Dead Animals

Like a knife, warm and wet from the dishwasher, sliding into the block, I guided my car over two lanes onto the exit onto the route towards the exit to home. My feet and legs and butt and lower and upper back hurt from work: carrying plates, both with food and with the remains of food, and drinks while managing a guest’s expectations ran the body ragged. On this drive home, while morning is still dark, it rained and the rain fogged my windshield. I cursed. “Fuck,” I said through lockjaw. I was about to cry as I pulled down the ramp onto the next route. 

I was speeding and the stray police car that sat on the grass divider ignored me. My thoughts had taken off. Fuck my manager for holding me in the restaurant for 10 hours. Fuck the couples ordering a dozen small fruity drinks and craft beers. Fuck the families who needed two tables to accommodate their birthday parties and their graduation parties. Fuck their children who left mac and cheese, french fries, small berries, and bits of chicken tender on the floor.

I had to take a break from my thoughts. My therapist told me that I need to stop myself when I fall into these spirals. I checked the shoulder for roadkill, counting the dead rabbits and squirrels as I went home, of which there were zero tonight. I could feel pressure on my eyes. I tried the rhythmic breathing exercises I learned and bit my teeth. I focused on the podcast I was listening to. The second of four hosts was describing a terrible date with a covert racist and I laughed but also recoiled from my own whiteness. For the first time, on this particular drive, I saw road kill. A turtle shattered like a toppled mirror. Just like every other time I passed a gored animal body, I flinched but was also fascinated. There wasn’t a body of water for miles and a turtle smashed into the concrete was out of place. 

The turtle did what the turtle does: walk slowly and leave little grooves in the mud where it’s been. It was all I could think about and every other thought I had about work, podcasts, being white, and children were buried like turtle eggs. I drove slower. The turtle corpse turned over in my head, smashing on its back or side and spraying viscera over the road. I pulled off the route and onto the residential streets.

On a side street, a small hawk flew by. Something smashed into the top of my car. I pulled over into a stranger’s driveway and got out, looking at the place of impact as I dismounted the car seat, running my finger through a large, bloody dent in the roof. Then, with the small sound of feathers catching air, the hawk came down onto the road. It had dropped a turtle, lifeless with its shell cracked like a boiled egg, and was now tearing into its corpse for meat. Its beak and talons dug into the turtle and pulled away muscle tissues. The bird’s swallowing motion looked like a toddler chewing. As I turned away and closed my eyes, I laughed a little. I drove, careful to avoid the dining bird, a few blocks and turned onto my street. 

I clicked the lock with my key. Inside was the short hallway that led to the four apartments in my building. What was, from the outside, a small Victorian manor was in fact a set of studio apartments built from 60s prefab housing. I walked down to my door and could smell iron. I opened my door and my cat, with a pride that went beyond the normal pride a cat moved with and a flirtation that did the same, curled his tail around my leg. His ears perked forward. His eyes were wide green ovals with pupils dilated. The grit in my jaw softened as he let out a chainsaw purr, but when I squatted with my stomach on my thighs, I saw little spots of blood in the fur around his mouth. I sprang up and ran around lifting every piece of furniture, digging through the trash cans in the kitchen space and the bathroom, throwing the wardrobe open and putting my face half an inch away from the bottom, running to the litter box and putting my face half an inch away from the dirty litter, and crawled on the floor like an animal in peril looking for the puddle of blood my cat threw up. I couldn’t find anything and he looked fine, purring and mewing for my attention and kneading into my comforter. I pulled the comforter out from under him gently as more of an encouragement to move than a forced removal. He jumped down and I pulled back the comforter. There was a shredded mouse. Entrails, flesh, heart, lungs, connective tissue, skin, fur, and face were turned to wet ribbons on my bed and haloed in blood. The sheets were undoubtedly ruined and I pressed my teeth into each other, imagining the enamel turning to dust and washing away with my saliva. This was no deterrent. There would come a day, probably when I was 85, where my mouth would be full of bone dust and gums and I decided that that was fine.

The shreds of mouse must have soaked through the sheets, now ruined, to the mattress, which also must have been ruined. I seethed, most likely blowing my dusted enamel over the bed, adding more ruin. My cat looked at me with arrogance, the expectation that I would clean up his unwanted kill twisted my back muscles into spasms and I, indignantly, ripped the sheets off my bed. My wrist hurt. The flicking motion was the last straw on the sore humps of bone between arm and hand. In the force of motion, streamers of mouse flew as if in a horrible parade. My cat began to eat the scrap that landed closest to him and I gave up. I picked up the mouse remains with my bare hands. It seemed that the actual kill took place awhile ago because the blood had coagulated enough to not make a huge mess of my tile. Kitchen spray picked up the gobs of scab. The bloodstain in my mattress was large and had, somehow, developed the ability to stare at me. Looking into it, I could only laugh. Everything sank.My shoulders moved away from my ears. My jaw loosened. Every muscle finally gave up its tension. And I laughed. I laughed as I wrapped myself in all the blankets I had. I laughed as I lay on the floor. I laughed myself into sleep.