The Squatter

Image Credit: Matt Handle

I was recently trying to process all of the senseless killing going on in our country and around the world. What would possess a person to shoot a roomful of kids, purposely crash a plane full of innocent passengers, or push a stranger in front of an oncoming train? How can people be so evil and are they even people at all? Maybe Bill Paxton’s excellent 2001 film, Frailty, got it right. Perhaps these people are really demons in disguise.

I wrote this flash fiction as a result of those thoughts. If you don’t like it, you’re in pretty good company. Nine magazines rejected it. Still, it speaks to me so now I’m sharing it with you.

***

I spotted you easily. Solitary and weak, you separated yourself from the herd. You were an obvious target. You couldn’t see me of course, my camouflage much too sophisticated for your human eyes to decipher. But I saw you. I saw you coming from a mile away.

You with your dull eyes, your doughy flesh, your slovenly attire, and your plodding gait. You had all the tell-tale signs of a once proud species, still holding onto the arrogant belief in your place atop the food chain. I know better. You are sheep, you are antelope, you are a solitary rabbit in a field bereft of burrows. You are prey.

I blew through you like a stark wind. The cold fury of my attack bit through your meager defenses in seconds, eliciting naught but a gasp before I shoved your pathetic soul aside and pulled your stinking body around me like an ill-used secondhand suit.

That wasn’t the culmination of my hunt. It was merely the preparation for the sport that lay ahead. I bided my time. I gorged on your starch-filled pantry day after day. I defiled your flabby wife every night she could be convinced to suffer your body’s feeble and awkward advances. I befouled your toilet more times than I can recall. And now, finally, the time is upon us to conclude our macabre little puppet show.

As I guide your stubby, cholesterol-clogged limbs down the narrow subterranean corridor between railways, I casually choose the instrument of your destruction. The C Train approaches, its brakes squealing like a 42-ton boiling tea kettle. Your end won’t be so clean, not nearly so abrupt. Instead I direct you toward the wizened old man that stands waiting on that train, his gout-suffering feet just a tad too close to the cautionary yellow line painted along the pigeon-besmirched cement. This sad, liver-spotted specimen is even weaker than you, another born victim if I ever saw one.

Just as the lumbering stainless steel behemoth reaches the platform, I force you to shove the old man forward. Like a straw-filled scarecrow loosed from its stake, he flops through the air, arms spread wide as if he might take flight and wing away from this terrible fate. But of course, he does not. The distinct noises of crunching bone and splattering fluid are immediately followed by the horrified blatting of those other sheep that stand witness around us. Their mouths hang open, their eyes wide with shock. And then they all turn to stare accusingly at you. The sound of a siren wails in the distance.

Our dance is now done. I float away from your addled mind and condemned soul just as the authorities arrive, guns drawn and radios blaring. It’s time to find my amusements elsewhere. This world holds so many to choose from.

For Cecil

Image Credit: Brent Stapelkamp

Here’s a little piece of flash fiction I wrote last week. I decided it was too timely to sit any longer on the Submittable shelf hoping for an appreciative lit mag editor. I hope you like it.

Walter woke disoriented and sore. The last thing he remembered was being grabbed in the grocery store parking lot and tossed roughly into the back of a van before a cloth that reeked of chloroform was forced over his nose and mouth. He thought something loud had awoken him. He was almost sure of it.

As reality swam into focus, he realized he was lying in one of his own dental chairs. Nitrous oxide was pumping into his lungs via a small gas mask. The mini blinds were closed and his watch was missing so he had no idea what time it was but it was bright thanks to the overhead fluorescents.

Strange, he thought as he pulled off the mask and let it drop to the floor. He’d turned off the lights when he closed the office two days prior. With all the public fuss as of late, he figured he wouldn’t reopen his practice for two weeks at least.

Another loud noise came from one of the adjacent hygienist rooms. There was no mistaking it this time. Someone had just knocked over a tray full of equipment, the devices clattering to the floor. The noise was followed by a deep growl and a snuffle. Walter furrowed his brow in confusion. He was still wobbly from the laughing gas, but whatever made that noise definitely didn’t belong here.

He got up slowly from the chair and then leaned upon it as he tried to regain his equilibrium. The room was spinning crazily and his legs felt like they were more well-cooked noodle than flesh and bone. He was still waiting for his balance to stabilize when a female lion stalked into the room and stood glaring at him from no more than six feet away.

Walter couldn’t help it. He giggled. Laughing gas will do that to you and the situation was simply too ridiculous. If he’d been right in the head, he might have wished for his hunting rifle or at least a bow and arrow, but instead he grinned and sang out, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty…”

The lioness’s golden eyes flashed a hatred that Walter recognized even in his current state. He screamed in terror just as she leapt toward him, ears flat against her head, jaws wide open. She tore into his belly, pulling out his entrails as his screams rose in volume before turning into nothing more than a wet, dying gurgle. 

She remained there feeding on the dentist’s bloody corpse until she was sated. And later, once she was napping comfortably in the middle of the office’s waiting room floor, the men came to tranquilize and take her away.

She slept all the way back home, dreaming her lion dreams. She dreamt of the beauty of the savanna. She dreamt of the warmth of her cubs. She dreamt of her longing for a husband taken too soon. And yet, she slept with the confidence that the law of the jungle would never die.