Feral Feline

Occasionally a bird would attempt flight, winging from some bush or stand of grass, but then vanish, yanked violently back down into the scrub, made a meal presumably.  From under the dumpster the eyes will stare impassively.  Some make that noise walking to their cars in parking lot, trying to woo them from out of their hiding place.

"Kiss, kiss, here kitty kitty."

Is there a flinch?  Not even in an ear.  Maybe the eyes narrow but maybe really that's just me projecting onto them, wanting perhaps some emotion, a reaction maybe, a sign that they could be comforted, poor babies, in their poverty.  But they know that I would only pet them, a scruff behind the ears, and then leave them like everyone else.  They know this in their DNA.  Its been bred into them over the generations--a river-bound culture of solitude and of Darwinian death.  Who needs a vampire movie?  A zombie story?  Linger sometime after the trains have gone and the commuters have charred a path up the hill.  Wait for the mist to part and allow yourself stillness for a moment, focus there, on the underbrush, and you will see them.  You will see the low crouch, the tension under mottled fur, the clawed feet perfecting their launch pads, the tail-end hooked, measuring wind and balance.  Eyes like cold empty death, waiting, counting down, sensing every inch of vulnerability.  Bird, human, cat--blood pounding in unison.

*  *  *

And then she appeared.  A slender tower, even from above.  White haired but hooded.  Hands pocketed.  What shadow had she stepped from?  Maybe it was the pigeons that called my attention as they quietly fled, wings impossibly silent.  Were they afraid?  Alone, I swallowed hard and her head turned, or more like tilted.  I looked down on her from the station as she stood at the fence around the vacant field below.  The lights of the power plant a few miles up the river signaled a toxicity in the air.  I imagined her eyes following the cock of her ear, her eyebrow raised in consideration, coming to a conclusion about me as her witness, or maybe inviting me to flee in this one afforded moment, to take flight with the other birdies, safe home to roost at my sitcom hearth, my candy-dished coffee table.  

She stepped, impossibly, through the chain-link.  My eyes strained to decode the illusion.  Where was the gap?  What shadow conspired to trick?  But then her gliding gait was yet even more magic, her stride a wind-part on the weeds.  What was this thing?  I felt a bladder urge, like a shiver of fear, and I held myself to stop the flow, like a child dancing in front of a TV cartoon not wanting to part with the color and delight.  No color here though.  What I watched was a drab autumnal blanket of weed spread at dusk, carpeting down to the slow-flow of water, the Hudson here an eddy-turn north against the stoic, estuarial tide, a bold ignorance of the commerce of humanity.  And there, at its center, a white witch.  

She called them to her with raised hands and the drape of coat over her shoulders and arms.  And they came.  They moved like lions, a pride of cats, a community of monsters, through the grass and reeds, out of hiding places and off of regal perches.  They closed perpendicular through the concentric wraith-wreath around her, deliberately.  At her feet they would one by one disappear under the narrow circle of her long skirt, an impossible amount vanishing inside her clothing until all were gone.  A wet draft rose and the moon light broke free of the sooted clouds of night.  She bent at the waist drawing into herself and the air was charged with the static foretelling of a lightening strike.  A warm flow ran down my legs and the acrid litter-box stink of stale piss burned my nose.

Then, a white cloud of hot light mushroomed with the witch at its center.  It was for a moment like a summer day and then gone.  I was knocked back sitting into a puddle and banged against the brick wall of the station.  The roughly finished cement of the rustic building digging into the scalp at the back of my head and the nape of my neck.  I don't know if I slept or just waited to clear my head.  There was a light in my face and a man's urgent voice.  I shaded my eyes and saw a police cruiser idling at the curb and shafting a flashlight at me, the obvious drunk passed out at the station.  

"Hey!  Move along buddy."   

I stood.  Smoothed my suit coat.  Tried to gather myself and give an impression of sobriety.  Down in the field all was still, dark, empty.  

"Take a cab would ya?  Do me a favor, OK?"

"But I'm not...I haven't been-"

"Cab."

"OK."

He drove off.  I went down the metal stairs to the street below.  The cabs lined the fence on the other side of the tracks and the drivers dozed waiting for the next train.  I sat on a bench thinking I should wait; give my pants a chance to dry out.  From under a car in the parking lot a pair of eyes reflected greenly, indifferent.  I looked away.