From: Snowcat To: David Braun Subject: A Bad Day Date: Sunday, March 29, 1998 4:03 PM It lay on the desk where I'd thrown it. One corner was curled under, but one could still read the report's title, "TSC Critical Systems Impact Report (Commercial/District)" It was only one hundred pages - correction - it was one hundred WASTED pages. It was covered in little squiggly arrows, and circles, and other pictograms indicative of a bored mind at a dull meeting. I'd crammed for this report. I'd slaved over it, putting in 12 hour days. I'd begged, cajoled and threatened people for the figures I needed. Turns out they'd overestimated the need for the report at the meeting. Hell - they never even looked at it. I stared out the window and toyed with a pen. I picked it up and let it slide through my loose grip until it tapped on the desk, then I flipped it and repeated the process. The meaningless motion, and slow, rhythmic tapping almost soothed my seething temper. My desk faces north, and but for the trees, I could see my house from the office. It's very flat here. "Tap.. tap.. tap.." went the pen. Behind me I heard the pounding of keys and trill of telephones. Somebody was swearing at his phone, apparently in the vain hope that it might stop ringing if he swore loud enough. To my left, Bob had stopped on his way back to his desk. He was wielding a cup of coffee in one hand and waving the other expressively while he regaled Leon with war stories about the switching crews in his area. Bob was so animated at times that it became hard to remember that he was not twenty, but sixty. "Tap.. tap.. tap.." said my pen in slow counterpoint to Bob's exuberance. George walked past my desk on his way to the coffee room for a refill. As he passed, he called, "Hey dogf***er, must be nice! I want your job." He meant it to be friendly. George was just being George. I didn't take it wrong. Heck, I just made a rude, one-fingered gesture at him and he walked on, laughing. I think that's when it started. All the sounds of the office melted into a single sea of phones and cursing and laughing and stress. I didn't belong in this chair, feeling this anger, staring past an idle computer through smoked glass at an urban expanse. Beyond the edges of the dilapidated North End, past the suburbs of the Kildonans there lay fields that would be rich with grain in a few months. It's very flat here - you can see to infinity on a clear day. I pictured myself running through the fields. I could see the fields from my window. I smelled the fresh, green wheat. I felt it slapping my face, and brushing against my belly as I ran. I jumped out of my fugue as the pen slipped from my grasp and clattered onto the desk. Instinctively I tried to catch the pen before it could roll off my desk, but my fingers would not respond. A numbness settled over my limbs and soaked through into my emotions. My anger faded, and was replaced by.. nothing. With each passing breath I was sunk deeper into a cold sea of detachment. A wave rose out of this ocean and swept over me with a wash of ague. I watched, helpless and indifferent, as a small spasm wracked my body, then a larger one. I must have vocalised my distress, because Garry ducked down from his side of the metal partition that separated our desks and said, "Christ man, you look awful! Are you feeling okay?" Time suddenly had no meaning. One can speak nine words in less than three seconds, yet it took him a whole year. My senses flared, and numbness became pain, then pain passed the threshold into numbness again. My blood turned to magma, and my heart to liquid nitrogen. The cool fluorescent lights of the office became lasers, searing out my eyes, and the stir of the office became the howl of a jet engine. Gasping, heaving I wanted to scream, but I was denied even that dubious release. My bones turned to water. Claws tore through fingertips. Flesh yielded and tore as sinews sprung from their human prison. Agony embraced me with the intimacy of a lover, and in this moment of private eternity, I knew the every pain and ecstasy of Hell. At last I screamed. I screamed as flesh fell away with the shred remains of my business casual attire. I howled as blunt, useless teeth flew from my mouth. Birth always hurts. Epidermis clung to my mane like afterbirth. The numbness fled in a rapturous explosion of emotions; rage, fear, lust. The lust of power. I spied my quarry and leapt. The metal partition between the desks surrendered with a metallic crash of snapping bolts and flakes of enamel. In the tiny corner of my mind that still harboured rational thought, I felt a twinge of irony. The partition had been loose for months, and it might have held if they'd replaced the bolts like I'd asked many times. I shall never know what my prey saw coming at him over that partition, for I had only a brief glance at his face before it vanished forever. I stepped over the fallen one. I'd done him a favour, though he didn't know it. I could smell his cancer. Incurable. He'd have died a long, lingering death. His mate and daughter looked out at me from the gilded picture frame on his desk with mute looks of gratitude. I touched the picture with a paw, leaving a track of blood on the glass. Somebody was screaming. It was a shrill, terrified sound that hammered mercilessly at my feline ears. She stood at her desk, hands balled into fists at the side of her face while she shrilled. In two bounds I was there. Even as she started to turn, I delicately took her throat in my teeth. It was almost more of a kiss than a bite with which I crushed her wind pipe. I lowered her gently to a carpet stained with her own urine and blood. Movement caught my eye, and I turned and sprung again. I caught Randy in mid-flight, tackling him from behind as neatly as a well-executed football play. His spine shattered under the impact of my full weight. I nipped the back of his neck to break his spine because his cries of anguish annoyed me. The sheep scattered before me, the smell of their blood and fear teasing my nostrils and driving my lust. Another fell before me as she ran, but I leapt right over her and killed the person behind. I turned, and loped toward the end of the office, where the terrified flock was trying to crowd through a fire door. They pushed, and scratched, and punched, and sobbed in their panic. All but one. He stood apart from the rest. He held a fire extinguisher belligerently, turning always to face me, and his face twisted in resolve and challenge. "Come on you lion bastard," he growled, "just gimme one good shot..." I thought to kill this one, but I could not. I feinted left, and I stopped. I rolled right, and came up short. I could not kill this one, because he was a friend. A veil lifted from my mind, and I saw my friend, looking upon me with terror and determination. The sweet blood in my mouth turned to bitter guilt. I had killed. I would kill again. And again. Already the lucid moment was passing, but I had one last duty to perform. I owed a debt to the dead. I threw myself at the friend, faster than he had expected, and knocked him aside. I charged past him and threw myself toward redemption. The tempered glass was meant to stop wind and weather, not a three-hundred and fifty pound lion. The window exploded, but did not break clean. Jagged edges and shards tore flesh and arteries, and a halo of my own blood sprayed about me as I flew. For the only time in my life I knew the freedom of flight, but my soul took wing before my body rejoined the earth whence it came.