Read Online Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition by Akif Pirinçci - Free Book Online

street to carry off rainwater. Since day must have dawned some time ago, light could now come into the sewers through the drainpipe. With a bit of luck I might be able to wriggle up it to the world above and escape my pursuers. In sudden euphoria I switched to turbo drive, like an athlete putting on a final spurt at the end of the thousand metres, and raced on as fast as my tired joints would go. The lance of light, which was getting brighter every moment and seemed to cut the gloomy sewer in two, was approaching at amazing speed, and I was delighted to find that the sound of the mob after me soon died away. Another ten metres, another five metres, another two metres; that shining hole in the wall looked more and more like a magic gate beyond which outright madness would drop away, and such unjustly criticised phenomena as addiction to TV, the weekend glooms, Monday-morning feelings, in fact the normality of ordinary life would begin again. At last I reached the longed-for passage to freedom and prepared for a sharp right turn. The monsters could seethe in bitter frustration or eat each other up for all I cared ...
    The colossus emerged from the bright hole in the wall as suddenly as a super-tanker from a bank of fog just before a collision. As I tried to slam the emergency brakes on I thought I'd run straight into some goddam dog - a dog which had gone to the bad and turned into a monster, though. About a metre before this imposing figure I stumbled, lost my balance, fell over, turned a full somersault and finally landed in front of its shaggy paws. Expecting it to be already bending down to smash my head in, I opened my eyes a crack, out of sheer masochism, and looked straight at its face. It looked even freakier and more dangerous from ground level than stomach level, a phrase to be taken literally, because even on my feet I only came up to its belly. Despite its monstrous size I immediately saw that it wasn't a dog at all, but one of my own species, a Chartreux.( 5 ) This fellow had his breed's typical and enviably dense short, smoky blue coat, although it was so full of sewage sludge that the soft and downy texture of the fur was largely lost. His type also showed in the healthily compact build often regarded by the ignorant as obesity, although in this particular specimen the muscle and extra fat tissue had combined so happily that it was hard to be sure if you were facing a tub of lard or a muscle man boasting resilience and elasticity. In any case he was incredibly large, in fact massive, and above all he was absolutely terrifying. He did, however, differ from the usual variety of neighbourhood tyrant in three respects, and they froze the blood in my veins. The first difference seemed pretty harmless compared to the other two: this giant stank so much you'd have thought he went diving for treasure in the sewers every day of his life. I didn't know whether to throw up straight away or wait until he'd exercised his own operating technique on my oesophagus. The second difference was more alarming. He had no eyes. I mean, he had eyeballs all right, but they were covered with a milky film, like a lighter version of cataract. Set in his blue-grey face, these milky orbs had a particularly grotesque effect, giving their owner the scary look of a sinister medieval dabbler in the black arts. My intending murderer was blind as a bat. Unlike human beings, however, he didn't necessarily need eyes to get his bearings - and certainly not to kill! Third and last, there were his earrings; golden earrings, strangely clean for all his dirt and shining in the eerie light. His earlobes were very ragged; the earrings probably got caught in various objects from time to time and had made more space for themselves.
    The executioner of my fate stood there in the flood of light, a mighty, indeed almighty figure, and as improbable a sight as a Christmas goose found horrifically resurrected when you open the fridge door. He stared intently down at