The black
cat’s tail swished as it watched the dark form of a man creep into the barn.
The knife in the man’s hand flashed and the cat’s green eyes shone in the
shadows. The man had always liked cats as they shared traits he valued himself
on; silent as the grave and guiltless. Both the cat and the man could hear the
soft breath of the young couple sleeping in the lofts, which was why the man
was there in the first place. The man made barely a noise as he strode toward
the ladder leading to Emma, the loveliest highborn girl in the town, and Will,
her secret stable boy love. The cat stared, emotionless, at the last moments of
their lives.
The man was
now on the second story, barely ten feet away from Emma and Will. No one in
that barn knew that there were three human lives taken that night; Emma’s,
Will’s, and their unborn baby’s. No one knew that the man would go back out
into the night and think about this murder only once as he burned the letter
that told him who to kill and where they would be. No one knew that letter came
from Emma’s best friend, who was in love with Will and forgot to tell the man
not to kill him.
Now the man
was there, the knife raised high above his head. The cat walked to the barn
door and looked back as the man brought the knife down. To the cat, this was
just nature. Emma had fed it for the past two weeks so it had stayed but now
Emma wouldn’t be saving scraps for it. The cat strode into the darkness and
went looking for a place to get its next meal.
