Michael Malone - Weebly

For it was inconceivable to Miss Lattice that a woman
would crush the head of a defenseless cat.
chapter 52
When he had killed the cat that way, he knew he
was losing control.
He wasn't deranged. He didn't worry, he said, that
he would find himself stabbing nurses or shooting down
at passersby from the top of a tower. It had been just a
cat, a public nuisance that should have been put to sleep
anyhow. Still, something was wrong, something was
slipping out of place, out of line, something was roaring
up in him and pressing out the reality of Limus Barnum,
like suffocation by fire.
Up in his room where he kept things, Barnum sat in
his bathrobe, sweaty and cramped, in front of the
mirror. The robe was pulled open and underneath it he
was naked. It was after eight. He was furious at the
time it was taking him to masturbate. The erection Mrs.
Haig at the post office had given him was still
unrelieved. Livid with frustration, he flurried through
more and more magazines of photographs. But the man