Joshua Corin - Before Cain Strikes

Was it a conscious moan? Timothy wasn’t sure. He remained fixed on that middle step and watched her. She lay fifteen feet away and, yes, she was beginning to awaken. Good. Good. He gently placed the duffel bag on an upper step, all the while keeping his gaze firmly on her body. Forearms twitched. Legs stretched. Eyes opened. Those eyes as blue as wrist veins. They belonged to him now. She belonged to him now. It was time for introductions.

“Hi,” he said. The timbre of his voice quavered. Was he nervous? Of course he was. Lynette was the first pet that was truly his. “I’m Timothy. Today is my birthday. Welcome to your new home.”

Her blue eyes widened. She saw him, standing there. Her mouth formed words. Her brow formed confusion. Those eyes flickered from Timothy on the stairs to the cement walls around her, to the eleven feet of heavy chain attached from her collar to a rafter ten feet above her, and then to her own bare thighs and breasts and finally to her arms, which used to conclude with long lovely hands but now ended only with…

Well, he’d declawed her.

Oh, how she screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

“Poor thing,” muttered Timothy. “You’re going to need to be housebroken.”

She rushed forward. The chain yanked her back. She rushed again. She bared her teeth. She cried out something like “What have you done to me?” but Timothy wasn’t paying attention. By then he’d reached the top of the stairs and shut the basement door.

It was lunchtime.

If there was any surefire way to domesticate an animal, it was with food. Wasn’t that how his parents had tried to domesticate him? Timothy removed the remaining items from the duffel bag and then tossed it aside. Most of the items were, of course, Lynette’s clothes. Those might come in handy later, but for now, they were useless, so he folded them up, just as he’d been taught, and placed them on top of the discarded bag. He had never folded a bra before. That proved the trickiest. He ended up doubling it over, cup onto cup. That seemed to be the thing to do. Then he returned to the kitchen and picked up the other items from the bag and placed them on the counter.

This wasn’t his house, so he had to search for a pan and utensils. He finally found what he needed and set the pan on top of the gas stove and almost activated the burner when he realized he was skipping a very important step. His mother would have been very angry with him. Before cooking the meat, he needed to debone it.

That took some time, not because he was inexpert at what he was doing but because there seemed to be so many tiny bones to take away. Gradually, the garbage bin underneath the sink filled up with inches and inches of slender joints and ligaments, and all the while, from below, Lynette screamed. A bread-box-size TV hung below one of the kitchen cabinets and Timothy clicked it on. Lynette’s voice, which was quickly hoarsening, was drowned out by a rerun of Law & Order. By the time the court case had begun, he had vegetable oil and soy sauce sizzling in the frying pan. By the time the shocking verdict was reached, he had fried the sliced boneless meat to a handsome brown.

The kitchen smelled like summertime.

Excited, Timothy switched off the burner. He forked several slices onto a green ceramic plate, sprinkled on some herbs he’d found in the cabinet above the TV and carried the meal, along with some eating utensils, to the basement door. Lynette had to be hungry and the fried flesh had a savory aroma that even a vegan couldn’t resist. Not that Lynette, by all appearances, was a vegan. Timothy opened the basement door and descended into her home.

She was crouched on the floor in the corner. Her long blond hair was moist with sweat and clung to her face like fresh-spun silk. Through the silky yellow, though, peered those blue eyes. He saw hatred in those eyes. That would change.

“I’ve brought you lunch,” he said. “Doesn’t it smell good?”

“Let…me…go,” she rasped. All that screaming had really done a number on her vocal cords. Timothy regretted not carrying down a glass of water to accompany the meal. So thoughtless! He promised to reprimand himself later.

“Don’t you want some nice steak, Lynette? I made it all for you.”

“How…do you know…my name?”

“Why wouldn’t I know your name? You’re mine.” He smiled at her. “And I also went through your wallet.”

Her eyes briefly went to the meat, then back to his face.

“Why are you…doing this?”

Timothy’s smile turned upside down. Had he chosen poorly? When he first spotted her in the library, those blue eyes so intent on the words in that thick paperback, he’d assumed she was intelligent. The last thing he wanted was a dumb pet.

“Please,” he said. “Have something to eat. The food’s not poisoned, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He speared a slice with the fork and slid the thin wet flesh into his mouth. It was gamey, but the soy sauce and the herbs really added flavor. He chewed, swallowed, smiled. “See?”

Did her throat swell with a bated gulp? With that leather leash bound so tight, it was so difficult to tell. Timothy took a step forward. He speared another slice and held it out to her, mere inches from her nostrils.

She stared at it.

Timothy was certain Lynette had an appetite. It had nothing to do with her size. She had been through an ordeal, and animals dealt with stress via sex and/or food. He was just trying to make her comfortable. He wanted this relationship to work. After Dwight and the puppy and—

She reached forward and with her teeth she sucked the meat off the fork. Timothy wanted to clap, but that would have meant putting down the plate. Instead, he took another step forward. Now maybe fourteen inches away from her.

“Thank you,” she muttered. Her lips gleamed with steak blood. “What is it?”

“You should know, silly. It’s your left hand. Silly, silly pet. Want some more?”

With his left hand, he loaded another slice onto the fork and brought it to her mouth. He almost made an airplane noise.

Briefly, their breaths intermingled. This, finally, was intimacy. Timothy felt warm inside. This was true love, an owner to his pet.

And then she forcefully chomped down on his left wrist. Timothy recoiled, but her jaw held fast. Her incisors pierced his paper-thin flesh and dug deep into his plump antebrachial vein. Blood squirted into her throat and almost made her gag but she held fast and squeezed tighter with her jaw. She wanted to hear his bones snap. She heard something shatter but that was just the ceramic plate with the pieces of her hand, her hand, her hand…

She opened her mouth briefly for air—she needed to breathe, she needed to throw up!—and that’s when Timothy stabbed the fork into one of those blue eyes that had attracted him so, stabbed her all the way into the soft tissue of her frontal lobe. Blue ran red. Blue ran red.

Timothy took a step back. He held his gnawed wrist to his chest. He would need a tourniquet. But first he took one last, long, disappointed look at Lynette. What a bad, bad pet she had turned out to be.

He found a first aid kit upstairs, in a bathroom attached to the master bedroom, and after dousing his wrist in fiery iodine, wrapped it tightly in toilet paper and then Ace bandages. It was a temporary solution, but it would have to suffice. While upstairs, Timothy wandered the halls. This wasn’t his house, but he knew the occupants wouldn’t be back for another twelve days (according to the information he’d gleaned at his father’s travel agency). He tested each of the three beds. The king-size in the master bedroom was the most comfortable—firm but not too stiff. Timothy wanted to take a nap. His left hand felt…well, felt nothing at all, and he knew that was not a good sign. Begrudgingly, he roused himself from the king-size bed and made his way back downstairs to the kitchen. It was time to go.