Michael Malone - Weebly

successfully among all her boxes and buckets of
summer flowers. Near her back door, by a garbage
can, Prudence Lattice stood, spectral in the shadows.
She clasped the lid of the can to her chest. Her wail,
lulled now, had sharply sobered him.
"Prudence, are you all right? What's wrong?"
He had frightened her. Her thin arms in an old
flowered bathrobe tightened around the lid; she held it
against her like a shield. One slippered foot pressed
quickly on the other, then switched, as if she ran in
panic but were too panicked to move.
"It's just me. It's Winslow. I thought I heard a
scream. Is something wrong?"
The small woman stared at him blankly.
"Scheherazade," she whispered.
"Your cat?" Then, with sickening suddenness,
Abernathy saw what lay at the top of the garbage pail.
His old neighbor's cat, her Siamese. A stiffened reality
of what had once been life, now hard fur and legs
locked in a stretch. The crossed blue eyes gazed
moronically ahead, indifferent to the night.
"My God, Pru." Abernathy pried her hands from