SoulRipper II

I remember it was getting to be about evening or so. It think it was around 6 o’clock and I was getting ready to cross the street going northbound and he was getting ready to cross coming my way about half a block down the street. It’s a quiet street you know, we were I think the only two people out there.

I paused there for a second because I noticed a cat crossing the road. It was a beige cat with white zebra stripes, very beautiful cat. Well, he got about halfway across the street when this truck, a big old truck started coming down the road hauling tail.< Well, the truck ended up running over the cat but not really. It’s wheels went over the rear end of the cat and it kind of hissed in pain for a second. The cat obviously wasn’t killed by the truck but judging from what I saw I didn’t give it much hope for a future. I kind of followed the truck with my eyes as it kept speeding down the road and then I saw that guy step out right in front of the trucks path. At first I thought maybe it was an accident, maybe he wanted to get a better look at the cat and stumbled into it’s path but when I saw him step out I went running because I thought he was going to get hit. That truck screeched it’s breaks real loud and stopped something like two or three feet in front of him. But there he was, clear as day with his arms folded across his chest standing as strait up as he could, as if he didn’t even notice that he was just a few feet from death itself. He walked over to driver-side window and pounded on the glass really hard and the guy rolled it down. By this time I was only a few feet away from the car and I could hear him say rather loudly, “If you don’t go back there to help that cat I’m going to hang onto this door until you have to kill me like you did that poor creature.” He got a good grip on the door and stared straight at him. The driver glanced over to his passenger and threw the car in reverse, backing up to where the cat was. I walked with them trying my damnedest not to get involved. When they got there, he kneeled over the cat and I could tell he didn’t see how bad it was the first time. His face tensed up and he had to look away for a bit. The cat just lay there, only it’s head and front legs able to move. It was meowing in intense pain and it was a gruesome site to say the least. The two guys got out of the truck. They looked to be the redneck type you know? I don’t like to use that word but, um, it’s the only one that comes to mind. I mean, they just fit the bill you know? Well anyway, one of them said, “You might as well give up on that cat, it’s as good as dead.” The other one chimed in with a semi-sarcastic “sorry”. He just looked up at the guys and glared at them with a kind of hate I’ve never seen before. He then looked back at the cat and breathed a heavy sigh and said, “Do either of you have a gun?” He couldn’t even look up at them. They just sort of looked at each other and said “naw”. I know they were lying though; I looked at their faces and knew it. He couldn’t see it, he was staring at the cat, but they had a gun, they just didn’t want to waste the bullet. I kind of ceased the opportunity and said, “Well I’ve got a knife” and I pulled out my old army knife. It’s a nice knife, it’s got a good sized blade, it was used by my grandfather in World War II. I asked him if it would do and he said “yeah”. Well, I handed him the knife. The cat looked up for a second, you could see his eyes move and when he saw the knife, he stopped meowing and he stopped moving. It was eerie. He just put his head down on the concrete and lay there, barely breathing. It was like he had made peace with it or something. Well, he gripped the knife with both hands, raised it up real high over the cats head and with a single hard motion brought it down. This must have killed the poor guy, because he started crying. There he was, some young guy just sitting there in the middle of the road crying his eyes out over a cat. I didn’t know what to think. The two guys in the truck started to walk off. When they turned their backs he raised his head up, wiped a tear from his eye and said, “If I ever hear of you too hitting an animal and leaving it I swear I’ll torture you just like you did this cat,” he pointed to one of them, “and I’ll do you,” he pointed to the other, “like your as yet unnamed second victim.” They said nothing and just walked off. He just stayed there crying his eyes out, I wanted to console him but I didn’t know how, it was sad. But, I had to get going so I left as well, when I got ready to turn a corner away from the street I looked back, there he was in the street still crying, still bawling. Anything else you want to know officer? “No, I think we have all we need from you,” the detective said. “We’ll arrest him for assault tomorrow, you can’t just go threatening drivers like that you know?” Yeah, I know.