Kittens
By
Steen W. Rasmussen
He is the pig farmer who drowns four healthy kittens in a plastic bucket. Before exiting the pigpen, he grabs one dead kitty and wipes his soiled boots clean with its glistening fur.
He walks to his house where a well-earned lunch awaits him, and he throws the sad little corpse to the yard-dogs. The other three he’s already fed to the pigs.
***
I am the avenger who—under the cover of night—sneaks past the dogs, into the house, and up the stairs to where the farmer and his wife lie snoring.
I stand next to their bed for a while observing how innocent and innocuous humans look when they’re unconscious—when their personalities are dormant. Then, without fanfare, I cut the wife’s throat with a single slice, covering her nose and mouth so her death rattle doesn’t wake up her husband.
I sit down and wait for the first ray of sunlight, and when it arrives, the farmer opens his eyes. He is a bit dazed at first, but then sees me sitting on his chest.
“What?” he manages to say, confused.
“Not what—who!” I reply.
“I am mother to the four healthy kittens you drowned yesterday. You probably don’t even remember—you’ve killed so many.”
The farmer makes a nether-worldly sound, betraying the demonic beast that he really is. I point at his wife who, in truth, has been lying lifeless next to—occasionally under—him for years, but whose body is just now entering rigor mortis. He looks at her—then at me—with the expression of someone who realizes he’s about to go over the cliff in a runaway car.
Before he can get his hands out from under the blanket, I attack his right shoulder and tear it open with my long fangs. I quickly locate the tendons amongst the torn cartilage and gushing blood, and sever them with the razor-sharp blades on my front paws. I repeat the operation on his left shoulder, rendering both arms useless for any kind of defense. With legs flailing, he wiggles his torso up and down and side to side with such force, first the blanket—then his dead wife—fall out of the bed and onto the floor.
I tap dance on his dumb, ugly face with all of my twenty claws fully extended, then scratch at his evil fiery eyes until they're liquid mush. He's howling like a wolf in a bear trap which makes my blood pump faster, and boil hotter, than it already was. The commotion has awoken the yard-dogs, and to the sound of their rabid barks, the clinking of their iron chains yanking taut, I go to work on his mushroom nose and cauliflower ears.
When I’m done ripping his head to shreds—it looks like it’s been through a meat grinder—I tear open his stinky pajamas and plow my claws deep into every patch of skin I can find. Once I've covered his entire disgusting body with furrows—and sliced off a few choice appendages along the way—he looks like a bloody heap of offal.
The farmer gurgles like a baby—the impotent yard-dogs whimper—and I finish him off with a stab to the place where his heart would've been had he been born with one.
Steen W. Rasmussen was a singer/songwriter/guitarist with various garage bands in Denmark—his native land. He now resides in NYC and is a member of the distinguished literary forum, Woodside Writer. His poems and short stories have recently appeared in Gorko Gazette, Poem Stellium, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Dear Booze, and several others.
By
Steen W. Rasmussen
He is the pig farmer who drowns four healthy kittens in a plastic bucket. Before exiting the pigpen, he grabs one dead kitty and wipes his soiled boots clean with its glistening fur.
He walks to his house where a well-earned lunch awaits him, and he throws the sad little corpse to the yard-dogs. The other three he’s already fed to the pigs.
***
I am the avenger who—under the cover of night—sneaks past the dogs, into the house, and up the stairs to where the farmer and his wife lie snoring.
I stand next to their bed for a while observing how innocent and innocuous humans look when they’re unconscious—when their personalities are dormant. Then, without fanfare, I cut the wife’s throat with a single slice, covering her nose and mouth so her death rattle doesn’t wake up her husband.
I sit down and wait for the first ray of sunlight, and when it arrives, the farmer opens his eyes. He is a bit dazed at first, but then sees me sitting on his chest.
“What?” he manages to say, confused.
“Not what—who!” I reply.
“I am mother to the four healthy kittens you drowned yesterday. You probably don’t even remember—you’ve killed so many.”
The farmer makes a nether-worldly sound, betraying the demonic beast that he really is. I point at his wife who, in truth, has been lying lifeless next to—occasionally under—him for years, but whose body is just now entering rigor mortis. He looks at her—then at me—with the expression of someone who realizes he’s about to go over the cliff in a runaway car.
Before he can get his hands out from under the blanket, I attack his right shoulder and tear it open with my long fangs. I quickly locate the tendons amongst the torn cartilage and gushing blood, and sever them with the razor-sharp blades on my front paws. I repeat the operation on his left shoulder, rendering both arms useless for any kind of defense. With legs flailing, he wiggles his torso up and down and side to side with such force, first the blanket—then his dead wife—fall out of the bed and onto the floor.
I tap dance on his dumb, ugly face with all of my twenty claws fully extended, then scratch at his evil fiery eyes until they're liquid mush. He's howling like a wolf in a bear trap which makes my blood pump faster, and boil hotter, than it already was. The commotion has awoken the yard-dogs, and to the sound of their rabid barks, the clinking of their iron chains yanking taut, I go to work on his mushroom nose and cauliflower ears.
When I’m done ripping his head to shreds—it looks like it’s been through a meat grinder—I tear open his stinky pajamas and plow my claws deep into every patch of skin I can find. Once I've covered his entire disgusting body with furrows—and sliced off a few choice appendages along the way—he looks like a bloody heap of offal.
The farmer gurgles like a baby—the impotent yard-dogs whimper—and I finish him off with a stab to the place where his heart would've been had he been born with one.
Steen W. Rasmussen was a singer/songwriter/guitarist with various garage bands in Denmark—his native land. He now resides in NYC and is a member of the distinguished literary forum, Woodside Writer. His poems and short stories have recently appeared in Gorko Gazette, Poem Stellium, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Dear Booze, and several others.
