13

In the dark the brick buildings were like empty black caverns. The streetlights were dim smudges. The stones of the pavement glistened, although it was not raining, and it had not been raining for hours. There were no stars.

It had not been like this for years. Peter didn’t care. The voice in him was clear, and his penis was swollen at the sound of it. All he had to do was catch one of the naughty, naughty creatures.

He had a tin of Norwegian sardines, and he had all the patience of justice. How could he have forgotten how wonderful this was? A simple trick, a box propped on a stick, a long string, and a tin of sardines. Just like the days behind the tiny gardens, among the rubbish bins, those days the smiling doctors had assured him were gone forever.

He had seen one here before, a black-and-white one. You could tell what a creature like that is thinking, just by looking. You can see into its heart and see what evil little things, all the evil little things, it wants to do. Lick the private parts of women. Things like that, nasty, naughty things like that. It had been years since he had thought like this, and now it made him so hard to think about it. Think of all the years of pleasure he had missed by forgetting all of this.

Naughty creature, you’ll have to be punished very badly.

He sat in the darkest part of the alley behind Queen Anne’s Road. Three nights of this and it hadn’t worked. But it would. It always used to work, eventually. All he had to do was wait. Sometimes a door slammed and he froze. His box didn’t look like a trap. It looked like a pile of rubbish children had been playing with, and in a way that was all it was, really.

Oh, please, sir, it’s nothing, only a toy, like, to play with, like.

It was so cold. He had his thick, fur-lined gloves on, and three pairs of stockings, but it was still so cold. All a part of the game, though. A little cold to whet his appetite. He sat with his back to a brick wall, and he waited.

Oh no, sir, I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt a cat, sir.

Wind swayed nearly invisible clouds, dragged them away. Sometimes one star barely throbbed through the black, and then dissolved again. All the bedroom windows were black. Everyone was asleep. The city was empty. The trees in the dim streetlight were a tangle of dried veins. Nothing moved on the ground. Nothing moved in him, except blood to his lust that was so hard now it hurt.

Nasty creature. So naughty.

He drowsed, and woke. What a fool to nod off like this, after all these hours. What if it came now, with him asleep?

But it didn’t. There was the box on its single stilt. There was the dark, all around. He was invisible here, but nothing came.

It wasn’t coming tonight, either. It was never coming.

Then it was there.

After being not-there, it was like a trick, like something impossible. Just as simply as if he imagined it. There in the box, its haunches and tail protruding out, the white parts of it so white, the black like parts that weren’t there. There was wind shaking the sky, and a dry leaf months old scratched the ground, and he pulled the string.

Oh no, sir, I wouldn’t know anything about any hurt cats.

The box fell, and the cat backed away, and nearly escaped. It wore the box like a hat too large, and the box made a dragging sound as the cat pulled back. Peter lunged, and fell across the box. The cat made a cry—a low cry, a cry not like the sweet, begging call cats made, a low, deep, strange note, the song cats make when they know.

He slid the flat stiff cardboard under it. He taped the cardboard up the sides of the box, and then he could turn it over. He had done this all before, so many years ago. It was such a pleasure. Why had he waited so long?

He hurried with the cat struggling inside, punching the cardboard with its head. Such a naughty creature, doing such nasty things with your tongue, and we know all about it. We will show you what happens to such naughtiness when it is found out, and when it is caught. Such bad, bad nastiness—you won’t get away with it anymore.

Out onto the great black emptiness of the football field beside the river, the town a stipple of lights, barely there, the river a quaking black nothing.

The hand peeled back the cardboard, and the head of the creature was out, like a snake, urgent and surging, a serpent of nastiness.

At arm’s length—it must be like that, or the naughty creature will do harm. It can do such nasty harm, this terrible, terrible thing. The box fell away. Holding the cat out at arm’s length, the leather gloves around the neck, and the strong sleeves, leather under the wool coat, all armor against not simply the cold.

The gloves squeezed the throat. The cat was a struggling blur. It clawed the sleeves with its hind legs, arched itself, swung itself around, nearly breaking its neck with its fight. So much fight. The eyes in the dim starlight bulging. The mouth with its fine white fangs open in a scream that became air.

The jerking body clawed the dark, urine and feces spurting. The eyes popped out, like beans borne from soil on their own sprouts. It was all over now, but the body didn’t know it, fighting and clawing at nothing.

Until, swung by the tail, it spun and sailed through the air, into the deep wet nothing of the river.