victim. Loretta and I both knew the feline in question, and she was quite fond of him. I figured out that Gizmo must have nailed him somewhere near the bench before I’d found him, which explained his post-meal grogginess.
I didn’t even want to think about what he’d one with the body, if there even was a body left after Gizmo finished chowing down. But I knew for sure that kitty wasn’t coming back home again.
After that it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. Actually, it took about two weeks for push to come to shove. And while it was shocking, in a way it really wasn’t any surprise at all.
Just like before, it happened on a day when I left work early. Ray liked to close shortly after noon on Fridays before holiday weekends, and this was one of the more meaningless ones – Columbus Day, I think, a holiday that doesn’t mean much to anyone any more but still comes with mandatory three-day weekends on a lot of work schedules.
So we started cleaning up around two, and by four o’clock I was out the door for good.
Some of what came after that was a replay of the previous incident. Once again I found a blood trail, but this time it was on our living room rug. There was enough blood to produce a metallic scent that vaguely turned my stomach, and when I rushed to the spare room I already knew Gizmo wouldn’t be in the enclosure.
I left the house quickly, the contents of my stomach already churning. They came bubbling up as I headed toward the patio, but I had enough warning to pick out a bush to hurl into where the puke wouldn’t be quite as conspicuous.
Sure enough, I found Gizmo in the exact same place, curled up contentedly under his favorite bench. This time I was diligent enough to spot the blood splotches on his back, and even if I hadn’t been looking they were prominent enough to be hard to miss.
Being careful not to repeat my past mistakes, I went through the same ritual as last time, sitting down next to him, scratching his head, then pushing the bench over backward so I could get access to him. I’d left the door open this time, so I got him back into the enclosure without another crisis. I’m not sure there would have been one even if I’d messed up again; he was much groggier this time around, to the point where I knew it would take several hours for him to come out of his food coma.
Loretta went missing that night, and of course I knew instantly what must have happened. She was supposed to go over to her family’s place right after she finished her lunch shift and likely swung by the apartment first to feed Gizmo. She never showed and her family called around dinner time, wondering where she was. By that time I’d already disposed of the rug and bought a new one at Home Depot, cleaning the crap out of the entire place before I laid it down.
And as bad as I am at cleaning, I have to say I did a pretty good job.
I also checked the path to the patio and the area around the bench for any telltale signs of carnage. There was nothing obvious; the few patches of blood I found in the dirt path were easy enough to erase by simply kicking dirt over them. And I poured some bleach on the dots of blood I found out on the patio once the sun started to go down, making sure nobody saw me while visions of CSI-type crime scene shows danced in my head.
We had to wait 48 hours to report Loretta as a missing person, a period that gave her family plenty of time to build suspicion for me as a potential perp who was responsible for whatever dastardly deed had taken place. I tried to compensate for this by looking as visibly distraught as possible, but my anguish and anxiety were mostly internal and tied to a completely different sequence of events than the ones they were imagining.
I was torn up, of course, but I’m not a real outwardly emotional guy, and I had a steady river of fear adrenaline coursing through me because the real perp was still at large, sitting right in my spare room, waiting for his next burger to come through the food door.
By the time they were ready to report Loretta’s disappearance, I realized I had to do something about Gizmo, knowing there was some kind of police investigation on the horizon. Ray had been decent enough to put me on a part-time schedule, probably to keep from killing me, but it gave me time to figure out what to do.
I drew blanks on coming up with a plan initially, because I really had no idea what to do with Gizmo. Plus Loretta’s family was still suspicious as hell and basically all over me like white on rice.
Once the holiday weekend was over, though, I felt like I had something that at least vaguely resembled a plan. It wasn’t the most rational thing I’d ever done, but it felt right in my gut, so I started running through it in my mind, considering all the details, and then going over it again and again to make sure I could make it work.
Ironically, it was Loretta herself who provided the springboard for my idea. One of the things we’d done shortly after our arrival was the obligatory day trip to Tijuana – she said it was something she’d done when she was a teenager, and she wanted to experience it with me. I did some poking around on line, and the whole expedition seemed innocuous enough, so in the interest of regular sex and peace in our time I gave in and let Loretta take me down there.
This might have worked out fine, save for Loretta’s wild streak, which eventually led us to Coahuila, which I didn’t know at the time was Tijuana’s red light district. We tried to park there, but we barely made it out of the car before a pair of cops approached us and asked to search the trunk.
Suffice it to say that it was more a demand than a request, and Loretta panicked, since she has a bit of a history with controlled substances and there might have been trace evidence of her wild days back there that any drug dog with a decent sniffer could pick up.
Somehow, I managed to keep my cool. I’m told I’m a hell of an actor when I put my mind to it, and I launched into my “lost tourist” routine, frantically asking for directions as if I’d accidentally driven into the eighth circle of hell, which actually might have been true. Loretta quickly picked up on what I was doing, and she started sweet talking the cops for all she was worth. After some of the most anxious moments of my life – other than with Gizmo, of course – we somehow made it back alive and intact.
Now, memories of that trip sparked my new plan for Gizmo. Donning my best tourist gear, which consisted of a Hawaiian shirt, an Indiana Jones fedora that made me look incredibly silly, cargo shorts and red Adidas sneakers, I made the drive with Gizmo, stopping shortly before I reached the border to put the new, smaller cage I’d purchased into the trunk. I knew I couldn’t leave him in there for long, but from what I remembered of the border cops, getting into Mexico wasn’t that big a deal, especially dressed the way I was.
Amazingly, my plan worked. My outfit was clearly convincing, to the point where I had the two guards who stopped me nearly convulsing with laughter when they checked me out. I pulled over a few miles into Mexico, sweating bullets over the horde of dark possibilities that seemed imminent as I moved the cage from the trunk to the back seat. Once again, though, nothing happened, and I forged on toward Tijuana.
I didn’t really have a concrete plan for what to do when I got there, other than heading back to Coahuila. For some reason that part of the trip was uneventful, perhaps because I was minus Loretta’s odd karma, she had a way of drawing trouble even when she wasn’t deliberately placing herself in dangerous situations. I got a little lost when I reached the edge of Coahuila, but a surge of memories came flooding back once I finally hit the main drag.
My next move was all improv. Winding my way through the sleaze, I spotted a side street that looked promisingly dingy and dangerous. I made a hard turn, squealing the tires to attract attention. It had everything I wanted: a decrepit dive tavern that only a barfly could love, a squalid apartment building next to it, and an obviously abandoned warehouse further down the street.
Wishing my sad looking Toyota sedan was new enough to draw nasty people with bad intentions, I pulled o
ver, double checking to see how Gizmo was doing in the rear view.
I thought the street was deserted, but it took next to no time for me to draw the type of attention I sought. And I even had time to spot them coming down the street, a couple of thuggish-looking teens who were poster boys for the cartel junior achievement award, sporting a mélange of tats, hoodies, wife beaters, wool skull caps and camo pants.
The setup was perfect, so I hustled over to the curbside back door and popped Gizmo’s cage out the back seat. He got their attention immediately, of course, and I made sure it stuck by drawing on my limited acting chops, panicking and acting nervous as a kitten.
They bought the routine completely, especially when I hustled back into the driver’s seat and headed off; leaving Gizmo to whatever his fate might be with the hoods and the cartel they presumably represented. I made it out of the neighborhood without further incident, and that was the end of the adventure. Or so I thought.