Burnt Tongues

  Pitiful.

  Desperate.

  Shit.

  A few moments later, we’re both standing in the tiny

  administrative office, which is cluttered with stacks of paperwork and spit-coated chew toys. Polaroids of smiling children holding secondhand pets line the walls. The air reeks of urine and stale kibble.

  The man lowers the box onto my desk and pulls back the flaps. He sucks air through his clenched teeth, then reaches inside and lifts out a ragged mass of black fur, slick with blood. “Oh, Christ. Look what they’ve done to her.” He runs a hand along her glistening back, and she turns in my direction.

  “Oh, Christ,” I echo.

  It’s a miracle she isn’t dead already. Along with the gouges in her back and sides, her right eye is dangling from its gore-caked socket. Just a bloated sack of blood vessels with a hole punched directly through the cornea.

  She sneezes, and a tiny cloud of red mist plasters onto the front of my smock.

  My hands begin to feel ice-cold. “Un-fucking-believable.”

  But it’s not the cat’s face that rattles me. I’ve seen it all over the past seven years. Every day, animals are brought to this shelter looking like hell, the victims of abuse or neglect—severed ears and cracked teeth, snapped tails and crushed paws.

  No, what gets me is the pattern on top of her head. There’s a large white splotch, a fat star with rounded corners that travels halfway up the back of her ears.

  Just like Charlie.

  She even looks about the right age. This is a cat near the end of her life span, with or without the help of a brutal beating.

  She stares at me through her one good eye—a pale blue orb surrounded by thick red crust—and the memories twist through my mind, clear and sharp as splinters of glass.

  “I found her near the park on Greenwood Avenue,” the man says. “Some little fucks were stabbing her with sticks. You can help her, right?”

  I rub my forehead and try to realign my thoughts. “Sorry, sir. We’re just a shelter. We aren’t responsible for medical treatment. She’ll need to see a vet.”

  He begins to stroke the cat’s head. Even now, in what must be total agony, she leans into his fingers and purrs. “And they’ll help her?”

  I stare as the man rakes droplets of blood through the white splotch, dyeing it a faint shade of pink. “Sure, but she definitely needs surgery. Probably cost you a few hundred bucks.”

  He looks at me as if I’ve just asked for his wife’s bra size. “Jesus, man, I don’t want to adopt her. I just wanted to save her from those little bastards.”

  The cat nuzzles his open palm. He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. “What’s going to happen to her when I leave?”

  I explain that the shelter typically covers the medical expenses of non-sponsored strays, provided the injuries aren’t too severe and the animal is a reasonable age. But in this particular case, we’ll likely recommend the vet euthanize her with an injection.

  Sodium pentobarbital.

  Quick and painless.

  Putting it so bluntly makes me sound like a dick, but my hands are tied. We’re overcrowded as it is, and hardly anyone will adopt a cat her age, much less a deformed one.

  Because that’s the sad truth about shelters: they aren’t

  really about rescuing animals.

  Not even close.

  They’re about vanity. For twenty bucks and a character reference, we’re the perfect choice for anybody with a budding messiah complex.

  People don’t just come here to adopt a pet. They want a good sob story to tell friends and family. How they alone were caring enough to give a poor, mistreated stray a chance at a regular life.

  But here’s the catch: the story can’t be too good. Too good usually means extra work or—even worse—a family pet that looks gross.

  They want the slightly malnourished tabby, not the completely blind American shorthair. They want the German shepherd with the crooked ear, not the Border collie with

  explosive diarrhea.

  Everybody wants to play savior, but no one wants to own the animals that truly need saving.

  The cat mews, as though she fully understands the situation. She looks at me again with that pale blue eye

  of hers.

  Charlie’s eye.

  “Can’t you at least perform first aid?” the man asks. “Something to ease her suffering?”

  I want to tell him it’s too late, that we both know anything I do will just help him, not the cat, feel better. But watching this guy hold her tight against his chest, gently scratching the star-shaped splotch, I say, “Yeah, sure.”

  The man nods, then exhales, which causes his chins to ripple. “It’s a pretty fucked-up world when kids get a kick out of doing something like this.”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll regret it one day,” I say. Then, without realizing it, I add, “Even if they never meant to hurt her.”

  The man narrows his eyes at me. “Does this look like an accident to you? Those little fuckers were . . .” He pauses, then says, “We’re not talking about the same animal anymore, are we?”

  Shit.

  I haven’t spoken about Charlie for fifteen years, but something about this mangled look-alike drags the words out of me. She is a feline priest ready for my confession.

  “My sister’s ninth birthday party,” I say.

  Jessica was a little brat who always wanted the best of everything. Our parents barely made enough to get by, but they somehow managed to turn our backyard into a glorified carnival. They rented a miniature pony and a bouncy castle and had hundreds of those big, foil-covered helium balloons tied to everything. As I explain this, I tug a fresh pair of latex gloves from my pocket and work them over my hands.

  “We weren’t exactly what you’d call friends,” I say. “In fact, we hated each other. Jessica loved to make fun of my glasses and crooked teeth every chance she got.”

  I pull half a dozen Kleenex from a box on the desk and dab them against the cat’s back and sides. Deep red blots bloom across the wads of tissue.

  “We had just watched Jessica open about a hundred gifts—toys, games, enough clothes to fill two closets. Any normal girl would have been thrilled, but she sat on the lawn with her arms crossed and her lips puckered. There she was, wearing her princess tiara and a little red sundress, sulking like she’d got nothing but odd socks.”

  The cat sneezes again. Another mist cloud drifts to the floor and sprinkles onto a rag doll with tufts of stuffing poking out. It gets thrown in the trash along with my gloves and the Kleenex, which by now are all soggy with blood.

  “That’s when our parents came parading out of the house with a cardboard box,” I say, sliding on a second pair of gloves.

  Mom made a big deal out of announcing how there was one more gift for their special birthday girl. Everyone crowded around Jessica as she ripped open the flaps and started squealing.

  The man grunts. “Let me guess. A cat?”

  “A kitten,” I say, then grab the shelter’s first aid kit from the desk drawer. “No more than eight weeks old. She reached inside the box and pulled out a tiny ball of fluff. It was solid black, except for a white splotch on top of its head.”

  The man squints, then his eyes grow wide with comprehension. He traces one bloodstained finger along the outline of the cat’s now-pink splotch but says nothing.

  “Jessica named her Charlie right there on the spot, then hugged our parents and said that a kitten was the only thing she’d ever wanted. After that, she paraded Charlie around the yard and let all the kids pet her.”

  Well, everyone except me.

  I take a small pair of scissors from the kit and slide the garbage can underneath the cat. She purrs while the sticky clumps of fur that cover her wounds are snipped away.

  “When it was finally my turn, Jessica skipped up to me and said that ugly boys didn’t get to pet Charlie. The other kids laughed, and I ran off towards the picnic tables in tears. Meanwhile
, Jessica gave Charlie to Mom and went to play inside the bouncy castle with everyone else.”

  Another set of gloves go into the garbage, replaced by a new pair. I grab a needleless syringe and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the first aid kit.

  “I tried telling Mom what had happened, but she never sided with me over my sister. She said that Jessica was just being her usual silly self and not to take jokes so seriously. To prove there were no hard feelings, I could watch Charlie for a few minutes while she and Dad went inside to get the cake. Before I could say anything, she dropped Charlie in my lap and headed for the house.”

  I fill the syringe with peroxide and pull another wad of Kleenex from the box. “She must have been agitated from being handled so much. Because when I tried to pet her, she dug her claws so deep into my hand that it bled.”

  With each squirt of peroxide, patches of white froth bubble up from the cat’s fur. Streams of pink-tinted solution drain into the Kleenex.

  “Even Jessica’s stupid kitten didn’t like me, and that really set me off. Both of them needed to learn that I wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore. And that’s when I noticed just how many helium balloons were tethered around the wooden slats of the picnic tables.”

  The man removes his fedora and fans himself while I put on my fourth set of gloves and grab a roll of gauze from the kit.

  “I stuffed Charlie into the front pouch of my sweatshirt and began snapping the colored ribbons that held the balloons in place. I gathered up maybe two dozen of them, big and silver, all of them saying, Happy Birthday, Princess in block lettering. Crouched behind the tables, I knotted the ribbons together at the top, then tied a huge slipknot at the bottom. My dad had taught me how to make one earlier that summer on a fishing trip. The thing about slipknots is that the harder you pull, the tighter they become.”

  The man shifts his weight, then glances at the door. We both know he can leave, that no one is stopping him from walking out of the office, out of the shelter, but he isn’t moving.

  Perhaps he’s fascinated that a stranger would share his deepest secret because of an old, mutilated cat. Or maybe my story is the verbal equivalent of a car crash, and he can’t help but rubberneck for just a little longer.

  Either way, he’s staying until the end.

  “The other kids were playing in the bouncy castle across the yard, and our parents were nowhere in sight. It was the perfect opportunity. I pulled Charlie out of my pouch and threaded her midsection inside the slipknot, then climbed on top of a picnic table and yelled, ‘Hey, Jessica, look who

  I’ve got!’”

  The man swallows a lump of air. He extends his trembling arms, allowing me to wrap thin, white ribbons of gauze around the cat’s body.

  Before long, Jessica tumbled out of the bouncy castle and stared in my direction. Sometimes I wonder how it must have looked from her perspective: seeing the brother she had always tortured perched on a picnic table with her new kitten strapped to a cluster of balloons.

  “She started running across the yard,” I say. “She was screaming, ‘Charlie! Put her down! Charlie!’”

  The man almost sounds like he’s purring now. His lips are an airtight seal, and a groan swirls in the back of his throat.

  “I never intended to hurt her. It was just supposed to give Jessica a scare. The sight of her kitten dangling in midair for a few seconds should have been enough to keep her from picking on me ever again.”

  That was the plan, anyway.

  The gauze is taped, and I ease myself against the corner of the desk. The words are pouring out of me, fifteen years’ worth of guilt spilling out into the tiny office.

  “For a moment I thought it wouldn’t work, but Charlie was no heavier than a stuffed animal. When I released my grip, the balloons jerked her into the air. She started crying and thrashing around, but that only made the knot tighter.”

  “Oh, dear Jesus,” the man says.

  “By now the other kids had piled out of the bouncy castle and were pointing and shouting at the sky. Jessica slipped on a pile of pony shit and landed face-first on the lawn. It was total chaos—enough to convince me that my point had been made. But when I reached up to grab Charlie, my hand felt nothing but empty air.”

  The office is completely silent. Even the cat seems to be hanging on my every word.

  “The balloons had sent Charlie too high, too fast. She was already more than an arm’s length away and drifting farther by the second. Even when I jumped with everything I had, my fingers just brushed the tips of her tiny paws. There was nothing I could do except watch her float away. She passed by our second-story window, bounced off the satellite dish on our roof, and sailed clean over the house.”

  I stare at the blood-flecked floor and shake my head. “Want to know the hardest part? There was a second, right after I let her go, when she looked straight at me with those sad, blue eyes. I can still picture them, clear as day.”

  The man wedges his lips between his teeth. He’s still cradling the cat like a child, stroking her head with shaking fingers.

  “When our parents finally came running out of the house to see what all the fuss was about, I jumped off the picnic table and bolted out of the yard. I couldn’t bring myself to look up at the sky anymore, but I could still see the shadow of those balloons on the ground. Even after I ran for half a block, there it was, gliding across the sidewalk. Almost like it was

  following me.”

  The man exhales in a wheeze, as though the climax of my story had robbed him of the ability of breathe. Then he says, “So, what happened?”

  I tap the lid of the first aid kit, and it falls shut. “My parents offered to buy Jessica a new kitten, but she didn’t want one anymore. I was grounded for a year, and we never had another family pet.”

  “And Charlie?”

  “That’s the thing. No one ever found her body. Not the local shelters, our neighbors, or me during my own constant searches. She was a ghost. Part of me has always wondered if she survived. If maybe she became just another stray that would somehow end up here. I know that probably sounds crazy.”

  “Not at all. So do you actually think—could this really be her?” He offers me the cat like he’s performing the end of some ancient ritual.

  I lift her from his bloody hands. “Thanks for listening,” I say. “But Charlie is dead.”

  The man crinkles his brow, then stuffs a hand into the pocket of his overcoat and removes a business card. “Here,” he says, tossing it onto the desk. “Let me know what happens to her, okay?” He takes one last long look at the cat and sighs.

  “Jesus Christ,” he says and turns to leave. “What a world. What a goddamned world.” His voice echoes through the hallway, then the front door slams and stirs up another chorus of animal noises.

  I stand there, holding the cat, feeling her warmth against my arm.

  “Charlie,” I say, slipping the phone receiver from its base and jabbing a few numbers with my free index finger, “is it really you?”

  Someone picks up on the other end.

  “Hello, Doc?” I say. “It’s Roger. Sorry to call you so late, but I’ve got a personal emergency this time. It’s about my cat.”

  And Charlie purrs.

  Paper

  Gayle Towell

  He had big hands. Kyle doesn’t. Kyle’s hands are small—about the same size as mine but his fingers are a little longer. But him, he had big hands. And the skin on his hands had a weird pattern to it. The little crosshatch lines you see on your skin when you look close—his went deeper.

  And he was hairy. Really fucking hairy. He would climb off me, and in the sweat on my stomach would be dozens of his curly black chest hairs. Now, Kyle has a total of three hairs around his right nipple, two near his left, and that’s it.

  The smell of him—his sweat mixed with that cheap

  cologne he would wear.

  He never said, “I love you.” He would always say, “You know I love you.” And I must
have been fucking brainwashed because I believed it.

  Yes, me, Jane, the great prodigy, the smart one, was young and stupid. Naive. Jane could marry an older man when she was twenty because she was smart like that. He could pin her arms up over her head, pinch the wrists so tight together it would leave bruises. He could fuck her dry and make her bleed.

  And this was happiness.

  She’d give him a blow job not because she wanted to but because he’d have her hair tight in his fist and hold her face over his dick.

  And this was marriage.

  I won’t marry Kyle. Even if he asks, which he hasn’t,

  because clearly marriage is just a piece of paper you sign.

  Kyle’s hovering over me now in our bed, naked. “Why is it all the areas I like to touch make you cringe? Don’t kiss the nipples,” he mocks. “Don’t kiss the neck. And for the love of God, don’t go anywhere near the crotch.”

  “Those are the rules,” I say. “You know the rules.”

  “But you’re just lying here”—he kisses my forehead—“with nothing on but your skin”—he kisses my cheek—“here in our bed”—he kisses my lips—“and I can’t help myself.” He goes for a nipple.

  But I’m quick. I block him with a hand over each one.

  He’s smiling at me through stringy blond hair hanging in his face. He’s been growing his hair out. For me. Because I said it would look good like that.

  I reach up and tuck it behind his ears. Force a smile back. “I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.”

  He sighs his same old, tired, not again sigh, looks over at the bedroom door, and gets out of bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll come to bed later.”

  “Are you mad? Don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad.”

  He leans over and pulls the blankets up to my neck. Runs his skinny fingers through my tangled black hair. “Hey, did you feed the fish today?”

  I shake my head.

  Day two at my new job and there seems to be some unspoken etiquette in the women’s restroom. The previous visitor always leaves a large unrolled paper towel segment ready for the next person. Waiting for me after I wash my hands again this morning is a segment of paper towel ready for my use, and I tear it off. I put my hand on the lever to unroll more but don’t.