Broken bodies

Outside, the rain lashed against the window pane and Jacqui would not look out, not for anyone.
Some time ago, the last time the moon shone, she’d seen a beast at her door. She watched it snaffle around for half an hour in the dustbins below her apartment and destroy much of the communal garden.
Later, on an internet forum, she described it as a brown furred creature, about two feet tall, quite happy standing on either two or four legs. The thing was said to have grunted regularly and seemed to be scavenging for food. When on two legs it hopped. When on four, it crawled and scraped with its sharp front claws. Spotted - so the post said - on Reliant Drive, Greathays, LL57.
And, just over a fortnight later, it returned. Jacqui sat near to the window and drank whisky from a shaking hand, listening to it scraping around outside. She listened until listening made her vomit.
The next morning the rain sprinkled a lazy drizzle upon her scalp while she bravely ventured outside to check upon the damage. Fantastic paw prints marked the flower beds but the eternal rain had washed clean the blood she expected to find on the concrete paving.
It was the neighbour’s cat she sought. Jacqui expected to find its broken body somewhere in the garden, so she didn’t bother to call out for it. Her search proved fruitless.
What a noise it had made last night. What a noise! I’d heard it myself and I live just across the street. Not the frustrated and frankly annoying evening call of a cat in season, or even the screech of a fighting Tom. No, this was the sound of evisceration in action.
It is by no means unusual for unknown creatures to be spotted at night. Since the last time it stopped raining I’ve viewed over one hundred weird sightings of quite bizarre biological specimens, all sadly online, however!
I’ve never been lucky enough to see one of these creatures in the flesh but, it seems, they are now common to our suburban streets, perhaps as common as the fox once was.
Soon after witnessing the painful demise of Timmy (a small grey feline of no particular breed who resided, at least some of the time, at 52 Reliant Drive), I was online and messaging Jacqui. Alerted, over a week earlier, by a link to a strange sighting in the same postal area as myself, I had been amazed to find both the close encounter and the spotter based on my street. A few posts later and Jacqui and I were emailing. Several emails on and we had moved to correspondence via instant message.
Strangely, despite our easy textual relationship, Jacqui never suggested a meeting, despite our living so close to one another and the general lack of one-to-one contact enjoyed by most adults today.
That said, two evenings after the cat had unleashed its unearthly howl I found myself invited to supper with Jacqui and, later, to share her bed during the storm-broken night. She clung to me then, shaking.
I had blood on my hands, but the rain soon washed it away. Lucky she never dared peek to see me that night, standing there beneath her window, the lightning exposing my drenched face. Standing there with Timmy and a hunting knife, and a desire to meet someone. A desire just to touch someone else in this life.
Now, is that really so unforgivable?

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Enjoyed the tale? Then try this one: The hands of Mitch Gregory