People thought Darrell was pretty goddamn weird.  His writing behavior troubled them.  You know how that goes: they probably thought he was writing about them.  As for me, I thought his behavior was a lot less weird than a lot of the things that other people did, so I wasn't bothered.  But I was sort of curious as to what he was writing. 

Anyway, that was what Darrell was doing when I found him one day in his garage: scribbling away on a scrap of paper.  I saw him from down the road as I approached his house at the end of a court.  With his bright orange hair, you could spot him a mile away.  We were both twelve, maybe thirteen, at the time. 

But something else was going on.  When I got to the top of Darrell's driveway, I heard a horrible noise coming out of the garage: "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"  It was a cat howling, obviously in some sort of distress.  

Once in the garage, I saw that the howls were coming from a milk can--one of those square metal ones with insulation inside to keep your dairy products fresh.  Bricks had been piled on top to keep the lid down. 

"I trapped Igor in there," Darrell said without emotion, as if this were the most commonplace thing in the world. 

Igor was Darrell's cat.  Or really, he was Darrell's ten-year-old sister Heather's cat, since she was the only one in their family who liked him or took care of him.  But Darrell had named the cat.  Igor was a huge, fat, grey longhaired cat. 

I noticed that there was a green garden hose protruding from the can.  It propped the lid open a bit, but not much.  The cat was slamming himself against the lid, trying to force it open, and trying to get his paw or his nose through the tiny opening.  He was still keeping up his din:  
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" 

"What the hell!?" I said.  "This shit sucks!"  I went up to the milk can and knocked the bricks off as I raised the lid.  But I really didn't need to raise the lid: Igor slammed into it and raised it himself, shooting out of there and out of the garage like a bat out of Hell, soaking wet and slinging water everywhere.  It was all I could do to step aside.  Igor didn't look so big with his hair slicked down like that.  

I looked down in the can: it was three-quarters filled with water.  The hose, which had been knocked out of the can, was turned on just a trickle--I suppose in order to prolong the cat's agony.  

Darrell had already shoved his paper and pencil back into his pocket.  "I wasn't trying to drown him," he told me guiltily. 

And for some reason I believed him.  I became curious about certain practical difficulties of his project: "Didn't that cat try to scratch you when you tried to put him in that can?" I asked. 

"No.  I caught him off guard.  And anyway, he didn't suspect that I was going to run water in there." 

I didn't hang around with Darrell for awhile after that.  But later, one summer night, we got together again.  We had just vandalized a fruit stand--busting open dozens of watermelons, eating our fill--and were headed back towards Darrell's house, when we saw a dead cat lying by the side of the road.  "Look, it's Igor," Darrell said when we got close enough to see. 

As we stood over the corpse, Darrell took out his scrap of paper and began to write on it with his stub of a pencil. 

Sure enough, it was Igor.  And he was clearly dead, apparently run over by a car.  He had vomited up a good bit of blood and gore, saturating the long fur on his face and neck, and forming a puddle around his head.  The blood and gore was gooey and thick, and black in the moonlight.  I nudged Igor with my foot.  He was not yet stiff. 

Darrell didn't care that his cat had died.  He didn't even seem surprised. 

Whatever he was writing was much more important to him.  But he still felt some responsibility for the cat and felt he had to get it off the street, or at least that's what he said. 

We got a shovel and a big shopping bag out of Darrell's garage.  The shopping bag had apparently once contained a Sears Diehard car battery, since that was what it said on the side: Diehard.  We thought that was a real riot, and we chuckled about it the whole time as I scooped the limp cat into the bag.  "Now what are you going to do with it," I asked. 

"Let's take it into my house," Darrell said as he gathered the handles and lifted the bag. 

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," I said.  "Your mother's not going to want a dead cat in her house." 

"She won't care.  She'll want to see it.  And so will my sister." 

I tended to doubt it, but I went along anyway to see the results.  We went into the house, and Darrell sat the bag down on the rug in the family room. 

The kitchen opened into the family room and Darrell's sister Heather was sitting in there at the table.  "Come over here Heather, and look in this bag," Darrell called to her. 

"I'm doing my homework now," Heather replied. 

"Isn't this a nice bag?" Darrell continued.  "A Diehard bag.  Check out what I've got in this nice Diehard bag." 

"I don't care what you've got in there." 

"Oh, you don't want to miss this." 

"Go away Darrell.  Leave me alone." 

"Well, OK, but you'll be sorry."  Darrell made a move as if he were going to pick up the bag. 

Heather' curiosity got the better of her.  She got up from the table and came into the family room.  Suspecting a trick, she approached the bag cautiously, then peered down into it--and let out a blood-curdling scream. 

She became hysterical, shrieking and crying and running around the room. 

Then she ran out of the room and up the stairs.   

"Diehard!" Darrell yelled after her.  "You get it?!" 

Darrell's mother came running down the stairs.  "Darrell, what are you doing to your sister?!  What have you got in that bag?!"  She looked in the bag: "OH MY GOD!!!  Get that damn thing out of here!" 

We hurried out of the house.  Now we had a dead cat on our hands: what the hell were we supposed to do with it?   

"What are we going to do," I asked. 

"Bury it in your back yard?" 

"No.  Too much work.  And my mother wouldn't want me digging up the yard," Darrell said, suddenly showing an odd concern for his mother's feelings. 

We carried the bag around for a while through the dark streets--mostly I carried it--while Darrell paused periodically to scribble some notes. Given the events of the night, my curiosity was heightened, so I asked, 
"What the hell are you writing?" 

"Oh, just some notes.  Things about my life."  That didn't tell me much. 

Since we couldn't figure out what to do with the cat, we just walked around with it some more, pondering the question.  We were both in agreement that we couldn't just waste it.  What a shame it would be just to throw it in a trash can or something.  It's not every day you get a hold of a dead cat. 

Finally, we found ourselves standing in front of a house a few doors down from where I lived.  I thought about the people who lived there, the Delgado's, about what assholes they were, always chasing us kids out of their yard.  "I think they deserve it," I said, and Darrell agreed.  We walked down a few houses and snuck back around through the back yards, coming out on the side of the Delgado's house.  Their car was sitting in their open garage.  We snuck up to it and I tried the doors.  One of the back doors was unlocked, so I opened it and set the bag in on the floor.  "That'll fix them," I said, quietly pushing the door closed and turning to leave. 

"Wait a minute," Darrell said.  He opened the car door back up, grabbed the bag, and upturned it in the car floor, dumping out Igor's bloody remains.  He closed the door, wadded up the bag, and stuffed it down in the Delgado's trash can. 

Once we went through the back yards again and got back on the street, Darrell took out his scrap of paper and his pencil stub and started scribbling again.  He was writing around the paper in a circle, spiraling inward, turning the paper in his hands furiously.  He was really going at it.  I couldn't help myself; I just had to see it.  "Let me see that!" I said, and I snatched the scrap from his hand. 

Darrell didn't put up a fuss at all.  I carried the scrap over by a street light and read it.  It wasn't what you'd expect: not some conspiratorial ravings, nor plans for world domination, not even, as I had expected, descriptions of events that had just taken place.  I would print it in a  
spiral, but I don't know how to do that on my computer.  Anyway, it read: 

Show self control  Control your emotions  Don't let bad  feelings take over  Discipline yourself  Show self-restraint   Control your temper Suppress your hostile attitude  Control  your anti-social tendencies  Behave yourself  Respect  authority  Consider the feelings of others  Take 
responsibility for your actions  Show respect for the  feelings of others  Recognize that your actions have an  effect on others 

Darrell seemed, maybe, a bit embarrassed that I had discovered his secret. 

I handed the scrap back to him and he quickly put it away in his pocket. We walked down the street in silence. 

Now I wish I could tell you that Darrell--or myself--went on to become a serial killer or a corporate lawyer or something good like that.  Because of course that's how stories like this are supposed to end.  But all Darrell did was join a religious cult.  I joined one too, though I dropped out soon after, since for some reason the leaders objected to my coming to the meetings drunk.