| Splat |
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I picture the rattling noise his lungs make as his comatose body push air out of his broken nose into the puddle of blackened blood. he is lying face down in a puddle of his own fluids, sprawled out against the cool asphalt pavement. The back of his neck is coated by a thin film of sweat, his left arm bent in a distorted angle, swollen and bloated. My first thought was that here was a dead human being, a victim of a midnight traffic rendevous, a pice of roadkill that gets left in the middle of the road only to be run over by the next passing car. He has a long gash on his left leg, a clean scrape that is just damp with blood, a mere flesh wound compared to his face. i can see the flakes of skin immersed in his blood, spotted by tiny flecks of gravel.
She was nothing more then a white hump in the road, at first I thought it was a garbage bag that had fallen into the road, but we all knew that it was something else when we came within seeing distance of it. Kyu swerved away from the middle of the road, pulled into a side driveway, and turned around. I jumped out, and ran towards her in the road. Imagine the fear of seeing a familiar face, a memory of a friendly moment, someone you know. As Kyu edged the van toward her, he covered his face from sight, slowly edging the car towards the lump. in the dim headlight I could see that her face was bashed in, i could see the splinters of her teeth strewn all over the road. I could see the striations of her arm muscle as the skin had been rubbed raw. There was blood everywhere. There was a white streak of her coat about a yard away from where she lay. My heart was beating faster and faster, and I had a cold ache of fear in my chest. I didn't want to look. It wasn't my cat. Just like it wasn't my friend that ate it on the road. Its pretty pathetic and selfish how relieved I was when I realized that she had orange streaks on her back instead of the calico black and brown spots. I didn't relaly care about it that much, not even when all his drunk ass friends came running out of the house 15 minutes later joining the circus of three squad cars, a fire truck and an ambulance arriving at the scene. They were all yealling and swearing, some crying, all reeking of booze. "Dumbasses." I thought to myself. It wasn't that bad. His pulse was strong and steady; I had no problem finding it when i arrived. He was still warm, he had just started sweating as he went into shock when the ambulance arrived. They say in accidents the most critical time is between the call for help and the arrival of the paramedics. He had survived this, and I had in a sense fulfilled my moral obligation. He was going to be fine. Maybe a broken arm, and nose at the most. One of the cops had to stick this emotional guy to keep him from falling on his friend in the road. The next day I went outside and looked at her in the road, she had gotten smashed a couple more times, and her blood had changed from a bright shade of red to a dull maroon color. There were flies buzzing at her face, and her tail was broken. I'm sure that he had a nice stay in the hospital, where they cleaned him up real good and fixed his jaw. All his boys probably came by, and saw him, told him how worried they were, and how lucky he was to be alive. They probably told him how much better they would take care of each other in the future, and how much friendship means in this cold world. Its pretty funny how the person that helped him the most probably cares the least. Its also pretty funny how a dead furball in the road means more to someone when he realizes that it might be his cat. I noticed how her arm looked a lot like a chicken thigh at Safeway. you know they eat cats in China. In some places they probably eat roadkill too. My mom called the city and county roadkill hotline to make a pickup. I wonder what they did with her. I'd like to imagine some kind of funeral, something decent, I mean maybe an attempt at finding the owner or something, but in reality I see them tossing her in a garbage truck. Or maybe she found her way to manapua or somthing. It all doesn't really matter you see, she's dead. He's not. He probably doesn't even know I was there making sure he was still alive, and calling for help. They wouldn't have givien a shit if the tables were turned and I was there lying in a pool of blood, but I do. |