To the cat that got killed under my back wheel...

My heart bleeds for you. You know that. And it’s hard to explain how I feel about this. I was pulling over into the parking lot fronting my office and never had the chance to see you coming. If I did, you can be sure I will do everything to avoid you from getting crushed under the back wheel.

I live my life dedicated to the personal mantra that I had adopted ever since I was a child; that is to treat everyone with gentleness and respect. And that personal philosophy does not extend to people alone but to all of life itself, which would include even the tiniest insect. Heck, I would levitate if I can for my feet not to touch the ground and bring harm to what I couldn’t see lurking in my path. I feel that if you have the power to eat, drink and live today, you must have a purpose to be sent to this world bearing the gift of life.

Otherwise, you would have ended up a piece of rock, a thing bound to be around for the ages but without moving, without feeling, without consciousness, simple as that, just a cold lifeless piece of rock. Or perhaps you can be the thunderbolt, the thing with the fastest movement but with the shortest life. If you were a rock, my back wheel would have rolled over you without leaving as much of a souvenir as a slight scratch. If you were the lightning bolt, I would have been in serious trouble. But no. You were a proud cat, a feline of the class pantera, member of kingdom animalia, (whatever that means), and because of what I did, the consequence is this; this miserable way that I feel now, the feeling that I had done a dissacrelege, that I had defiled something pure and innocent, that I had disrupted the universal order, the cycle of life so profound and great everything else is subservient to it, and in its depth and vastness both of us and every other creature for that matter would pale in significance when taken in isolation, removed from the great big boundless scheme of things. If I go to court because of this, then I would probably tell the judge you where nowhere to be seen when I approached the parking space, and let me stress this point – that I did so, slowly and carefully – yet it just couldn’t be avoided because in all likelihood, you must have sneaked up from under the car, reducing any chance of my catching a split-second glance at you, which is consistent with the horrible outcome of my rear wheel catching you. If this reasoning should fail, I wish I could just say it's curiosity, not me, that killed the cat.

Believe me, I don’t feel right telling this and rewinding in some deep dark inner recesses of my brain every single scene. Some people would react to the incident with hardly anything more than a shrug of the shoulder and then perhaps they charge it to experience and move on. But not me. My problem is me. A cat is dead and I do give a damn about it and I have in fact been losing precious sleep over it. From now on, there will be no more licking and romancing on rooftops for you and your girlfriend-cat. Your rat-chasing days are definitely over. You’ll never get to see the little bundle of baby-cats that would be born from all your acts of indiscretion. There’ll be no more kitchen raids in the dead of night for you that's for sure. And that's all because of me. I had assumed you are a boy-cat since, in my self-styled theory of human behavior, which by analogy should apply to animals too, the male of the species is the most prone to such wanton recklessness and disregard for personal safety, like getting killed in broad daylight under a slow-moving vehicle. You are, in my youth particularly, the cat version of me.

I wish I could say my piece, my apology in a language you can comprehend, dead or alive if only to lessen the pain that swept both of us, which in your case was horrific but rather quick whereas mine was not as deep but would surely last. There is something else I’d like also to tell you if somehow it can still be done. The difference between you and me now is that now you’re dead while I’m alive, now you’re history while I’m here, still here living and walking and breathing the same obnoxious air and condemned to go on living perhaps for a few more years this miserable life to which another chapter of misery has just been added by your passing and for which I am driven to insufferable confusion trying to regurgitate the significance of my becoming the reason to your doom, why of all people it had to be me. If this is part of the grand design, then I must protest and rage against the way I’m treated. Screw the grand design. I would have to stir up a storm and agitate people like me into action, all of us that were shortchanged by destiny. There is more to life than being the cat-killer.

Wait a minute, you got nine lives, right? Well, you certainly can use one right now. Do me a favor will you? I beg you, please, get the hell back to life and spare me the lifetime of conscience-pricking. My heart bleeds for you. You know that. I do give a damn about your death.

So please… Please... Get the hell back to life or I’m gonna kill you…

Between the Night and the Silence

He pulled hard on the wrench to turn the screw but the grip slipped and his hand crashed violently against the sprocket, opening a deep wound that started spewing blood immediately.

John bit his lips and continued what he was doing, unmindful of the pain. There was far greater pain pounding at his chest, eating him up, the sort of angry pain that could explode at any given time.

His mind wondered back to the scenes that transpired shortly beforehand, which lingered vividly. They were driving home, he and his wife, and there was no word, no sound, a small talk much less, but only the air conditioner and the hum of the engine that showed pulses of life, otherwise an absolute dead silence owned the night, the kind that he dreaded the most.

He would step on the gas with mean intentions and the car would fly, eager to get home past the roadside trees, the structures, and the signages and against the headlights of the opposite lane traffic, chasing shadows and becoming the ghostly imagery of his desperation, that kind of aching deep down inside hoping to see the moment ended at last so that they, who both were erstwhile trapped into this cramped piece of hell between the night and the silence could step out to freedom, walk their separate ways perhaps to find peace and the right path back to serenity and reason. In the meantime, the wife’s sideway glances were a rain of daggers.

The boy ran to him as soon as he pulled over into the garage, she on the other hand quickly disappeared. Little Joey was sweetly excited, remembering his father’s promise to fix the bike as soon as he comes home tonight which John realized he had totally forgotten. His trouble had doubled. And it was just too much for the fortysomething dad to handle. First, his wife’s silent rage and now the boy’s irrepressible badgering. He was barely able to contain himself from cussing out loud but John couldn’t help banging the car door with such brutal force in his exasperation, terrifying the child and even himself. John instinctively wanted to kill himself as soon as he realized what he had done. After that, another long inexplicable silence appears to merge with the cold spell.

He recalled how he wondered into the garage, finding the bicycle in one corner under the fluorescent lamp and right next to the tool box, the muted testimony of his promise. John pulled up his sleeves and began to work, beginning with unscrewing the rear wheel and again his mind drifted back to the past. He was reminded of the ineptitude of his physical abilities, a fact he had accepted eversince he was himself a child. His father would constantly show him the calloused hands of the construction worker, and their conversation would almost always end up with the surreal vision of a distant future, created through his father’s riveting words, that John someday when he grows up would not be wearing the blue collar, no, never shall he sweat under the sun the way that his father did because this boy would become the man who would use his brain instead more than his hands. That admonition would thankfully become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet on occasions like this, when it became his turn to play his fatherly role, he hated being so inept and ill-equipped, and John was anything but thankful and in fact, he felt bitter to not have inherited even a little of his old man’s skills with manual work.

Blood continued to drip from the cut in his hand. He was down on his knees on the dirty pavement trying to figure out what to do next when John was astonished to feel the child suddenly embraced him from behind. Joey had sneaked up to him to watch his father at work, doing the most important job in the whole world, the one thing that really mattered at this moment. The thing about fixing what was broken.

John carried Joey in his arms and rushed back to the house. She hugged his wife and whispered something in her ears.

The boy, the wife and the bike. Nothing else mattered.