I Am an Executioner Read Online Free

happened so quickly I can barely describe it. I saw the fleshy child tumble toward the ground, and in one instinctive surge I lunged toward it.
    The next thing I knew, the tiny human dangled, upside down and crying, from my mouth; I held it only by the crinkled piece of cloth it wore around its bottom.
    The mother stood a few feet away from me, and she cried out now even more uncontrollably than her cub did, and her cheeks were flushed bright red. I had never seen a human so upset before; I had no idea how she would behave now.
    I started to move forward, thinking I would return her offspring to her, but as soon as I lifted my paw to move, she yelled and quivered more alarmingly than before, so I stepped back again.
    Now I really didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t move in any direction without sending the woman into further hysterics. I just stood there blankly.
    When it began to seem that our terrible, nervous stalemate might last forever, this woman ended it in a totally surprising way. She slowly bent down and picked up a couple of wooden blocks, baby’s toys. She got up and flung them at me hard.
    The blocks hit me sharply on the flank, and I backed off into a crouch. The woman seemed to gain her courage back when she saw me cower. She started to pick up anything she could get her hands on—plastic things on wheels, blocks of many colors, soft and furry shapes resembling bears and lions and people—and she rained these objects on me in a continuous, angry hail.
    As soon as I got over my surprise, I began to realize that as hard as she threw these objects, they didn’t really hurt me. And more often than not, they hit wide of their mark, anyway. Frankly, I was more concerned that, with her wild arm, shewould hit her own cub—and in fact this happened: even as I tried to curl around and protect it, a high-flying train flew over my head and bounced off the piss-wet leg of the little one.
    Now I was thoroughly annoyed. I let the cub drop onto the pillowy floor and turned around and roared at the mother with all the might of my hot and humid lungs. Then I stepped toward her and roared again as loud as I was able to.
    As I said, humans are so unpredictable. As soon as I roared like this, the curly-haired lady collapsed as instantly and softly as a pile of feathers from a startled bird. She fell to the ground in a dead faint.
    After a few seconds, I gathered the courage to approach her inert body. I bent down, sniffed her, licked her face, but she didn’t wake up.
    Now what was I to do? The cub had begun roaring, wailing and crying, rolling this way and that on the floor. It didn’t seem right to leave it there so helpless, with its mother lying unconscious. I went back to the little one and sniffed it. I had thought that Maharaj was an ugly-smelling beast, but this human cub smelled terrible. I licked its pudgy, salty face, but this had no comforting effect. Finally, I picked it up again by its soiled cloth. I pushed my way back out the door through which I had entered the house. I went to the ice-blue pool where I had enjoyed such a refreshing drink a few hours previously, and I held the baby human’s face to the cool water, thinking perhaps it was thirsty.
    But it didn’t reach for the water—in fact, it seemed a little frightened of it. So I took the liberty of dipping its face into the liquid, ever so gently. But now the little thing coughed and spat, and began crying all the louder.
    With this loud crying, my pounding headache from earlier that morning began to creep back. I also worried that the loud noise would draw the attention of people in the neighboring buildings, or of the man with the rifle, who I was sure, even then, was stalking me. I thought to leave the little one there andrun away, but I couldn’t bear the thought of this helpless, undefended, motherless cub in the open. Really, something had to be done, and quickly, to quiet this confounding little human. I admit I don’t have the instincts of