Page 373 of As the Rain Falls
They’re singing again?
“My god!” I chuckle. “Someone needs to stop them!”
The hum of Mateo’s apartment still echoes faintly behind me, Antony’s laugh louder than anything else. I don’t know if these people are my friends, but it feels good to be surrounded. A room full of noise is better than the quiet of my bedroom. I don’t want to ever go back.
Determined to make the most out of the night, I take a step, then another, ready to reach for the door and join the rest of my friends.
And then I hear it.
It’s faint, unassuming.
Almost too delicate and fragile.
It’s the sound of a cat meowing.
It makes me pause and spin around, searching for it by letting my gaze drop to the ground. My vision adjusts to the darkness around me only to find the smallest kitten in the entire world seated beside the dumpster.
“Are you a girl?” I crouch near her, reaching out to pet her soft fur. The little thing hisses, as if in warning. “I think you are.”
A strange thought crosses my mind then.
Run.
But I smile instead, the corner of my eyes creasing. There’s nothing to fear tonight, not as long as Beckett is around.
I need to stop being so paranoid.
“Where’s your mom, little one?” The kitten leans against my touch, recognizing that I’m not here to hurt her. “Did she leave you all alone? That can’t be right.”
I’m about to look for the mother, knowing she can’t be that far away, when the streetlight glitches and every muscle in my body starts to pull tight.
Something is lying on the ground a few steps ahead of me.
For a second, I assume it’s just a fluke and I’m seeing things that aren’t there, but then I see the larger corpse. She’s spread out in the middle of the street, paws bloodied and twisted in an unnatural way.
“Oh!” My eyes begin to water. “Oh, no!”
I approach it, trying to see if the cat is still breathing.
The neck is clearly broken, posing towards the opposite direction than it should be. The sight feels oddly familiar to me, and a flash comes to mind.
I’m bored, Mom.
I don’t want the puppies; I want her.
Trying to understand where the memory is coming from paralyzes me entirely. It feels like opening a door leading to a room I haven’t ventured in not in a long time.
Quickly, I block it all out. I urge it to go away, just like I did with André, because thinking about it gives me a sense of apprehension that I don’t know how to tame.
But if I’d been less distracted, maybe I wouldn’t have missed the boots on the gravel. The beat of his steady step, a particular sound that always warned me about his presence before he’d even walk into a room.
The sound gets louder and closer, and I naïvely picture it as the sound coming from a neighbor heading home.
My lips part, ready to call out for help.
“Hello?”
A voice slices through the darkness.
