He had almost stepped on the cat before he noticed it was there, and when he bent down to look more closely, the boy wondered how he had not smelt it in approaching. The animal had been dead for quite sometime, maybe several days. It had been missing for longer than that, and the mere location of it induced a relief in him which belied the sense of loss and dread that would surely follow. He squatted, bending his thick knees carefully and touching his fingertips to the concrete of the underside of the bayou bridge in order to steady himself. Lovingly he shooed flies away and patted the poor creature's head as it lay crushed and oozing. The single tear which found its way down his cheek then surprised him greatly, for he had known just how he would find his precious pet from the moment it had come up missing. The children in the new neighborhood had made such fun of the boy when he had been foolish enough to sit in the yard with the cat, nuzzling it and whispering sweetly in its soft ears. With his other hand he brushed a wisp of mousy blond from his long eyelashes; his rosy cheeks bloomed further the longer he stayed under the shade of the cold, concrete bridge. His blue school shorts were dirty, and he would have to wash them himself so that his mother would not be able to yell at him. He didn't think he could handle being yelled at without his best friend to comfort him. Stroking the cat's tail with his flattened palm, the boy adjusted his footing in order to ease the pressure on the joints which connected his toes to his feet.

He fantasized about laying his mangled and beloved pet in a shoebox lined with soft tissues, about spraying it with perfume and combing its knotted fur where he could, about lidding the box and placing it in the deepest grave he could dig before dinner, about holding a ceremony to bid the cat goodbye. He was about to scoop the animal tenderly up into his arms and carry it home when came the heart-stopping, unmistakable scrape of sneakers upon concrete from atop the bridge. He was far enough under so that the pebbles which flew over the side did not fall on him, and no one from above could have seen him crouching below. Catching his breath in his throat, the boy instinctively put himself between the side of the bridge where the rocks had come from and the murdered animal. As the chorus of footsteps started up again, his eyes, otherwise glued to the place where the bridge met the steep concrete floor, fluttered down for one nervous second so that he could reacquaint himself with the distance between his perch and the water below. As he did, his foot jerked and loose pebbles went tumbling down the ridge to plop, plop, plop themselves into the bayou. This made him gasp and he was lost in his fear of falling, his fear of those who would find him there, and his fear of interminable solitude, until the voices of the three boys who had come down to inspect their prize drew him back to reality. His face jerked around to meet them, his eyes following milliseconds later, and when they saw him they began to laugh. Their hair was tousled and clumpy, and their school clothes were caked with filth and slime. Surely they would not be yelled at when they returned to their own mothers, surely they would not have their only friends savagely beaten and murdered so far from home. They laughed harder and approached the boy when he shed another, single tear, though he made neither sob nor frown. Two of the three young murderers took him by the shoulders as the other one stared him down, obviously meaning to intimidate.

"Look here!" said the last, but the boy heard no more of what was said. He was lost in his own thoughts and could not be distracted by the teasing and rough shuffling about. Ignoring them as they shoved him and tweaked his ears, he looked down over the ominous, algae-corrupted water. He didn't hear them this time when they told him that he looked like a girl, or that his father ought to know that he was raising a homosexual; he gazed out over the thick, deep, warm-looking abyss and took a step toward it when first they released him. There was a very definite ridge after which the ground was far too steep for one to effectively control one's footing, and the boy pushed toward it. None of the other boys would touch him then, so obvious was it that the slightest misstep would send him tumbling down the concrete plane, and he looked calmly into their eyes. He could see their disgust, their loathing, their pure jealousy at his unwillingness to be controlled by what they found intimidating and their own attempts to imitate it. "Murderers." He said it softly and without inflection. The boy's every waking hour had been spent on the hunt for his dead friend since the cat had come up missing seven days before; the cold weather and winter germs had caught him easily, and his voice had taken on a nasal quality. Blushing with what he knew to be shame, but what they no doubt passed off in their minds as the cold, the other boys shoved their hands in their pockets and stepped back.

"Look.. come away from there. It isn't safe." The first murderer was serious, scratching his head and beginning to look nervous. He hadn't felt anything when they had beaten the cat with sticks and belts, but the idea of an actual person's blood on his hand made him uneasy. Someone would definitely find out about this...

Murderers." The boy was more intense this time, almost fiery. His eyes glistened and the heat from his heart and his brain made his nostrils flair and his breath steam. Power. He had power over them. It pumped through him like liquid life, defrosting his toes, his cheeks, even the tops of his ears. Picturing the three of them as they watched him tumble to his death, as they reeled around to go -- only to be confronted by the very symbol of their wretchedness which they themselves had wrought and displayed --, as they ran screaming from the dead animal which had sacrificed itself that one boy might pay his tormentors back tenfold by the only means available, as they became murderers to everyone, and not to just to the child they had wronged so horribly, the boy breathed his last breath of agony.