tyres on the road at the front of the house, bringing the car momentarily to a halt. Leena also screams and cries as she drops her bike, rushing over to where Rusty has landed. It takes a few seconds before I realise what had just happened. Following my mother down the stairs, I once again hear a screech of tyres as the car speeds off. That is when I see my beloved Rusty, bleeding and broken on the road. I run to him as fast as my little legs will allow and when I reach him, I put my head on his chest just as I had done the day before. Rusty doesn’t move. He is not breathing. The only sounds I can hear are his ribs collapsing under my ear. I know, just by touching his broken body, that Rusty’s soul is gone. My best friend is dead.
Trembling with horror and rage as adrenaline courses through my veins, I look up and can still see the car in the distance. While watching the car, I am able to see the face of the driver inside my head. I hear his laughter before seeing the faces of many other people – children and adults – as they scream, while looking on in horror as their pets had also been run down by this maniac. Oh my God! You do this for fun? You worthless piece of… Before I can finish my thoughts, I point my finger towards the fleeing car as my fury unleashes the wail of a banshee from my lungs. From within the speeding vehicle, I hear the driver’s shrieks of pure agony as his soul is forcibly torn from his body. The car comes to an eventual stop in the middle of the road as, one by one, the bones of the driver’s body pulverise, leaving nothing but dust in their wake. Wanting him to experience every bit of his punishment in its entirety, I focus carefully on his consciousness as the bones from his toes, feet, ankles, legs, pelvis and spine disintegrate, transforming the frame of his body into the equivalent of a coriaceous mass of jelly. Every movement brings agony to the driver. His lungs continue to suck in oxygen and exhale a vile stench of air. He continues to scream as the remaining bones in his ribs, fingers, arms, shoulders, neck and skull are no more. As his eyes sink backwards into the blob which still houses his veins, muscles and blood, I witness everything those eyes see as they descend through a red river of sinew, bodily organs and faeces. You need to feel every bit of pain that you have caused.
My mother catches a glimpse of the car in the distance which had stopped in the middle of the road. She does not hear the driver’s screams. None of my family knows what is happening to the evil joy-rider behind the wheel. On the news that night, however, a clip of the giant skin-covered globule oozing out of the driver’s door when police and media arrive at the scene is shown. The very second that skin touches the concrete of the road, it splits open, spilling out the blood and organs within. It is at that moment that the driver finally dies. Never again will he kill another animal on the road for fun. The clip continues, showing the police trying to quickly cover the mess with a white sheet as one eyeball floats up into view from the offal-filled pool of blood, but the white sheet leaves nothing to the imagination. It puzzles the newsreader how a human body can disintegrate from the inside without any visible signs of trauma, even though the car which had contained it doesn’t have a single scratch on it.
Engulfed in our own grief, my family feels absolutely nothing for the speeding driver who had killed our dog before driving off without a second thought. They do shudder however, when the newsreader tells viewers of the coroner’s finding that the soulless glob’s heart had still been beating when the police arrived.
“He killed Rusty!” screams Leena angrily. Sobbing, she wipes away her tears with her pyjama sleeves. Mum and Dad hug her as they listen to the news story.
“Yeah, he did,” I say, glaring at the