Mr. Sam Reiley sat on the porch in the cooling afternoon of early autumn, looking out on his farm. It consisted of 20 acres of land, where he kept a  reasonable vegetable garden. The farm wasn’t really a farm anymore, and  hadn’t been for years. His father had owned this land, and had passed on. What with Sam being the oldest son, the land fell to him, and rightly so, as it says in the good book. Up until three years ago, he had shared this place with his wife, Verna, but she’d fallen ill and died, leaving Sam alone.

Sam sat there with his Pabst Blue Ribbon between his legs, and his ruger .22 rifle across his lap. He was doing his evening ritual of clearing his garden of varmints.

Sam had loved Verna, but she had this soft spot for feeding strays, so his land had become overrun with cats. Maybe 50 of them around the place, and when they were mating, they made such a racket that Sam felt he’d go plum crazy.

At the edge of his field, he spied a cat. He’d seen this one before. It was a new mother cat that had left her litter of squirming vermin under his shed. Every time he’d brought her into his sights, she instinctively seemed to know, and she’d bolt away.

Sam slowly brought the rifle into firing position, and leveled to barrel toward the mother cat, whose belly still hung low and loose. The crosshairs of the little 2x scope sat just behind her ear. His thumb gently released the safety, and he exhaled, gently applying pressure to the trigger until the sharp crack of the round sounded. A split second later the tink of the   rimfire brass hitting the concrete of his back steps was the only sound. For a moment, it seemed all of nature was in a hush.

Sam again brought the cat into the crosshairs to see if it had been a clear hit. Satisfied with his shot, he got up, walked down into the warm sun, collected the carcass and tossed it onto his compost pile. He turned over a pitchforkfull, tossed the body on the pile and covered it. God had given man rule over the beasts of the fields, and that gave Sam the right to rid himself of these nusences as he saw fit. The good book said so.

He went up to his shed and found an old sack for grass seed. He grabbed a pair of old work gloves, and put them on. Then he walked around the back, where a space under the shed had given the cat access to a safe place to put her kittens. Kneeling down, he found a litter of perhaps 7 kittens, still squirming
and blind. One by one, he grabbed them and tossed them into the sack.

Sam trudged across his property toward the small river that bordered his southern property line. He heaved the sack into the water and watched it sink, then turned and walked back to his porch.
 

Part 2

Sam walked back toward his house, across the fields, listening to the clumps of tilled earth break beneath his boots. As he approached, he saw a car in the road, which ran in front of his old farmhouse about 30 yards away. There was a slick looking sports car there, all black, and from the hissing sound and the steam from under the hood, he knew that expensive piece of machinery was boiling hot, and not going anywhere. Sam changed his course, walking toward the car. Helping others was in the good book, and Sam was a god-fearing man.

As he approached, he saw the car was one of them damn foreign numbers. The emblem said Jaguar. The plate said ‘SEQ1MET’. He couldn’t understand what vanity plates meant half the time, and didn’t bother with this one.

The lady that emerged from the car as Sam approached was almost certainly a model. She had that long, lean, picturesque body that could stop a man’s heart. She was also dressed in expensive clothing and of immaculate grooming:Perfect mane of red-brown hair; perfect shaped and painted nails; black leather bustier under leopard print jacket and skirt. To finish off the look was a set of tasteful sunglasses, completely black. She was shockingly beautiful, and raised in Sam feelings he had thought long gone.

He couldn’t see her eyes, but when she looked at him, she smiled, not the haughty smile of bored wealth he’d expected. She radiated.

In something of a dreamlike state, he led her to the house. He was quite certain he’d introduced himself, but somehow couldn’t remember actually speaking the words.

As he reached the porch again, he turned to look at her. She had said (he thought she had said) something about final judgement. That had got his attention. Over her shoulder he saw where the sports car had been... there was now a great cat, like a panther or cougar... Damn, he felt stupid.  It was a Jaguar. Heh, he was just getting too much sun. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. The cat was still there. The lady was pressing close to him. She pulled away her sunglasses, revealing beautiful green eyes, disturbingly marred with pupils slit like a cat. She was smiling menacingly.

His hand fell upon his rifle as he backed toward the door. In a flash he had the muzzle in her belly, and let off a quick succession of rounds into her, sending her back.

He didn’t stop to look at the results, and used the time to leap inside the house, bolting the door behind him. He was trying to think, trying to make  logic of this situation, but before his mind could clear, he heard from behind him a rumbling purr. He turned to look right into the eyes of a bengal tiger. If his ass weren’t clenched so tight, Sam would have literally shit himself in fear right there.

The tiger moved swiftly and leapt forward, grabbing Sam’s head in it’s mouth. In the scuffle, Sam dropped the rifle. He could feel the Tiger’s huge canines against his skull, and struggled to free himself, but the tiger pressed him to the ground, and it was huge, a mass of muscle. It squeezed the air out of him, and smothered him. He fought with everything he had, and felt the edges of unconsciousness moving in. Please, he thought, not like this.

He woke up on his porch, sitting in his old wicker rocker, and was immediately relieved. When his eyes opened though, he saw the lady standing there, with her great cats. He was tied tightly to the chair, and in the yard, and fields around him were hundreds of thousands of rats and mice.  They did not pproach
her closer than about 20 yards, but were otherwise covering everything and pressing to come near.

Sam again knew from the woman… without speaking, why he was being judged. The cats he had just killed had been the last of a score. 144 cats had died at his hands in the last three years. Had it been so many? He could think back to at least a dozen instances of bagging kittens. Yes, he though, his mind was filled with a vision of every cat. One at a time, like the verdict of a jury, he saw his crime. And what would be his punishment?

Over the course of the lives of all of the cats Sam had killed, they would have hunted and killed the swarms of rodents now encircling him, literally hundreds of thousands of vermin. He could HEAR them, even this far away.

The woman stepped back, walking away from the house, and as she did, the rodents swarmed ever closer to Sam. Sam finally screamed ‘I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ!’ The lady stopped, and laughed lightly. She strode confidently forward, and reached into the breast pocket of Sam’s flannel over-shirt. There he kept a small copy of the new testament, King James version. She turned it toward him, and opened it, without looking, to Mathew chapter 25. Sam’s eyes fell on the page, the tiny print...

41: Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
 
44: Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45: Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

46: And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
 

Sam knew and understood. He did not fight his judgement, but only hoped that  God would forgive him his sins. Again the woman backed away, and again the vermin came, biting and clawing over each other, rolling like a dark sea of  living water toward him.

Sam watched the swarm of rodents approach… felt them approach. They shook the very air with their presence, and created a low vibration through the ground with their sheer numbers. Sam strained at the bindings on his arms. The lady continued stepping away, and the rodents swarmed onto his porch scurrying over each other toward him. In moments they covered the porch and began chewing on the wicker chair, and climbing up the legs.

Sam had instinctively leaned back in the rocker and picked up his feet, but even so, the rodents were piled deep enough to reach his feet and began climbing up his pants legs. When one would reach a spot where it could wriggle no further up his legs, it would start gnawing at his flesh, or tearing his pant legs to shreds.

The individual bites were tolerable, but before his mind could set aside the pain from one bite, the next would come. He felt the slick wetness as blood begin to first trickle in droplets then rivulets down his legs. The blood seemed to just send the rodents into that much more fury.

They continued climbing, up his legs, into his lap, tearing through the crotch of his pants, and biting his privates with searing pain. Sam clinched his teeth, and squinted his eyes as tears welled up. He dared not open his mouth as rats were now crawling on his shoulders and seemed to want access into his mouth.

Blood from bites on his arm had slicked the baling twine that tied him, and he pulled and heaved on his bindings. The chair itself was chewed to bits and Sam could feel it disintegrating. He fought all the more furiously against the ropes. Blackness crept in from the boarders of his consciousness, and he fought it away. He wanted to live too much to face dying this way.

Rats and mice now swarmed all over his body, biting, clawing, and scurrying over every inch. They threatened to suffocate him. Every time he screamed in pain, a rodent would find it’s way into his mouth, biting his tongue, and trying to crawl down his throat.

He knew his ears were gone now, and felt muscles in his arms tearing free as they were shredded. Sam staggered up with great effort. Somewhere through the fog of pain, he thought about the river. If he could make it there, he could jump in, and these cursed vermin would be drowned. Drunkenly staggering down the steps, he slipped on rats and mice crushed beneath his feet and came down on his right knee, splintering it on the edge of the concrete step below. He sprawled forward, and was immediately swarmed all over by the waiting mass of rats.

Through holes in his cheeks he screamed. He felt his left eye pop from the bite of a huge rat. His left calf tore free as the Achilles tendon snapped at the merciless gnawing. Sam wished to die. He knew his body was ruined, and the waves of pain were all he knew, as if it had always been this way. He was up on his knees and right arm, the left arm (there was no longer a hand there) was trying feebly to scrape his face free for one good breath of air. The splintered knee was just one more pain in a sea of pains. He fell back on his haunches… what was left of them. The wet squish of bloody flesh on bloody flesh seemed almost funny.

Somehow the pain lessened. Through his remaining eye, he lifted his trembling right arm, and watched the rats consume his fingers. Another wave of near-laughter, and then everything started feeling cold. His already trembling body went into violent wracking shivers. His vision in the only eye he still had was narrowing to a tunnel, and the sound of the rats seemed blanketed in static. Like the sound in a sea shell… The world began to spin. Sam barely saw the moment his abdominal wall was punctured and his intestines spilled out. It would have been very funny, if he felt more attached to the situation. Somewhere dimly in his mind, he knew they were in his stomach now, and would soon reach his lungs and heart. He decided it was time to go.
 

Part 3

Sam was lying on cold dusty ground, and opening his eyes, he saw a baron  landscape void of features, and a dead gray sky. He was naked and himself a  lifeless gray. He realized he was on the bank of a river whose waters were  darkest black. There was no sound here, no breeze. Nothing. Across the narrow river, some ways away from the far banks was a stone wall that ascended upward
beyond sight. In that stone wall, was an archway leading…   somewhere, and he knew wherever it led, he was supposed to go there. The river was not terribly wide. Distance was hard to guess in this place, but he thought it not more than 50 feet maybe. There didn’t appear to be any current. He dipped his toe
in the river to test the water. It was a deadly numbing cold that somehow reached his mind. He felt memories slip away… his mother’s face… the smell of apple pie.

Sam decided to wait and see what would happen next. He sat crouched there for some time. Maybe it was ten minutes. Maybe it was a week. Time, like distance here, was hard to guess. But at some length, a small boat could be seen approaching, and a robed figure pushing it with a pole. As the figure
approached, something in the water came floating toward Sam from the other  direction. The figure fished the thing out of the water with the pole. It was a feed sack. Sam’s heart sank. The figure stopped at the far bank, opening the sack from whence seven kittens scurried. They rolled and played, and pounced, and eventually wandered toward the gate and out of sight. The boatman turned his head toward Sam, and under the hood, Sam could see a leering skull. This boatman, it was the ferryman across the river Styx, Sam thought. What happened to the pearly gates?

The ferryman pushed his boat across the water, and stopped short of the shore Sam stood on. He held his skeletal hand out. Sam knew he wanted money.  Sam had come here naked. The ferryman understood and pushed the boat off. Sam sat there, knowing how horrible it would be to be here eternally, no way to cross into what lies beyond.

Again, Sam sat down and waited. At some length a man approached from the distance, wearing simple robes and sandals. He was a short man with dark skin and short hair. His wiry muscles stood out plainly. He looked middle-eastern. The man sat there in front of Sam. The man smiled after a moment, and the feeling of familiarity crept into Sam. This little man finally pulled his robes up, showing his wrists, where the ancient holes of crucifixion still showed. Sam was sitting before Jesus of Nazareth. He began to weep with joy. Finally, he would have a chance at redemption. Perhaps Jesus would send him back to make up for his mistakes.
 

Jesus knew his thoughts, and in Sam’s mind came the knowledge that his old life was over, but there was a way to cross the river. Sam accepted the gift. Jesus touched his head, and Sam slept.

Part 4

Sam was warm, and felt very safe and comforted here. He was just coming out of a nap. He was huddled close to his siblings. He tried and only barely succeeded to open his eyes. He was under the shed of his house. He was TINY.  In a flash, he knew his judgement. He was a kitten. And at the moment that knowledge came into him, there was a sharp crack of a rifle. He didn’t want to die again so quickly, but his tiny weak body wouldn’t get up and move right. He squirmed and tried, but soon, his former self came, and he and his brothers and sisters were tossed into a sack. The inevitability of the situation was horrifying. He knew what would come. Certainly, this would be the shortest life anyone had ever lived. Bounce, bounce, bounce, as he and his fellow kittens were taken across the field toward the river. Then, the feeling of heaviness, and weightlessness as they were hurled into the air. The other kittens were mewing with confusion and fear. Sam knew what was about to come. They hit the cold water, and were almost instantly in shock from the late autumn chill in the river. Sam thrashed as best he could… but eventually fell again into the grips of darkness.

Seemingly moments later, the cold faded, and he was on the dusty ground. His eyes were open, and he could move, and around him were his brothers and sisters. They knew the gate awaited them, but they hesitated, enjoying the moment, playing and rolling with each other. As they approached the gate, they saw their mother. Now though, Sam could see more in her than just a cat, he could see his wife Verna, and felt this great double swell of love for her. Together they entered the gate to the afterlife.