Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones Vagabonds Vol. 3 | Page 64

So I thought about it.
I thought about what my options were. Or I guess, what my buddy told me my options
were. I thought about how, for some reason or another, I couldn’t kick that cat out. And I
thought about, for some other reason or another, I couldn’t try to watch the cat, or try to
help it out.
And then I thought about the pain.
I thought about that cat jumping on me and digging its claws through me, tearing me
apart, ripping open my skin, invading me, invading my being. And I thought about how
the blood would just come squeezing out of me afterwards, and how it’d trickle down my
arm or my leg or my face and how sooner or later it’d all end up on the carpet. And I
thought about how dirty that carpet was getting, and I thought about how hard I had to
scrub it to try to get the blood out and I thought about how no matter how hard I
scrubbed, no matter how hard I sweat and no matter how hard I prayed, how I could
never seem to really get it all out.
Because, goddammit, blood is really hard to clean after it’s stained something.
So I was desperate.
“Well,” he asks. “Do you?”
“No,” I reply. “I guess I don’t.”
So I had this problem I was telling my buddy about.
About this asshole cat.
And now, I got a whole new set of problems. Because now I have an apartment with a
seriously dangerous bunch of pissed off goddamn asshole cats. And I don’t know why
they’re so edgy and I don’t know why they’re so paranoid, or why they always seem to
go after me, because now most of the time now I’m just trying to ignore them, trying to
step around them without them ever noticing me. But I know at any minute, one of them
is going to snap, and then another one will, and then another, and another one and another
one and I know that sooner or later there’s going to be a goddamn cat massacre.
So now?
Now I’m always still too damn afraid to get any kind of rest.
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