"Well, what do you think of this?" he said softly. "It really is a splendid piece, isn't it? Wouldn't it please you to wear it? Look, I'll just give it to you. Just like this …"
And, before I could utter a sound, he circled my neck with the treasure and snapped the lock shut. Then, while I was still trying to comprehend my great stroke of luck, everything around me darkened. At first the whiteness turned gray, and then, very gradually, black. Only now did I notice that a rusty chain was attached to the collar, and that the man with no face held one end in his hand. While the depressing gloom gathered around us and all the glittering stars died out, he pulled tightly on the chain. The collar had turned into a noose, tightening around my neck and choking my windpipe.
I resisted, cried out, tried to escape the man with no face. But that made everything much worse, because my resistance only tightened the noose. Within seconds, I couldn't get any more air, and in panic began to flail. But the man with no face only jerked the chain more tightly toward him and pulled me up so high that I lost the floor under my feet, my throat throbbing in pain.
Gasping, and aware that I would die soon, I sought for his face in the ungodly, dark emptiness where it should have been. Suddenly, two phosphorescent yellow eyes shone out. They were the eyes of one of my kind, and they were brimming with tears. Tears as thick as pearls ran down from the eyes and fell very slowly to the floor, like hot-air balloons about to land. Finally I knew where the weeping and crying had come from. But why was that so important now? The noose had completely choked off my windpipe, and the little oxygen I still had in my lungs I'd used up. Everything around me began to dissolve, like a mosaic exploding in extreme slow motion. I died without discovering the secret of my dream.
I wanted to scream when I returned to the world of the living. But my throat was completely dry, which explained why I had dreamed of suffocation. My heart raced wildly, as if I had just taken part in a marathon, and my entire body was as cramped as if it had been in a scrap press. I saw those weeping eyes before me again as clear as day. Tortured, tormented, suffering eyes. At the same time, I knew they were the eyes of a murderer. But why were they weeping?
I looked around the bedroom, unsure whether Gustav and Archie had really given the room that weird cemetery look. That was silly, but it only confirmed how deeply the nightmare had gotten under my skin. Then the horror gradually diminished. Nothing had changed. The bedroom still looked as if it were the prizewinning gross-out masterpiece of a schizophrenic, environmental artist.
Although my circulation had had enough stimulation for the day, I did one of my simple, but indispensable, calisthenics: I stood up while yawning, curled my back, and shook out and stretched my front and back legs.4 I was just about to begin my washing routine when an ugly head pushed its way in through the balcony door, which had been open a crack.
You would not expect that monster's disfigured head to be able to reveal his no doubt exciting inner life, but now that toughened physiognomy was clearly moved by concern. Although he did everything possible to betray nothing, and to act as if this was a quick, routine inspection of one of his official pissing stops, his one undamaged eye, now blinking fiercely, and his ears, flattened against the side of his head, showed his fear and uneasiness. Nonetheless, he simulated cool disinterest at first by not even condescending to look at me.
"Another cold sack?" I asked him, not wanting to beat around the bush.
I caught him by surprise, but in seconds he had already composed himself, assuming his stoic Humphrey Bogart look.
"A cold sack," he confessed after a brief pause.
My right back paw jerked upwards, quick as a switchblade, to scratch my neck.
"What member of our god-fearing community got it this time? Stop, wait a minute. It was a guy, wasn't it? Just like the other four corpses."
Now he showed open astonishment.
"How the hell did you find that out?"
"Just a guess."
I had given my neck enough treatment. I went on to my chest and cleaned the fur thoroughly with my tongue. In between, I clamped my teeth in my coat and combed through it for parasites.5
The monster limped into the room, snorted, then crouched down beside me with a worried expression on his face.
"This time it was good old Deep Purple who said his last good-bye. His neck looks so bad you'd think someone used it to try out his new ice pick. As far as I'm concerned, they could have turned that dimwit asshole into dog food, but all these dudes kicking the bucket is beginning to give me the jitters. Who knows, maybe the guy with the strange hobby will someday have the pleasure of sinking his teeth into my own neck."
"Who was Deep Purple?" Now I had worked down to my tail. I bent it into a perfect U, processing it by licking it from the root to the tip.
"Deep Purple? An anal-retentive jerk who could have gotten in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's greatest such jerk. If nobody knew what it meant to be ornery, then the word would
