The last witness

Monday, July 12 – 08:00 AM

The alarm rings.

I open my eyes before the sound reaches me. It’s not the noise that wakes me up, it’s the habit. My body knows what’s coming. I sit up, letting my feet touch the cold floor. As always. I turn to the nightstand and tear off the calendar page. Monday. July 12.

I like Mondays. Not because they’re special, but because they’re empty. Like a room no one’s had time to fill yet. No demands. No expectations. Just silence. I inhale. Count to four. Hold my breath. Count to four. A routine. A way to keep my thoughts in place. Because if I don’t, they start to drift. And when they drift, I never know where they’ll end up.

In the bathroom, I find the cloth I laid out yesterday. I lifted it to my face but stopped. It smells strange. I grab a new one. Wash up. Glance at myself in the mirror—but only for a moment. The house is quiet, everyone else is asleep. Just me and the cat. It sits in the windowsill, staring. It says nothing, but I feel its gaze like a knife in my back. It knows something. It saw.

It followed me that night. I didn’t think it understood. But it was there. It saw everything. And now it looks at me like it’s waiting for something. Like it knows that I know that it knows.

I go down to the kitchen and make two slices of bread. The cat circles my legs. I ignore it. It doesn’t purr. Just follows. I take six bites. Throw the rest away. Then back to the bathroom. I put on workout clothes and brush my teeth. I go for a slow jog for about an hour, and when I return, Mom is sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee. She asks, “How was your run?” I answer briefly, with a fake smile, “Refreshing.” She’s acting strange. I walk around with fear over what I did yesterday. Not because I’m afraid of what will happen to me, but of what will be remembered.

I smell of sweat. I need a shower. I’m about to enter the bathroom when the cat meows and gives me a look. Something’s wrong. I must do something. After I shower, I take some liver pâté out to the garage to lure the cat. While it eats, I grab Dad’s hammer and a plastic bag. I sneak up behind the cat with careful steps, place the bag in front of the food, and raise the hammer high.

BANG !

It screamed. I hope no one else in the house heard it. As I watch the blood spill across the floor, I get flashbacks to last night—and the other days. I put the cat in the plastic bag and walked far into the woods to bury it. My body tingles, and as I walk back home, I meet the neighbor out for an evening stroll. I smiled at him—not to be polite, but because I knew they would never find them all.