Group Therapy

Stacey of Stacey’s Writing Moments chose Erma Bombeck’s Motherhood, The Second  Oldest Profession. Your line for this week, to open your stories, is….(drumroll please!!)

“One of the biggest complaints of motherhood is the lack of training.”

"One of the biggest complaints of motherhood is the lack of training,"  Abby Farnsworth spoke with authority. She was the oldest woman here. We all turned to listen, and the hush that fell over the room was reverent.

"Oh, we try to pretend like we know what we're doing," Abby continued. "We all played with the dolls when we were kids.  We pretended to feed them, burp them, and change their diapers with the pretend poop--what the hell was that stuff, anyway?  Never could get that crap off the wall.  No, taking care of dolls was lousy training for being a mother."

Abby paused, coughing delicately into the tissue she always kept in her sleeve.  Myrna offered Abby some of her water, and smiled broadly when Abby took a sip from the proffered glass.  We waited for Abby to collect her thoughts.

"And those parenting classes that they made us take when we were in high school?   Child development books?  Bah! Bunch of poppycock.  Filled us full of a false confidence, those did. Why, we came home from the hospital with our babies thinking that we knew it all. We go home thinking that everything will be perfect."

Abby's head hung low, her chin on her chest, staring fiercely at her lap.  Her voice was soft, but there was an intensity that held us captive.

"Nobody talks about babies born deaf or blind.  There's no class where they talk about that, tell you what to do, how to cope.  There's no book that describes the despair a mother feels when her baby won't eat, or when the palate is cleft. Nobody tells you about the baby who doesn't want to be touched, or cuddled, or cooed at. Nobody talks about the imperfections"

"That's when the real mothering is required, the kind they don't tell you about."

Abby glared at all of us.

"What's a woman supposed to do?" she hissed. "They don't talk about it, and it ain't in a book, but everybody knows.  It ain't right. Our men leave us. Our other children are moved to new families.  Everybody looks away and expect us to take care of the problem on our own!"

"And when it's done..."  her voice hitched, and a final tear rolled slowly down her cheek.  "Only after we've done the very thing that tears a piece of our soul away, only, when we give them what they wanted, then are we are allowed to return to our homes?  No. They bring us here, to rot. No husbands and no babies, imperfect or not. We die here alone. " 

Abby lapsed into a morose silence.  We all sat, lost to the world, remembering our own decisions, mourning our own children.  Several small sobs broke loose from the oppressive silence.

"Ladies." The pale psychologist who was supposed to be in charge of the group therapy quietly cleared his throat.  "Our time is up for today."

As the group shuffled out to head back to their rooms, the psychologist rubbed his eyes, as if he could scrub them clean, then wrote out his session notes. 

Decisions

 The Prompt: Your lines this week are:
From Shadow of the Night:

“The past cannot be cured.”

And from Winter Journal:

“You have entered the winter of your life.”

You can use these lines in any order, however you must begin the story with one and end it with the other. Please identify the lines in the story by enclosing them in quotes, bolding, or italicizing.

To read all of the other stories, go to here.


The past cannot be cured.  Eliza sat musing in the corner of the room, her thoughts held close.  She sighed heavily, the sound loud in the quiet of the hospital.  From the bed, her mother stirred fitfully, the nightmare world she now inhabited surfacing.   She moaned in horror at whatever being was occupying her dreams for the moment.

Eliza turned away from the woman's suffering, staring out the window at the parking lot instead.  She knew what the High Priestess was enduring, but she had no idea why her mother had drank the potion.  Drinking another witch's concoctions never worked out well; Eliza's mother knew that as well as the rest of the coven. The potion that Eliza had made for dreaming had been specifically for her, and now her mother was stuck between this world and the next, constantly tortured by vivid nightmares, unable to wake.  Bringing her to the hospital was a last resort; the woman was dehydrated and beyond the care of the local shamans.  At least here the High Priestess would be kept alive until Eliza figured out how to bring her out of it.

Or not.  Eliza could end her mother's suffering, and take her place as High Priestess by right of birth.  She had lived for years underneath the weight of her mother's position, as well as her power.  Others were constantly comparing the powers of the two, finding Eliza lacking.  The coven was unaware that the women in Eliza's family did not come fully into their powers until the previous High Priestess had died, and she meant to keep it that way.  Let them all think of her as a powerless fool, working on beauty potions.  They would learn soon enough.  What to do in the meantime was the question she needed to focus on. That is why she had created the dreaming potion in the first place.

She stood up, stretching her legs, then moved over to her mother's bedside.  Eliza stared, watching the rhythmic dancing of the High Priestess' dreaming across her eyelids.   She picked up the extra pillow the hospital had brought her, squeezing it close, visualizing the proper placement to complete the job.  Eliza stood there, watching her mother quietly breathe, and was standing there still two hours later when her cell phone rang.  She pushed the 'silent' button on the device and shook her head to clear it.  She suddenly knew that it was not her mother's time.  Eliza put the pillow down. Then she leaned over, close to her mother's ear, whispering a small chant for good luck.

Then it was time to leave, and Eliza gathered up her things, putting on her coat and sliding into her warm gloves for the ride home.  When she turned around, her mother was sitting up in bed, her eyes opaque. She spoke, an unearthly, eerie, unfamiliar voice that sent cold chills rippling over Eliza's skin.

"You have entered the winter of your life."

The Laughter of the Cosmos

This week, to keep things interesting, I asked Steph to choose the first line from the fifth chapter of any book of her choosing. She chose Three Junes by Julia Glass. The first line of the fifth chapter is as follows:

“Clever how the cosmos can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic.”

Use this line to start your stories.  Then please go check out the other stories over here.



"Clever how the cosmos can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic." 

"What the hell you yammering on about, now, Woman?"  George glared across the table at Alice, his fork halfway to his mouth.  Some of his meatloaf and gravy dinner had been deposited down the front of his dingy t-shirt, Alice noticed.  A glob of brown gravy sat in the middle of his protruding stomach. George never chewed with his mouth closed; she had no idea why she had ever found that to be an endearing habit.

"It's just something I read in a book once, George," Alice picked up her water glass and stared into the bottom before taking a sip.  "It just reminded me of you, that's all."

"You insulting me, wife?" George had resumed shoveling large pieces of meatloaf into his mouth. Bits and pieces of food were ejected into the air as he spoke, and Alice grit her teeth to keep from screaming.  "Do I need to get the belt and teach you some manners? You've been getting uppity lately."

"Not at all, dear," Alice knew that she needed to be very, very careful now.  Once George felt that she needed to be taught manners, she would be too injured to do much of anything for days. She held her breath a moment, gathering her courage around her. She needed to say her piece.

"It's just that I wished for a husband, George." Alice stared up at the dingy ceiling, as if she could see the night sky from five years before.  "I wished upon a star one night, for a husband, and the cosmos sent me you."

"That right?  So I'm a gift from God?" George snorted, coughed, then spit on her clean kitchen floor.  He eyed her untouched meatloaf speculatively, then he reached over and used one ham-sized fist to stab it with his fork.  "You gonna eat that?"

"No, George, you go ahead and eat that. You're a big man, You deserve it," Alice said, before she realized that George had already deposited the slice of meatloaf on his plate and was digging in.   She watched him a moment, then she got up, carrying her plate to the sink. 

"At first, I thought that the heavens were smiling down on me, that day we were wed," Alice reached into the cabinet and pulled out a shot glass, and George's favorite bottle of 100 year old whiskey.  "And that first night, when you beat me for not shining your shoes right, well, I thought that maybe I had done something wrong."

"What the hell are you doing with my whiskey?" George's voice had taken on a wheezing quality, and his face had turned florid with anger.  "You know you ain't allowed to touch my whiskey, you stupid bitch!"

Alice brought the bottle over to the table, placing it in front of her husband. He grunted. She opened the bottle and poured a shot, then handed it to George.  He glared at her a moment, suspicious, then tossed the whiskey back.  She poured him another shot, then went back to her seat as he poured himself another.  She wasn't supposed to leave her seat until George told her she could, but Alice thought that perhaps he might not notice.  His eyes appeared glassy and she could see beads of sweat pooling on his forehead. 



"After I found out I was pregnant, I thought that maybe the baby was the reason I was sent to you, that maybe the cosmos was on my side after all," Alice continued, her voice quiet, and yet it seemed that the entire world paused to listen.  "Then, when you beat me so bad that I lost the baby--well, that was the day that I heard it." 

Alice put her fist in her mouth, to stifle her feelings just a little longer.  George's head, which had begun to slump forward on his chest, snapped up. He glared at her, and she could see that several capillaries in his eyes had burst, spilling red blood into the whites of his eyes. 


"You heard what, you cow? The sound of my belt?  My fist?"  His words were slurring, and his head seemed to have become too heavy for him.  But he was too far gone in his fantasy that she was beaten, submissive, compliant. He had to try and reassert control. 


"No, dear," Alice smiled, her eyes betraying her anger after all these years.  "I heard the laughter of the cosmos. The idea that if you're good and do what you're told, you'll be rewarded. That's when I decided that I needed to take matters into my own hands. That's why you're going to be leaving me this evening."


George struggled to get up from his chair, realization dawning, but it was too late.  He fell to the floor, a fish out of water, and clutched frantically at his chest.  Alice poured herself a glass of whiskey; a profound sense of peace took hold of her.  She raised the glass in a mock toast to George, who foamed at the mouth as his body began to seize. 


"It was in my slice of meatloaf."  Alice whispered to her finally dead husband, and at last she was free.





  

Insect in Amber

Once again, we’re trying something new. Shannon was asked to pick any fiction book, turn to page 77 and give the seventh sentence as the prompt. This week, you will use the sentence somewhere within the body of your story. You can not use it to open or end your story. Please use bold font on the prompt sentence so that it can be found easily. Shannon chose Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” and the prompt is:

He felt like a safe cracker who – partly by luck – had sussed out the first digit in a lengthy, arduous combination.

This is a little long, even after I snipped at it for an hour.  Sorry.  

Matthias always felt uncomfortable around Celeste, the captain of the cheerleading squad.  She was beautiful, with a bright smile and flowing chestnut hair that she kept up in a pony tail, so that her elegant neck was displayed tastefully.  Each school day, when she sat next to him in English III, his shirt seemed to shrink around his neck, and his face felt hot.  Celeste never said a word to him, but his tongue grew thick and whatever words he might choose to say stuck in his throat.  He spent the class like an insect in amber, frozen and helpless, until the bell rang.  He might understand college level quantum physics, but he was at a loss when it came to understanding what his father called the fairer sex.   

Matthias understood the unspoken rules governing social interactions in high school.  She was gorgeous and he was not.  She was popular and he was not.  Balance must be kept in this ecosystem. There was no chance, on any planet, in any other time dimension, that Celeste Harper would give him the time of day.  Ever.  The sooner he got over his little crush, he told himself, the better off he would be.  

Until one day, Celeste Harper smiled at him in the hallway as he walked by her locker. 

Matthias stumbled as he realized that she was smiling at him.  He looked around for the popular student who must be behind him, to find that he was alone.  By the time he had arrived at his next class, he had dismissed the entire event as impossible. She hadn't even spoken to him in class, and it was January--why would she smile at him now?  Celeste had probably confused him with someone else, he decided.

Except that Celeste also waved at him in the cafeteria.  

He looked around as he sat alone in the far corner, where he had been told to sit so the principal could assure his parents that he would not be bullied anymore.  Maybe he had imagined the wave. Surely she had been waving to someone else?  

"Hi, Matthias!" Celeste sat down next to him, her teeth blinding.  "I've decided that you need some lunchtime company. Scoot over."   

As Matthias began to scoot over, and he found himself alone with a table full of giggling, gossiping girls.  He felt like a safe cracker who – partly by luck – had sussed out the first digit in a lengthy, arduous combination. Being in such close proximity to such beautiful girls was disconcerting, as if the natural order had been shattered, but he was determined to persevere.  

One of the cheerleaders asked if Matthias might have a moment after he finished eating to help her with a difficult Algebra equation. When that was finished, another cheerleader asked for help with an economics assignment.  The one after that asked for his help in figuring out chemistry.  As the bell rang and the entire squad quickly gathered their things and headed to the gym, Celeste planted a quick kiss on Matthias' cheek, thanking him for his help.

He just sat there as the cafeteria emptied, his cheek tingling, until the bell rang.  Celeste Harper had kissed him!  He felt altered by that kiss, elevated to a new rung on the social ladder, and he was drunk with the potency of an idea. Popularity had long been denied to him, and now suddenly it was in his grasp, except for a small nagging voice in the back of his head warning him about the natural order of things.   As he made his way down the hall to class, he walked taller, a little spring in his step.   

Over the next few weeks, Celeste and her group of girls sat with Matthias in the cafeteria for lunch.  They said hello to him in the hallway.  He was petted and fussed over.  Celeste and her squad smiled at him, hugged him, and kissed him. They posted cute photos of themselves on Matthias' Facebook page.  The girls even had a cute nickname for him--Puppy.  

Other students noticed, especially Emily Morgan, a girl in his advanced chemistry class. She wasn't very pretty, not compared to Celeste, but she was smart, and Matthias' shirt never felt too tight when she was around, so they became friends. 

Emily was waiting for him in the hallway outside of the cafeteria one day in May, her face set in firm lines.

"I can't stay out of this any longer," Emily began.  "Celeste and the other cheerleaders are just using you."

Confused at her vehemence, Matthias just shook his head.

"They do this every year, Matthias!"  Emily was emphatic. "Every year, the cheerleaders "adopt" a nerd.  They call them Puppies, and the cheerleaders hang all over you poor bastards until there is no chance that they might fail and be disqualified from participating in cheer competitions. Then they dump the poor guy, cut him off completely. We are all supposed to keep quiet about it, too, but I hate that they are doing this to you!"

Matthias didn't respond.  He did not want to hear any more.  He walked into English III, his head held high.  He sat down next to Celeste and smiled  at her.   

Celeste cooly stared at him a moment, contempt in her eyes, then she picked up her books and asked the teacher if she could move to a different seat.  Stunned, Matthias heard Emily's words in his head.  He sat alone in the cafeteria for the rest of the year while he ate the cheese sandwiches his mother made for him, and contemplated nature's attempts to restore balance to the universe.

Resolved

In keeping with “changing it up,” when I asked Carrie for a line from a novel, I asked her to give me the last line. That’s right class, this week, you have to END on the prompt, not begin with it. Carrie chose Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes, which ends with:

Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, Elena thought, maybe I was meant to be alone.  She lay on her back, staring in the direction of the ceiling.  The dawn was slowly creeping into the room, inserting its light into the smallest of crevices.  Soon she could see muzzy details of the room.   She sat up with a sigh, looking around for her clothes.  The man next to her stirred with the movement of the bed, and she hung suspended with a silent prayer on her lips.  As he drifted off once more, Elena slowly slid her body off the edge of the bed and onto the floor, where her movements would now pass unnoticed.  She gathered her clothes into a ball, along with her shoes and purse, and made her way out of the room, down the hall, and into the bathroom, closing the door as quietly as she could manage.  

Elena had always believed that love would be a bolt of lightning, striking her down suddenly, elevating her heart and filling it with the passion of an electrical charge.  And yet, in all this time, all these men, she had only felt a cold numbness, as if she were frozen.  Elena stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, her eye makeup smeary, her hair flattened on one side.  She dimly noted the rawness of a bite mark on her shoulder, but she felt nothing.  Except a blossoming anger at herself.

What are you doing, Elena-girl?  Her father used to call her that, and the admonitions seemed more appropriate coming in his voice.  She needed him more than ever and sudden grief pierced her numbness like a stiletto.   Every night, you're waking up in a different bed, and the next day you just toss them aside.  What are you looking for?   

Love, Daddy.  I'm looking for love.  A single tear pulled the last of her mascara off of her lashes, leaving a black trail down her cheek. I've been looking for so long.

And have you found it yet?  No.  Whoever told you that love was to be found between the sheets with strange men?  And how can you find love when you run off so quickly every time?

How, indeed?  Elena turned on the faucet and began to scrub at her face as if she could erase all of her sins along with her ravaged makeup.  Her lip quivered then, her eyes shining back at her.

Maybe I'm just supposed to be alone, Daddy, she admitted. Maybe I'm never meant to find love.  Her tears fell freely now, and Elena shakily sat down on the edge of the tub and let them come.  All the tears she had never cried were allowed to come.  When she calmed down enough, she blew her nose, finished dressing, then faced herself in the mirror with new resolve.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and acting the fool.  Your Daddy raised you better than that. Love doesn't come on command, Elena-girl.  It has its own timetable.  It will be here when it is time, and not a moment before. And if you're meant to be alone, well, you're a smart girl.  Surely you'll be able to find something else to do. 

Elena nodded and smiled at her reflection before throwing her purse over one shoulder and hurrying out the door.  She ran smack into a man's hard chest, knocking them both over in her hurry to get to her new life.  She heard his voice just before she slammed into him. "Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be."

We Can't All Be The Stars In The Sky

Prompt:  Angela wasted no time in choosing a new opening line (despite her daughter running away with one of her books under consideration). She has chosen Margret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, whose opening sentence is:

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.  There was no help for it.  The gymnasium of the local high school had been the designated emergency shelter for the town of Eulogy since it had been built.  Nobody thought that a tornado would demolish the entire town, leaving only three walls and no roof.  Even as they set up what meager bedding they could find strewn about the wreckage, the remaining townspeople, still covered in dirt, splinters, and blood, were puzzled.  Two of them were whispering in hushed tones in a cot near her.  The gymnasium was supposed to have withstood the winds, up to 200mph, they had been told.  Yet this tornado had been a minor one, the weathermen all said.  As it was, it would take three days for rescue crews to get here.

Elsie pursed her lips, then bit them to keep from speaking curtly to the women.  It did no good to try to figure out the why.  The dead were dead, and the town was gone.  She felt a sharp stab of anger at her missing husband, followed by an equally intense burst of gratitude that the tornado had struck on a weekend, and then she was struck by grief at everyone she had lost in the past 24 hours.  The image of her son being ripped out of her arms, pulled into the vortex, flashed before her in the dark.  She would always bear the marks on her skin where Samuel had tried to hold on to her, and his screams would ring forever in her ears. But she had one child left, and that child needed her to be strong. Elsie closed her eyes, then grit her teeth for a moment, and then let her tears silently fall. She no longer seemed in control of when the waterworks would start up, but she regretted the lack of hiding places.  She preferred to cry alone, but there was no privacy tonight, when they were all gathered here to shelter each other in spite of the lack of a roof.

"Mama?" 

Elsie turned her face away from her six year old daughter, and tried to compose herself.  She then  leaned closer to her only surviving child, pulling her close.  Elsie never wanted to let go.  She wanted to hug her daughter, until the horror of this disaster disappeared, but soon Lizzie began to wriggle, pushing at her mother to be released. So she let her go with a deep exhale of breath.   The two remaining Pattersons lay side by side on the gymnasium floor, heads together, and stared at the stars.  With no lights to clutter the sky, the immensity of the world beyond where they lay struck Elsie like a punch. 

"Which star is that, Mama?"  Lizzie pointed to the middle star in the belt of Orion.

"That star is your older brother Jimmy," Elsie choked back tears, and tried to sound cheerful.  "And that one to the right is your sister Joanna, and the one on the left is your little brother Samuel.  They're all up there watching over us, to keep us safe, Lizzie."

"The wind blew them up there?"

"Yes, my love."

"Why didn't I get blown up there, too?"

"Well, Lizzie," Elsie let a small sob escape, a hitch in her breathing that could pass unnoticed.  "We can't all be the stars in the sky.  If we are all up there, who is going to look up and admire the stars?  They shine so bright for us because they want to be remembered."

Lizzie stifled a yawn, then rolled toward her mother and took her hand.

"We will remember, Mama."  Lizzie closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep, while Elsie kept watch.

Everything to Gain

This week’s A+ student is Roxanne from Unintentionally Brilliant. Roxanne’s story, “In Therapy,” was intentionally brilliant as she expertly tells the tale of a troubled young woman. Roxanne’s choice of opening sentence for this week’s class promises to generate some more creative and off-the-wall writing. She chose Kelle Groom’s book I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl whose opening line is:

Morphine makes me weightless, airborne.

Morphine makes me weightless, airborne.  There's no pain, just the air surrounding me, lifting me like a balloon floating into nothing but the morning sky.  

I hate that.

Pain is my drug of choice. I want to feel pain.  Pain gives me a rush.  It makes me feel alive, energized, successful.  I crave pain like heroin.  I will do anything to feel pain.   I will pinch my toes, until they turn blue. I will stick a pin into my thigh.  I will hold myself up while my arms burn with exertion.  When I can suddenly feel those pins and needles, I scream.  But it's a scream of triumph, not despair.  The alternative is the numbness of dead tissue. The pain, overwhelming as it is, means that there's still a chance, and I am determined.

I will walk again.

Right now, however, I am waking up in the recovery room of a hospital, and they've given me morphine.  I am barely conscious, face down and looking at the floor, but I know the familiar, numbing feel of the drug.  My doctor is well-meaning, but he doesn't know that morphine and I are old enemies.  I can face any obstacle except eternal numbness.

I am weak now from the removal of more tumors, but when I can, I will fight this numbness, just like I've fought for every single thing I've ever had in my life.  I will rip out this cursed IV if I have to, so I can have my pain. 

Master Class

Prompt: Marian thought long and hard before coming up with an opening sentence. She chose Emma Donoghue’s “Room“ for this week’s class. The first sentence is:

Today I’m five.

Today I'm five.  I am number five in the line to see the visiting doctor.  I know this because Nurse tells me when she comes into my room to wake me. The sun is bright on this day, and I close my eyes and instinctively roll away from the sudden light, but you do not refuse Nurse.  Ever.  I pretend to stretch instead of hide, and then I sit up, hoping that Nurse did not notice my bit of rebellion.   My hope is in vain; I find her glaring at me, her lips pursed in irritation.  She will punish me.

As she helps me out of bed, she pinches the thin skin on my arm, hard, digging a carefully manicured nail into the muscle.  I stumble, biting my lip to keep from crying out, and I am roughly pulled back into a standing position.  Nurse shakes me by my arm, a rag doll.  I hear one of my bones crack, and the sudden pain is almost as blinding as the sun. I feel warmth running down my leg, forming a puddle on the floor. 

"You are so very stupid!" Nurse hisses, but the puddle means that there will be witnesses, and I watch as she plasters a smile on her fat face and calls the orderlies to come help her clean me up.  Two women in white uniforms appear, one with a mop and bucket, and they help me into the bathroom to clean up and change my gown.  After that, they silently wheel a chair into my room and Nurse thanks them.  She whirls on me the second they are gone, shoving me into the chair. I hear the crack of another bone, and I can't help but whimper.

Nurse puts her face close to mine, so we are eye to eye. 

"When they ask you what happened, what do you say?"  her voice is mild, conversational, her eyes terrifying.  "Are you going to tell them?" 

I shake my head as vigorously as I can, my eyes wide with fear. Nurse stands up, her disgust plain.

"Good."  She moves behind the wheelchair, then leans over to whisper in my ear. I cringed.  "Nobody would believe you anyway.  You may have been a CEO, but you're just a crazy old woman now, Mother."

With that comment, my daughter pushes my chair out into the hall of the facility, whistling a happy tune. 

Thug Life

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. It's a little uncomfortable up here, but it's the cleanest spot in the house. Roaches are everywhere. There's about a foot of garbage on the floor, old candy bar wrappers, rotting fruit, moldy bread, and assorted animals.  I see a skunk carcass over by the fridge; I am convinced that it died from the stench. I can see from my vantage point that the rest of the house isn't much better.  Having made it into this episode of Hoarders, I am not all that eager to leave my perch and wade through the layers of trash to get to the door. 

Merle never was any good at housekeeping.  I've named him Merle, but that's not his real name, of course. I never ask for their names.  It's too personal.  I don't need a name to kill a man, anyway. 

This guy, Merle?  He needed killing, and not just because somebody wanted his land.  This guy was certifiable, living way out here alone.  Nobody who lives in this much crap can be sane, either. The guy hadn't showered or shaved in months.  He probably couldn't even get into the bathroom even if he wanted to, with all this trash.  It was a mercy to put a bullet in his head, put him out of his misery, and I was happy to do it, even if I was just getting paid. 

Except for the cat.  After I walked into the trailer and shot Merle, I realized that he was opening a can.  I thought that was the guy's last meal, but then I saw there was a cat curled up on a blanket right on top of the kitchen table.  She was staring at me, a beautiful calico, eyes enormous in a thin face, ears twitching.  Most cats would have run away at the sight of a stranger, but I noticed that this cat's back legs seemed to have something wrong with them. She may not have been able to run away even if she wanted. There was a tiny pink dish, immaculately clean, on the table.

That got me thinking.

The one clean item in this entire s***hole was the dish for the cat.  Come to think of it, the cat looked groomed and the blankets under her seemed clean.  We stared at each other for a couple of seconds, and then that cat silently meowed.  I was hooked.

I picked up the half-opened can from the detritus on the floor.  The can opener was harder to find, but I was finally able to open the can and put some food in the bowl.   I pushed it close enough to her and she was able to lean over and delicately take a few bites.  I reached over and stroked her soft fur, and was hooked.

Merle let everything in his life go to hell, so much so that I got paid to kill him. And yet he was caring for this cat, and was doing for this cat what he would not do for himself.  What was up with that?

I'm going to take the cat with me. She's helpless, and she'll die out here before someone thinks to look for a body.  I might be able to kill a man, but I won't leave a helpless animal to die.

Besides, it's the least I can do for Merle.