I Am an Executioner Read Online Free Page B

came the cluttered drone of objects flying, and every sound in this world seemed ugly and new. In the distance, I thought I heard the loud report of a rifle, and I knew that the orange fire of that gun was near in my future. I wanted nothing else but to be back in my enclosure, and for the baby to be alive, and for Kitch to be okay again. But I knew it would never happen. I had been kidding myself—nothing in the world could bring Kitch back to life. Certain things can never be reversed. It would simply never happen.
    I thought of Kitch’s pudgy face as it was a few days ago, bright and pink beneath his khaki cap, and a smile settled on my face. I remembered the cooing noises of the row-your-boat lady singing her sad song. It had annoyed me so, but now that noise seemed so lovely:
    My brothers and sisters are all aboard, Hallelujah
Michael, row the boat ashore, Hallelujah
.
    And the noise was so close and so real that I thought she could have been there right beside me, singing, and when I looked up, she was. It would have surprised me to see her there on any other day, but this day nothing surprised me anymore. She was sitting beneath the same bridge as I was, amid a nest of bags and garbage. She looked at me and sang, smiling through her broken teeth.
    Then she got up and walked right up to me. “You came all the way here to see me, tiger?” she asked me.
    I was too tired to get up, but I raised my head slightly. I was so happy to see her that tears were streaming from my eyes.
    She saw the human baby lying next to me, and she shook her head. “Oh, tiger,” she said. “Oh, that’s a shame.” She bent down and stroked the top of the cub’s head. “Ming the merciless!” she whooped, and then she started to chuckle to herself, and that laugh was the strangest, sweetest sound I think I had ever heard.
    I closed my eyes and saw the zoo and its miniature red-green forest, and it was full of tigers, just like me. And Saskia and Maharaj were there, and I had forgiven them and I ran and I played with them. And the baby’s curly-haired mother stood nearby, but she was my mother, too—she had been my mother all along. And in my dream, I had my own kids, baby tigers, playful little cubs, as small as I had been once, just as small as the human baby I had killed. The tiger babies tumbled over each other clumsily, so cute. I tried to lick them and play with them, but I saw that my tongue and my paws were rough and too powerful, and the slightest touch would have damaged those babies, so I stopped playing, and instead I stood guard and watched over them.
    On the other side of the moat, Kitch and great hordes of humans watched and admired; and then, one by one they started to climb over the wall, and wade through the moat—so eager were they to reach us. Soon, great armies of people were crossing over into the tiger compound, and they came running up my hill. There were so many of them that I couldn’t protect my delicate babies from their heavy feet. They trampled right over my cubs, mashing them down in their oblivious rush, and the strange old man with thick glasses and rubber gloves came around and picked up my dead babies and dropped them into a plastic bag, and I was distraught. But then Kitch came to me. He stopped and patted me on the head, and scratched me behind the ear. He told me it was okay. He said the tiger babies were gone, and it was okay, and he was gone, and that was okay too. And I realized that as he petted me, he was beginning to crush my head, like wet sludge in his hand. His fingers were deep inmy brain, and he was massaging it into a pulp, and it felt good, in a way, but it terrified me also, because I knew I would soon be lost in oblivion.
    When I woke up, it was dark. I had the aching hunger that stretched my ribs. The droning noise from the sky was harder and closer, and I knew soon I would have to get up and keep moving, to stay out of the reach of the rifles. But at that second, this thought