Gwen, in Green

Only an outward push on her right leg held her from death and relief from the unbearable guilt. She tensed, took one last, long, slow breath, and held it. The explo­sion was not gunpowder and shot but a living thing, a big, long-­clawed black housecat named Satan, leaping from the floor, all claws extended, throwing his lithe body through the air to knock the weapon from her hands. It fell, hit the cushions, and slid to the thick carpet with a thud. No explosion. Startled, she looked at a familiar creature changed into a raging beast. The cat had landed on the sofa and regarded her balefully, eyes cold fire, fangs exposed, a rumble coming from its throat.

“Satan?”

Animals feel things. She knew that. It was incredible. He was trying to save her life. “You’re wrong, old fellow,” she said, quite calmly, reaching for the gun. Long marks sprang up on her bare arm. The cat’s movement had been so swift that she saw only the results, blood welling up from deep scratches. She gasped. “Satan?”

There was something familiar about the way the cat was acting. It came to her. Hot August sun. Dusty vegetation drying in the sun. Pushing through uncleared woods and brush to face an opossum. There was the same strange feeling of threat.

The cat stood between her and what she must do. She aimed a light blow at him and missed. She was rewarded by scratches on the back of her hand, delivered with lightning quickness as the hand flashed past. Knowing a new kind of fright, she rose. The cat stalked, its back arched, to the end of the sofa. It pounced, leaving a bloody trail of claw marks down her naked thigh before landing on its feet and advancing toward her, making that hor­rible growling sound in its throat.

She ran. Bare breasts bobbled. She bumped the door­jamb painfully and gained the bedroom with the cat behind her, its claws digging into her calves. She screamed, leaped for the bathroom, and closed the door, narrowly missing catching the cat in it.

She did not realize, until she heard George’s voice calling her, that she’d been cheated of death. Shaking with it, weak, she had spent a timeless period locked in the bathroom, hearing the scratches on the door and the rumble of the cat’s growl. Then his voice.

“No,” she screamed. “No, George!” The cat. The cat.

“Honey?” He was so dear to her, so beautiful. He stood there, his white coveralls mussed and soiled, looking at her as she cowered against the far wall.

“My God, Gwen.” He had seen the blood, the crusted scratches. “What happened?”

“Satan,” she said.

“Satan?” He could not understand. “He’s asleep on the bed.”

“Satan, he—”

George caught her as she fell.

7

If one is healthy, she found, one survives. The right arm, severed by a sharp blade just below the shoulder, bone crushed, jagged, can be closed off with fire. The system goes into protective shock, being unable, while aware, to bear the pain. But one survives. Loss of blood is limited by the cauterizing. There is an endless period of pain. Two arms severed at once is more of a shock to the system and can kill. Healthy specimens can, at times, survive. Life lingers on, in any case, fighting, not taking the easy way of quick death. A jagged, dull blade can dismember the body limb by limb and leave occasional periods of con­sciousness during which pain is a roaring rush which takes possession of all the senses. A foot lopped off bleeds the vital substances of the body into the earth. A leg chopped off causes the body to fall down, to lie on the warm earth writhing in pain.

She knew all. They took her fingers, one by one, giving her time in between to regain consciousness. Then they cut off her hands at the wrists. Then, whack, the arms at the elbow. Thunk. At the shoulders. She screamed in pain, roared with it, bellowed it, wept with it, begged them to stop, and sought death. Whisk. A foot gone. Thunk. A leg at the knee.

She was a twisting, bucking, limbless torso, flopping on bloody earth, screaming. And relief came only after an eternity of suffering. Her blood refused to run; it just oozed slowly out, taking her life with it by degrees, leaving her a dulling awareness of death and a fading pain which, she knew, was terminal. There was only a spark of life in her. Her skin was rotting, sloughing off. Inside, the bones had begun to decay, yet still there was life, agonized, dying so slowly, so slowly.

“Please, please, please.”

“Gwen. Hey, Gwen. You’re fine. You’re all right.”

She didn’t even hurt.

“The doc gave you a sedative.”

“George?” Tears came. “Oh, George.”

“Easy, kid. You’re all right. I don’t know what got into that cat.” His face was so concerned. “He’s at the vet’s. They’ll have to keep him under observation. If he’s rabid—” He paused grimly.