Page 14 of Absinthe Dreams
Genesis…
It was after midnight when I got to leave the hospital. I didn’t feel like cooking, but I was starving, so I hit a drive-thru on the way home.
Keying my way into the back door, I set my crap down and called out for my kitty baby, who, of course, didn’t come or answer. Which wasn’t unusual, but for the fact I could have sworn he didn’t go out when I’d left that morning.
I sighed and set my food on the counter as I breezed by the kitchen to the front door. I might as well check the mail and call my Charlie boy in for his supper from the front, which is usually where he came from when I did get home.
The smell hit me just as soon as I opened the front door. I tried not to gag on the coppery tang of blood in the air and tried not to panic too hard when I saw it.
Zip tied to my front gate was a cat, bloody, gutted, the intestines strung along the wrought iron fence like some demented Mardi Gras swag. It was worse, though, because on each finial of the gate, three to either side, little kittens’ heads were thrust upon them, like their little heads were on pikes.
“Brrrr row?” I jumped as Charlie wound his way around my legs, and I bent down, snatching him up and slamming the door on the macabre scene.
I tossed him into my bedroom and shut the door, shaking with a mixture of horror and relief that he was okay, that the tabby and white cat on the fence wasn’t him. It was the mamma kitty to those poor little kittens which were at least four weeks or better and likely still nursing.
I didn’t need to hazard any guesses at who did it.
I picked up the phone to call the police, but hesitated with good reason. I mean, I wasn’t hurt. The poor cats… but I wasn’t entirely sure that they would consider this “something happening.”
I went back to the kitchen and picked up the card with its torn corner off the counter, and with shaking fingers pressed the numbers.
I stared at the screen for a long minute before I pressed the icon on it to put the call through. It took forever for it to start ringing.
I swallowed hard and almost chickened out when there was a click and a deep masculine, “Hello?”
I froze for a moment and wasn’t entirely sure what to say, when I heard him clear his throat and say, “You got a wrong number or something?—”
“No! I don’t,” I blurted. “You might not remember me, but I remember you. You, um, gave me your card around three years ago, in the emergency department. I was one of the doctors the night they brought you in. Do you remember me?”
“I’ll be damned,” he said after several long heartbeats of silence. “Of course I remember you,” he said. “This mean you got a problem?”
“Yeah, um, a big one. Not sure it’s something I should explain over the phone,” I said.
“Say no more. Gimme a place to meet you.”
“Um, can you come now?” I asked.
“Sure thing. Where to?”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “This is going to sound crazy, but I think it’s better if you see it and then I explain.” I rattled off my address.
“Garden District,” he said. “Swanky digs. That your place?”
“Yes,” I said, and he said to me, “Be there inside the hour.”
And just like that, there was nothing. The line went dead.
“Oh, Genesis, what did you just do?” I asked myself. “What did you just do?”
I swallowed again and went to the kitchen, plugged in my phone, and tossed my waiting fast-food dinner right into the trash. I poured a glass of wine, went to the panel, and reengaged the alarm. Sure, I’d locked my doors, but the added layer of the alarm being set helped almost as much as the sips of wine at soothing my shattered nerves.
I sat in the chair by the front window and tried to watch for a biker pulling up without looking at my front gate and the mutilated cats on it. I didn’t want to leave them like that, but I wanted this man to believe me, because it didn’t feel like anyone did.
I heard him before I saw him, and practically pressed my nose to the glass, breathless with anticipation. He pulled up to the curb in front of my place and cut the engine.
He’d changed. A lot. I knew it was him, though. I remembered. He was a strawberry blond, bordering on straight ginger. His beard back then held the same white streak that it had now. The same kind of white streak that someone might say the person who had it was damn near frightened to death.
I went to the front panel and suspended the alarm, stepping carefully out onto the front stoop, hugging myself as though toward off a chill, even though it was in the eighties and humid, even this late at night.
