Read Online Strays by Matthew Krause - Free Book Online

socket.  You want that girl?  You want that?”
    Sarah bent her legs and arced her hips, bucking like a wild horse trying to throw off the rider.  She could hear Rhino’s laugh, right behind her ear.  The hand that held her arm tugged ever so slight, and the pain in her shoulder burned harder.
    “Listen here,” Rhino growled.  “You got fight, and I like that, but this has gotta stop now.  I hate to do this, girlie-girl.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    He pulled back even further on her arm.  The pain was like someone injected fire into the joint.  Sarah could feel the tendons, the muscles, the ball of the joint crying out in protest.  She bit the earth and waited for it to happen, but damned if he wasn’t doing it slow, taking his time with it, dragging her into hell an inch at a time.
    “Here it comes, girlie-girl,” he whispered, his voice right in her ear.  “Here it is.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Don’t say I didn’t.  Here it is, baby, don’t say I did—”
    A familiar shriek shredded its way out of the sky, a tuning note for a choir of screams.  Rhino’s own scream joined the chorus, and Sarah felt his fingers loosen their grip on her arm.  The second hand in her hair disappeared completely.  The beefy weight that had pinned her to the earth now lifted itself from her back, and she had the leverage to push now, to pivot him off of her.  She thrashed her hips and flipped, and Rhino bounced backward, and she rolled over to her back and stood up in time to see the carnage.
    The cat—that crazy, wonderful, ginger cat—had attached itself to the back of Rhino’s head, digging itself in like a big red tick.  Its forelegs and haunches were buried deep in Rhino’s mane of hair, and she saw its head come up and down, jaws wide open, fangs borne and wild, gnashing at the top of Rhino’s skull.
    Rhino was on his knees now, flapping his hands at his head trying to ward off the attack.  His screams were crazed and guttural like a wild bird.
    The cat kept clawing deeper, burying its face in Rhino’s hair, shaking its head side to side as it worked teeth into Rhino’s skullcap.  Rhino howled, too blinded by pain to process, and he thrashed his torso up and down, back and forth snapping about at the waist in an effort to whiplash the cat off of his head.
    The cat only howled and growled as it tore into the thin connective tissue of Rhino’s scalp.  Rivulets of blood could be seen flowing from out of Rhino’s hairline, pasting his disheveled bangs to his forehead.  Rhino hopped about on his knees, waving his arms madly.  Sarah watched, sickened with herself for feeling such fascination, and she pushed herself to her feet, standing over him.  Rhino flopped over on his backside, and he twisted his head and turned it up to her, his eyes now wide and pleading.  If Sarah had felt an ounce of mercy, the cat did not give her the chance to act on it. 
    A final screech issued from the cat’s throat, shredding its way from some black place of torture in its chest.  It snapped its head back, a bloody chuck of hair and flesh dangling from its jowls.  With a shake of its head, it flipped the gruesome treat from its mouth and began to howl again, its forelegs stretching deeper into Rhino’s hair, its neck muscles tensing and popping as it strained to extend its body.
    Rhino arched his head back and cried, his voice pitiful and small, and Sarah saw something that made her stomach crawl.  On either side of Rhino’s face at the level of the temples, two orange cat paws jutted out from his ample mane.  It was impossible, Sarah thought.  There was no way the cat’s forelegs were long enough to wrap around the skull of a man, least of all a fat skull like Rhino’s.  And yet, there it was, the cat’s twin paws, digging their way out Rhino’s hair, the pad’s widening and claws extending.  Like a pair of twin mousetraps, the paws clapped down over Rhino’s eyes.
    Whatever last