Stray

You feel an unfamiliar thud as your tires go over a bump you swore wasn't there. You bring the car to a slow stop and toss your phone onto the passenger seat, illuminating the car interior. Looking into the rearview mirror you see a black lump dimly lit by the orange glow of the streetlights and the glaring red of your car's brake lights. You put the car in park and, leaving it running, step out as the low, rumbling engine interrupts the otherwise quiet street. You aren't sure why, it's just a feeling. The rain soaked street lies empty except for a small red spot reflecting in the lights. Movement to your left draws your eyes to a shadowy figure limping into the alleyway.

What am I doing? you think as you leave your car and follow the feline into the alley. Peeking around the corner of the building, your eyes track the hobbling cat as its coat blends in with the darkness and its smell blends with the trash strewn about the alley. Down the alley it went, each paw dragging it along little by little into the increasing darkness. A single light briefly illuminated the walking corpse as it turned, pulling itself around the corner and behind the building. The cat out of sight, you stalk slowly, carefully, as if the soft sound of shifting gravel or the sharp sound of crushing glass might breath new life into its half crushed body and scare it away.

You freeze halfway down the alley, uncertain of the new sound in the darkness. It comes again and you recognize it for what it is - the soft mewing of a cat. Soft, strained, it comes again. And again. Abandoning stealth but still holding to caution, you finish the rest of the alley at a walking pace.

Turning another corner you find a service area in the back of the building: a loading area with dumpsters and boxes and crates and pallets, everything pushed and stacked neatly together and illuminated by a single, uncovered yellow bulb. In the middle of it all lies the cat, struggling to stand as its body trembles and blood pools on the asphalt under it. You arrive in time to witness its last mew, a death rattle piercing through the droning sounds of the city. Its will finally giving out, the black cat collapses onto the ground.

You approach, awaiting the moment the cat pops-up and runs away, or launches itself at you full of claws and fur and fury. Instead, you find exactly what you deep-down knew you expected to find. Death is all that remains of the stray. All falls silent in mourning for a second as you stare transfixed at the passed stray. Two seconds. Three seconds. Then a single ear-piercing Meow! cuts through the roar of the faraway engines. All falls silent again as if maybe it never came at all, perhaps just a haunting echo of your accidental victim. Another Meow!, different, closer another cat responding. A heartbeat later, another answer, closer than the last.

You turn to see a cat saunter into the service area from the alleyway. Another Meow behind you brings your eyes to one sitting on a stack of pallets. A dull thud reveals another walking along the top of a dumpster, yellow eyes glaring at you. All the while, the cries turn into an almost tangible cacophony that fills the air as more and more cats add their voices to the choir for one of their fallen brethren. Every time you turn to face a new sound or just the tingling sensation of a new pair of eyes on your back, a new cat appears to greet you with accusing eyes. More and more fill the once nearly empty area: they line up on a low wall or sprawl on the raised dock or just pace in circles. Always appearing the moment before you turn to see where they might've come from, like a magician through a trap door, or the devil. It only takes a minute or two for the alley to fill with them, cats of all shapes and sizes and colors, but all crying vengeance, not only for their kin lying dead at your feet, but all the others throughout the city, the country, the world. Strays they are called and yet how can they be strays when the very Earth itself its theirs?

The discord symphony fills your ears and cuts to your soul. As you stand at the center of the chaos and wonder what kind of God could deny their pleas, a charge rips through the air and you know that someone or something has answered. The pool of blood around the deceased glows a red that fills the alley, becoming a tower of light shining through to the dark skies above. Throughout the city, similar lights illuminate the night. The passed cat in front of you falls into the light, sinking into the glow until it disappears from sight.

The cries of the cats are drowned out momentarily by a single, hair-raising roar that sends a shiver down your spine. A shiver that jolts your feet to move but not before you witness the claws that rise up from the light. Its razor-sharp points dig into the asphalt, cutting into it like butter, or parting it like flesh. The terror consumes you as you run, that innate nature built into all prey that overwhelms them with fear when they know the predator has set its sights on them.

Down the alley and back onto the street, the night trades its midnight black for a hellish red. Dozens of demonic roars drown out the city, replaced by terrified screams of the soon-to-be deceased. You jump back into your still running car and sit petrified, awaiting the moment the screams stop, dreading the silence of extinction soon to come.




Happy Halloween! So, Stray has actually been sitting unfinished in my notebook for the past year as I planned to write it for last Halloween. Well, better late than never I guess. I also finally got a picture of a cat to use. It would've looked better if it were still lying on its side, but got up once I got close. I've also been reading this book series "The Others" by Anne Bishop about humans evolving along side other shapeshifting creatures that control the world which helped to me finish up the story.