I’ve never eaten a person but today I might
I wake up in my thicket to the sound of whipcracks and look out and see a bulky man in a brown leather jacket and brown hat swinging the whip toward two other people a man and a woman
the woman holds a phone up and says you look just like him oh my god
the man with the whip smiles and cracks it again and I feel something in the bottom of my stomach that’s not hunger
I also feel hunger
the man without the whip lies down on his back and spreads his legs and lifts his feet up to the sky and shouts okay do it just flick ’em just lightly flick my nuts
the man with the whip snaps his arm back and forward and the whip hits the dirt in front of the lying down man and the lying down man says yes yes
the woman presses her phone and says be careful those are my boys
I try to understand people but they make it hard
the man on the ground is skinny and the woman with the phone is skinny but the man holding the whip is thick and his neck bulges against the collar of his tan shirt and I can see a vein and hear the blood running down through his arm and his arm flexes and gets meaty every time he raises the whip
the whip hits the ground and kicks up dust and it sounds like the torment of all big cats
fuck this guy
I can smell his insides
my mouth waters and the drool slides down and soaks my paws
I smack my lips louder than the whip’s crack and the people stop like they heard me and the lying down man stands up and the woman turns her phone in my direction and the man with the whip holds the whip at the ready
yeah I heard that says the woman like someone asked her a question
I’m not scared of their eyes
I’m the same color as my thicket and the same color as the ground
no one sees me unless I want them to
the whip makes the bulky man brave and he steps slow toward me and squints and leans in with his throbbing neck vein in full focus
my mouth opens and I judge the distance between the man and his skinny friends and try to decide if I can drag him into the thicket quick enough
I wonder if they’ll chase us or if they’ll run away
it’s been weeks since I’ve eaten anything bigger than a raccoon
I think of how many meals I can get out of this man and how if I store him down in the caves the vultures won’t find him and I’ll be able to come back over and over to eat a little more
I think of all the nights we’ll spend together
this man and his guts and me
let’s get food says the man as he coils the whip around his fist and pulls his neck away from the path of my teeth
the woman claps her hands and says yeah I thought I was totally over brunch but I guess I’m not
I watch them walk fast down the trail and I go to sleep because sleep takes my hunger away
when I wake up I hear the last of the day’s hikers passing my thicket
two girls with huge water bottles that bounce the sunlight through the branches and into my eyes
it’s not easy to sleep on an empty stomach but I guess I did okay
one girl says god I can’t believe it’s dark already
I know we have to start starting earlier says the other
she takes a sip from her bottle and says no matter how much I say no and cancel stuff there’s still no time and the first girl says that’s just your scare city mentality you have to work on that
yeah I just you know this you know I don’t like change says the second girl and the first girl says of course but we all live in scare city under capitalism so we all have to make an effort to deprogram a scare city mentality as like our central driving force
their voices get lower and then I can’t hear them anymore and I yawn and stretch my paws out and their water bottles vanish with their bodies in the sunset
I shouldn’t be here and neither should they
now that the hikers are gone I leave my thicket and go down into the dry ravine where lots of water used to flow and I eat bugs and suck at the little trickles to make my thirst less
I remember the last rain and I remember I wasn’t happy about it but I don’t know how long it’s been since
now I need water to come from the sky or anywhere else
I need more than a dirty sip
I think of the girl hikers and the shiny bottles they gulp out of and I paw the dirt for more caterpillars and eat them and I know I have to find somewhere new to drink
things are changing
a while ago I wouldn’t fantasize about eating a person
what the girls said makes sense
I’m not sure what a scare city mentality is
but I have it
here is called different things by different people
mostly they say ellay but they also say the park or hollywood
I hear that word a lot
I know I live below the hollywood sign because the hikers say oh look we’re below the hollywood sign and they say can we get all the way up there and they ask which letter would you jump off
I’ve been up there but at night lights come on and it’s too exposed so I stay down where I am now
views don’t matter to me anyway
the hikers say things like look at that view or say things like we have to do this more often get up here and get perspective
what they see makes them point or stop and turn and put their hands on their hips and breathe deep but the distance they love is an out of focus blur when I try to look where they’re looking
all I can see is what’s right in front of me
when the sun drops below the ridge I leave the dried up ravine and go to town
town is where my people live
there are four of them and they have three tents set up just a few layers back in the trees where the hikers can’t see
but I see in the dark
the people in town smell familiar to me a smell like warmth or the woods not the sweet hiker smell that makes my head hurt
and that’s how I found them a while ago and found their pile of trash and the smaller animals that come to eat their trash and offer themselves up to get eaten by me
the people build a fire some nights and I have to stay far away from the glow but they haven’t done that in months they’re afraid of the dryness like I’m afraid of the dryness
there’s a water pump in the clearing past town and that’s why they built town where they built it
it’s not a bad setup
I go to the water pump and there’s a deep puddle below it and I lap and lap and lap
I’m the secret member of town
I stay on the edges and don’t mess with their tents or their tarps and supplies but I hear them talk about me
the older man in the left tent calls me puma
the couple in the middle tent call me ley own
the young man in the right tent calls me a different name every day but it always ends with cat
fucker cat or shitfuck cat or goddamn fuck cat
I can take it
he’s kind otherwise and leaves his trash by a tree and tonight it’s a bucket of chicken bones but at the bottom there’s chicken
the meat and the bones taste like many people’s saliva and my stomach gets full and I get grateful and my eyes fill
I want to thank my people but I know if they see me it’ll fuck up our relationship
the first light means it’s time to go and I bring a bone back to my thicket
the hikers start early and I hear voices as soon as I’m settled in hidden and gnawing
or I hear one voice a man’s voice
I’m a good listener says the man and I see he’s with a woman who hikes beside him
the man says really I’m serious I want to listen you can tell me anything you want about us or me or the dinner anything I promise I’ll just listen and I won’t interrupt or project I’ll just I can take it you don’t know what a good listener I am without you or when I’m not around you when I’m with other people it’s just this specific stuff with us that makes it hard so I’m ready to listen I really am I promise I’m ready
this is my bedtime story today and I close my eyes and leave my ears open
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