I Am an Executioner Read Online Free Page A

a mother, and for a long time I had no idea what to do.
    Then I had a stroke of inspiration. I laid the cub down softly on the grassy lawn. I opened my mouth wide and took its whole head, gently, inside my own mouth, and in this way I picked it up again.
    There! The sound of the cub’s crying was considerably muffled. My mouth also provided a kind of warm and comforting womb for it. And soon, in fact, the flailing arms and legs of the little one stopped moving, the cries in my mouth softened into comforted whimpers, then finally into silence as it drifted to sleep.
    Only when I released the cub’s head, and laid him gently out on the grass again did I realize what I had done. Yes, the baby human had stopped crying, but it had stopped breathing, too! I had stupidly, inadvertently, recklessly suffocated it. Oh, God. I picked it up and shook it left and right. I dropped it down and roared at it and then picked it up and swung it about some more, hoping somehow to wake it.
    By the time I finished, the cub was no more alive than it had been when I started, but its body was considerably worse for wear, with little rips here and there, dislocated joints, bruises spreading like lakes, and puncture marks everywhere, most upsettingly (for me) in its right eye, which dribbled a colorful syrup.
    I felt sick to my stomach. How did I keep doing this, time after time—killing people unintentionally? What was wrong with me? Was I evil?
    I picked the human up again by its filthy cloth, this limp little human whose head I had crushed, and carried it away with me, dangling from my teeth. Now I had two people to fix, and atleast I was comforted by this notion: If I could find someone to help me fix this cub (who was light, and easy to carry), then I would know there was hope for Kitch.
    (And yes, I couldn’t help but taste the blood of this human; it tasted even sweeter than Kitch’s blood. But even though I had eaten nothing for a full day, the thought never crossed my mind to eat this child. To be precise, it crossed my mind once, but I quickly put the sick notion out of my head.)
    I walked through the streets of that place, dangling that dead, dripping human baby before me like the night watchman in the zoo carried a lamp in the dark, and I saw no other creature. There was no one who could help.
    I must have walked another quarter day until I reached a vast sea of resting vehicles, and a large building that was thronged with people. I walked toward this throng—and again, people screamed and ran away from me—but I was so inured by now to this reaction that I simply ignored it. I was looking for that one person who would see me, and stop, and know what to do—that person who would know how to help this cub and to help me and to help my friend—my love—Kitch.
    I pushed my way into the building and people yelled and ran away from me in every direction, but I calmly walked forward. People carried bags of clothes, of toys, of devices and things, and they dropped and flung these bags everywhere as they saw me, but I simply and calmly walked.
    When I reached the other end of the building, I stepped outside again into the sunlight. No one had helped me, and I wondered, really, did nobody care for a dead baby? Was there nobody in this world who cared?
    By this point, the sun was sinking low in the sky, and I was depressed. I just wanted to lie down and forget everything, I wanted to unwind this day and let it disappear into nothing.
    I found my way across another avenue—the vehicles screeched and crashed and almost hit me, but I didn’t care—and I founda quiet corner beneath a large bridge or overpass. Above me I could hear those fast rolling things, but down here it was dark and cool and quiet. I set the human cub carefully down, and I lay down beside it. Far in the distance, I heard those wild howling sirens. The objects whooshed and whooshed overhead, and the bridge shivered and clanked with their weight. From somewhere in the sky