You will know me, know us all
The best and worst part about physical human torture is the pain. Pain is reflex alerting the brain that your body is being damaged or is about to be further damaged by a particular stimuli. Negative reinforcement, as it were. Pain caused by torture was the best kind of pain money had to offer for some darker folk. Pain caused by torture was exactly what Zach was experiencing at this very moment. Someone was peeling the skin off his right index finger with a pair of rusty pliers with cruel and uncaring precision. Zach was quiet certain he had been screaming now for some time. Time was not a factor really since the clock on the wall had read 7:18 or so as long as he could recall. There were no batteries in the clock and although the clock was run off of batteries no one had ever bothered to install them. It was simply 7:18, a.m. or p.m., your choice, all the time according to this clock. The clock is not important. The cat, however, lying casually at Zach's feet while he was being horribly flayed and disfigured with pliers, was.
The feline, you see, was old. Very old by cat standards to the very least. Let's just suffice to say the cat in question was as old as poetry. Not necessarily human poetry because poetry goes back much further than that obviously. Some in the know, and not many were still around who even were in the know, would have even surmised this cat outdated such grammar as the comma, or more importantly, the period. The cat's name if one were to ask the cat personally was Meow. Consequently, the name the ancient Egyptians gave for "cat". Even more so Consequently meow is the one true name for all cats. If you were to ask one or one thousand they would all reply the same. If they even replied at all. Which is to say that cats for the most part tend to be generally aloof and uncaring and don't bother much with such vulgarities as human titles. Titles, as it turns out, are rude, vain, and likened to the annoying bark of dogs and crying human babies. Negative reinforcement.
Meow was the only cat in existence. Ask any cat in the world and it will tell you they are the only cat in existence. There is truth there, albeit a shaky one. Butone would have to be in the know. All cats, both alive and dead and all future cats are just, plain and simple, one cat. And that is what this is all about. Not Zach who is being tortured despite his cries of agony. He is just a simple victim, like many, who, being in the wrong place at the wrong time get drugged, tortured, and murdered for the sake of simple pleasure. Chances are no one will ever see him again...
The highway stretched out like a snake skin and smelled of sweat and regret, like some awkward sex act gone horribly wrong. The sky, dark and heavy, was about to cry hard on Mississippi. Scratch, as he was called by humans, a cat of no small size, was padding down this lonely stretch of road slightly ahead of the others. He was the head of an army, the general of a legion he nor anything or anyone else had ever appointed him to. Scratch was heading somewhere, he knew not where, and behind him sauntered hundreds if not thousands of other cats. Likewise, all across the world they were gathering and moving. Moving closer towards revolution...