PATTON'S SAD TAIL- VOL. VIII

This may be a bit a jumble.  Shut up.  I was in shock, heavily medicated, and still working with a cat's brain.

"Dude, looks like you been torturing small animals...mumble...mumble...Sweet."

"My idea...mumble...but somehow more than that...murmur..."

Snap.  Fade.

"Flip him on his stomach...pss pss...we're gonna have to go in through the back..."

"Did you get the prototype?  Mumble.  Gauge...murmur..."

Snap.  Fade.

"I got this package...murmur...seems so small..."

"That's it!  Murmur.  Nanocomposite fiber...Teflon...titanium...silicon...mumble...We'll need to remove the distal phalanges...snicker..."

My claws...a-hole.  Snap.  Fade.

"Awesome...mumble...what about the interface?...pss.  pss."

"Grafts from the caudal neural ganglia...mumble...posterior fascia...muscles...murmur...Start the morphine drip...mumble...prep the nootropic wash..."

My f***ing tail.  Snap.  Fade.

That's the last thing I remember from before.  Now I know why my tail doesn't work.  My ass is in my hands.  He still better go back and fix that later, like I know he said.

I don't know how long I was out.  Seriously, you're still asking me to reference time?  All I know is the sun was out for a lot longer after I woke up than before.  Make of that what you will, but to me, it seemed like a new existence.  Like I said before (are you even paying attention?), I woke up on my stomach in traction.  I'd been immobilized for god knows how long (hey, I might actually believe now), but I immediately felt stronger; my mind, my body, everything but my g-d tail.  But...you know...butt.

I looked at the world with different eyes, and processed it with a different mind.  I didn't know it at the time, my front limbs still shrouded in bloody bandages, but I would soon tread upon the world with the devil's hands; hands my master had stolen from them and given to me.

Concerning more mundane details of my recovery, the master constructed a nifty little wheeled harness for me.  Like a body sling where I could use my hind legs, in their weakened state, to maneuver, and have my upper body free to heal and rehabilitate.  But this was more than rehabilitation where my hands were concerned.  It was like I had a brand new set of appendages with functionality beyond anything I'd experienced.

My sad tail, of course, was drawn up my side and strapped around my midsection so I wouldn't evacuate myself all over it.  Oh yes, I still had my cat-theter and cat-lostomy bag, but there's nothing my master hated doing more than cleaning my sad soiled tail with a Swiffer mop head.  Poor him.  Shut up.

I soon got used to the new abnormal.  Plato didn't know what to think of me.  He was still nice, and curious, and old, but I was suddenly smarter than he, and he could tell.  He gave me my space, and observed me with an oddly cocked head as if he was seeing how the procedure took...and whether it would work on him.

I have to tell you something else.  Don't be afraid, it's for your own safety.  One dead, cold night, a loud thud came from the patio door.  My master slowly shuffled through the living room and drew back the blinds.  I wheeled in after him, my curiosity expanding in multicolored, exponential fractals.  Plato hobbled low along the wall to get a look.

The light on the patio didn't work, but the near full moon shone bright across the light grey concrete.  Then we saw it.  I could tell we all saw it because fear excised any ease in the room.  A thick streak of dark blood trailed down the dirty glass door.  We followed it down to the ground outside, the silence bludgeoning. 

There, in the middle of the smooth concrete, a long, hairy, blood covered object twitched and squirmed.  The master and I leaned in to get a closer look.  Plato slunk back into the bedroom.  He already knew, and was well beyond the age to deal with, the horrors of that convulsing mass.

We looked closer.  It spat and flailed under the late winter moon; black hair, red blood, white bone, a trail of three bloody prints to and from the 'gift'.  The limb of a small animal.  Its distal end a mangled red cabbage, as if detonated by an explosive, its proximal end shredded, as if gnawed from the root.

Our old friend left us a gift, a crimson calling card.  She was still here.  She was watching.  She had chewed her own arm off, and left it for us as a reminder.  We will never be safe...as long as Ghasm lives.

I looked at the calendar.  It was February 14th.  Great.  Happy f***ing Valentine's Day!

Now send a card to someone who cares, I'm fearing a book.

Morphine Drip.