Homemade Sin by V. Mark Covington Page B

retarded.”

    Beneath a foreboding moon, Cutter, now penniless, slouched across the Santeria parking lot toward the certain Golgothic wrath of Hussey. As he passed the dumpster behind the kitchen he heard a sudden cacophony of cat howls and stopped in his tracks. Atop the dumpster perched Stinky, howling an invitation to all of the felines in his dominion to come to a feast. A clowder of cats gathered quickly in a semi-circle around the dumpster and howled back in anticipation. As the cats looked up at Stinky hungrily, tails swishing and mouths watering from the pungent scent of seafood, Stinky nosed bits of various fish, crab and octopus parts, leftovers from the chef Dee Dee’s table of toxic tidbits, she had prepared for the next day, toward the tabbies.
    Stinky had laced their fishy feast with the zombie extract he had liberated from behind the bar.
    â€œEat up my new minions,” Stinky purred, “my army of zombie worshippers”. As Stinky watched with anticipation, the cats devoured the fishy bits and began to drop like flies, twitching and howling beneath his pious gaze. Gasping, choking and clawing the asphalt, the cats, each and every one, went home to kitty Jesus.
    Stinky howled. “What’s happening? They aren’t supposed to die! They’re supposed to become zombies!” Stinky gazed over the carnage he had wrought, aghast. He had become the Jim Jones of fugu. So far all he had achieved was mass murder. Some sacrifices had to be made on the path to absolute power, Stinky rationalized. Kill a single cat, you are a murderer; kill a thousand cats, you are a conqueror; kill them all, you are God.
    â€œI am the God of Cats!” Stinky howled at the moon. “But without followers I’m just another egotheistic kitty in a dogma eat dogma world. People don’t worship cats like they used to, sure, maybe a few crazy old ladies and the occasional serial killer, the kind of quiet guy who lives alone and has lots of cats, but not like they used to. The only worshipers I can find are other cats, and pussy cats make difficult worshipers. They don’t herd like human sheeple, they don’t chew Christ crackers playing swallow the leader. Until I can find out a working zombie recipe, a way to subjugate my feline followers, sacrifices must be made”.
    â€œI didn’t just see a mass kitty cat suicide,” Cutter muttered as he slunk up the stairs to his room.

Chapter Seven
Bad Kitty
    Roland opened the recently renamed and redecorated Fugu Lounge the next morning and went about setting up the bar for the opening day’s business, cutting limes and lemons and pouring buckets of ice into the ice bin behind the bar. He gathered up the trash bags, full to overflowing with remnants of the old Blue Flamingo, tucked the discarded stuffed swordfish under his arm, and headed for the dumpster through the kitchen.
    What he found in the alley was so terrible it made his jaw drop and his stomach lurch. He dropped the stuffed fish on his foot. Dead cats lay scattered in the alley behind the restaurant. It wasn’t possible to swing a dead cat without hitting … a dead cat. Furry, feline corpses littered the area around the dumpster, their faces twisted in death masks of agony and their whiskers stained with a dusting of purple powder.
    Roland dropped the trash bags, stumbled back against the kitchen door, wide-eyed and appalled at the horrific scene.
    Stinky, his demented eyes shining with menace, sat regally, atop the dumpster surveying the wholesale death he had wrought.
    â€œJumping Jesus! What happened here?”
    â€œIt wasn’t Jesus,” Stinky’s voice rang icily in Roland’s head, “it was me.”
    Roland stepped over the feline bodies, lying where they had succumbed around the dumpster. It looked as though a cat cult had been passing out catnip Kool-aid.
    â€œWh … why … Stinky?” Ronald stuttered. He came nose to nose with