Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 12

Caged Meat

The smell of blood and bone spewed all around him.

He paced back and forth, trying not to think about it, but the odor was too strong to ignore.

The night was panther dark. No lights except the vague overhead glimmer of most nights in this harsh land.

He had water at least. Not blood.

The smell was maddening! The smell of slaughter.

He couldn’t understand why he was being tormented like this: caged and affronted with the stench of bleeding meat.

Or was it a dream? He had dreamed these dreams before.

How long in this prison?

How long since he had been stung into sleep and taken from his home?

No one knew where he was. He knew no one here. The blood wasn’t the only smell. There was the reek of urine and dung. His grounds had always been cleared quickly.

In the hot sun flies buzzed around it all: filth, raw meat, his eyes and ears.

At night the smell was the overpowering assault.

He heard others move in the night. He heard a rhythmic scraping sound.

And sometimes he heard footsteps, as the keepers with the barking whips moved back and forth, as he did in his prison, only they were free.

He lurched up from a prone position on the cold concrete to the corner opposite the rancid hay that was his bed and marking place.

Water at least. He drank thirstily, satisfying no craving.

Without water he would have died in the day’s heat. So they did not mean to kill him. Not yet. He knew that much, and no more.

But the smell, all around!

He lunged at the bars with a guttural cry of anguish.

He would go mad!

Why had they done this to him?