Bloat − June, 2004

It was a hot one. The air was almost too thick to breathe, and you could taste the sweat that stung your eyes made your clothes stick to your body. People draped themselves over uncomfortable lawn chairs like wilted flowers, clutching glasses and cans that were sweating nearly as much as they were. You could feel the weight of the sun on your skin, and you imagined that you could hear the beginnings of a sunburn.

As I made the trek behind my grandmother's apartment my shoes padded softly on the dry, cracked ground, and dirt swirled through the air like it was alive. I could smell the earth as it threatened to clog my nostrils. Following closely behind me were my two younger cousins, Tyler and Corey, and my younger brother Travis. We sought refuge from the heat, but more than that we sought refuge from the adults and their exhausting talk. So displeased with their lives they were, that they forgot that summer was still burning strong, and they let themselves forget the sound of its beckoning.

Looming sullenly in the wavy heat, a grocery store stood vacant behind an expansive parking lot, the surface of which daring the trespass of bare feet. We crossed the lot and its faded yellow lines where no cars parked, and hid from the sun in the shadow of the store. Wiping the sweat from my face I proceeded down the walk the stretched in front of the building, but stopped when I saw something black sitting in front of us in the noon day sun.

The smell hit us first. It was the dank, and yet somehow sweet, smell of rot that poured from the black mound. It was a cat, stiff as stone and baked to leather during what I'd guessed to have been the better part of the afternoon. Its mouth hung crookedly open, exposing two rows of tiny jagged teeth. The eye that wasn't pressed into the pavement glared sightlessly up at us, as if we were but one more exasperation to deal with.

Disgusted, and trying not to imagine the stink of the animal going into our lungs with each breath, we were nonetheless fascinated. Tyler assumed the role of torturer, and revealed to us all a streak of sadism cleverly hidden beneath the charms of boyhood. He subjected the hot corpse with whatever he found handy, and I have never laughed so hard in my entire life.

I wish I could adequately explain the sound the echoed through the empty walkway when the first rock struck. It collided with the hardened skin and it sounded as though someone had kicked a football. I fell to my knees in a fit of laughter, simultaneously trying to catch my breath and yet not vomit when I found it. When I recovered Tyler was readying his next assault.

Over and over he pummeled the cat with a piece of plywood, but despite his efforts it resisted his attacks. Instead, the smell of death intensified, and both Corey and Tyler threw up in the parking lot, with Travis threatening to do the same. When he'd caught his breath, Tyler took his aggression out on the cat's face. When he was through, what was left was only a vague suggestion of what a cat's face should look like. The eyes and nose had caved in, leaving nothing but a hole full of splintered teeth pointing crazily in every direction.

Travis turned and vomited discreetly behind a trashcan.

By now, the smell had reached even the furthest corners of the parking lot, and tufts of black hair littered the ground around the cat's corpse. Brown skin shown in patches, and proved too strong to pierce when Tyler went at it with a sharpened stick. Tossing down his weapons, Tyler turned on a nearby water spigot, deflecting the stream of water with his hands so that it sprayed the dead animal. When he was sufficiently pleased, he dragged a wooden box full of straw next to the cat and scattered some of the straw around the body.

Hot, tired, and vaguely nauseous, we made the trip back to my grandmother's. Later we would show my aunt Lisa the cat that rested in front of the abandoned grocery store, and she would say with her hand pressed tightly over her nose, "That poor thing. Something attacked it while it was sleeping in its bed. Tore the shit out of it too, by the looks of it."

I looked at Tyler, and he offered me knowing smile. Yeah, something tore the shit out of it, alright.