... in which Valya reflects on her sad life, the transience of existence, and becomes imbued with love for nature
Valya sat on a bench, slightly pulling her slender legs under herself in short leather boots with faux fur lining and thick black tights, looking sadly at the dead cat. Returning home late at night from a friend's place, she hadn't made it all the way. It was still too early to go to work. So now, sitting down to rest in someone else's yard, she pondered the transience of life and the vicissitudes of fate. The dead animal filled the girl with deep melancholy. Perhaps because she simply loved animals very much, or perhaps because, like the cat, she was a distinctly brunette with a rather graceful figure and large expressive dark eyes. However, despite her sincere regret, the girl could have taken a photo of the cat with her phone to create free shock content for Telegram, just to stir up the nerves of even more impressionable people than herself. But her smartphone was out of battery.
"Oh, she's been here for a long time already," Valya thought, looking at the small corpse already thoroughly pecked at by crows, "and nobody cares. No one bothered to show compassion and at least remove the unfortunate animal from the road. I'm sure everyone avoided it, looked away, wrinkled their noses in disgust. But ultimately, everyone doesn't care."
The approaching dawn painted the receding night haze gray-brown. Everything seemed faded and dimmed at such a time.
"My whole life is like this," the girl continued her sad reflections, wrapping herself tighter in a knitted scarf under her short leather jacket, "pathetic and meaningless. I wonder, when I die, will everyone still walk past me? Of course they will. Everyone doesn't care..."
Suddenly, Valya thought that sitting there now, in front of the dead cat, the most appropriate thing would be to take out a cigarette and smoke with a mournful expression. But she didn't smoke. She had never even tried, because since childhood she couldn't tolerate tobacco smoke, which caused her asthma attacks.
"What kind of person am I?" the girl thought angrily, feeling offended at herself, "I can't even manage to light a stupid cigarette! What a pathetic wretch I am... That's exactly what I am..."
Sometimes Valentina thought how wonderful it would be to suddenly give up herself entirely. To change her name, city, her entire life. To lose herself, only to find something new and certainly beautiful instead. She sighed dreamily and glanced again at the cat.
It seemed that something had caught her attention in this cold black lump of fur with a torn bloody belly, a head twisted sideways, and an eye pecked out. The wind slightly stirred the dust- and blood-covered fur, but it wasn't this that interested the girl, but a fluffy black paw lying helplessly on the asphalt. For a moment, Valya thought that the limb had twitched slightly.
Suddenly, the girl realized with horror that the poor cat was not yet completely dead and was agonizing in convulsions, but the little corpse was too old and frightening to be explained by anything else. Nevertheless, the movement repeated itself. And it couldn't be attributed to either the cold wind, alcohol, or lack of sleep. The cat's paw twitched again slightly and suddenly stretched out completely.
The animal arched its back slightly and then confidently stood up and headed toward the girl. Despite her surprise and fear, Valya almost instinctively reached out her hand to pet the cat, but it hissed and bared its teeth, revealing its white sharp fangs.
"Alright, go on, kitty," the girl muttered, but the cat showed no intention of leaving. Dragging its hind legs and dragging its eviscerated intestines along the pavement, the cat approached Valentina with a hiss, not taking its single glazed eye off her and clearly preparing to jump.
Screaming in fright, the girl jumped onto the bench. The cat leapt and viciously dug its claws into her leg, piercing through the black tights. With disgust, Valya felt the touch of cold, sticky entrails. Screaming loudly, Valentina desperately tried to shake off the terrible creature from her leg, but nothing worked. Besides, there was no one around on the street at such an early hour who could offer help. Only the windows of houses were blackened, like empty dead eye sockets.
Gathering the remnants of her self-control, the girl grabbed her old-fashioned umbrella with a massive wooden handle and, swinging it like a golf club, forcefully struck the cat. Letting out a muffled half-scream, half-squeal, the animal flew sideways and landed on the road, but unwilling to die again, it immediately got back on its paws. Inspired by her success, Valya went on the offensive. Jumping toward the hissing and snarling creature, she repeatedly brought her weapon down hard onto the one-eyed black head. Grayish bloody brain matter oozed from the shattered skull, yet the cat continued to hiss fiercely and try to grab its victim with its broken paw.
"Die already, you monster!" the girl shouted angrily, seemingly already feeling the intoxicating scent of blood, and finished off the animal by stepping on it with all her weight, breaking the cat's spine and finally turning its fluffy head into a bloody mess.
Silence and stillness returned to the street once more. Still not fully recovered and trembling slightly all over, Valentina distastefully pulled her foot in a bloodied boot away from the crushed and almost shapeless corpse of the cat and stepped back toward the bench. With shaking hands, the girl took a wet wipe from her purse and wiped the large wooden handle of the umbrella clean of blood and bits of brain matter, staring blankly ahead. Then, trying not to look at her victim, she staggered down the street toward home.
She was still shaking badly when she entered the entrance of her apartment building and hesitated by the door, struggling to open it. The lamp in the stairwell had been out for several weeks, and now it was especially inconvenient.
"This is a bad neighborhood. A bad building. A bad floor. A bad battery. Just a bad day," the girl thought to herself, either calming or tormenting herself. "All I'm missing is a maniac on the stairs..."
To be fair, Valya really did fear strangers who might rape her—or worse.
"They could have...," the girl repeated her thoughts again with a certain sadness, and suddenly dropped her keys from her trembling hands, unable to manage inserting them into the lock in the dark.
Fumbling around on the floor covered with unevenly laid and cracked tiles, she bent down and suddenly heard someone's shuffling footsteps on the stairs. Valya quietly pressed herself into the corner near the door, already forgetting about the keys and reaching into her purse for the handle of her stun gun.
"It's just one of the neighbors. It's dark in the stairwell. Maybe the elevator isn't working either. Such things happen... People have to go to work," she reassured herself with hurried thoughts. "Someone will come down soon, lighting their way with a mobile phone. Maybe they'll even help me find my keys... What's the big deal? It's just a minute's work. A simple favor."
But the expected neighbor with a flashlight never appeared. Something dark and bulky slowly descended the stairs, stopped a few centimeters from the girl, and let out a deep groan, as if inhaling air through its nose. Straining to make out the stranger, Valya suddenly felt a chill emanating from the darkness, and goosebumps instantly covered her from head to toe. In the next moment, something heavy and wet fell upon her, enveloping her from all sides.
Clutching the stun gun tightly in her hand, the girl squeezed it with all her remaining strength into that unpleasant darkness and pressed the button. There was a crackling sound and the smell of burning flesh. The unknown figure collapsed to the side. Forgetting about both the keys and her intention to enter her apartment, the girl quickly ran down the stairs.