Mercy

A short story I have been working on for the past few days.

            The room was filled with silence, turning the antique air of the mansion I called home into death. I sat across from the woman I only knew as Katherine. I say that because rumors about the vixen in the black dress spread throughout the country. Many tales tell of her being an assassin and an accountant at the same time. Some other ones include her being the most wanted prostitute in all of Tuscany or the fact that she has no back-story and she is just a normal twenty-seven year old fox. I don’t know what to believe, so I just announce her as a close-friend named Katherine and nothing else.

            Katherine looked at me with her solemn green eyes, a look I knew perfectly well as the look of curiosity and stern. It was funny, seeing how those two emotions could play the same role with perfection.

            “Stanton, I need to ask you of something?” She asked as she twirled her silver fork around in the spaghetti she made the two of us for dinner.

            “You may.” I inquired.

            She set her fork down. “How do you pull it off?”

            “Pull off what?” I asked.

            She looked at me with a smile now. It was a smile that only she could pull off. It involved almost every emotion in the book. Happiness, sadness, jealousy, anger, doesn’t matter. She could pull it off like she wasn’t even trying. I say that because it does take an effort to smile, even if it’s unconsciously.

            “You know what I mean, you damn mutt. How can you just sit there while you keep that man prisoner in your basement?”

            That was something I didn’t expect. I haven’t told her about anything of the sorts; let alone what the gender of my captive was. I guess someone let it slip.

            “Great,” I sighed, “Who told you?”

            “Nobody.” She casually told me as she took a bite from her meal.

“Nobody?” I repeated back.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does.” I said with a little anger in my voice. How dare she sit in my home, eating my food, and using up my time, and just tell me she knows about my toy downstairs and then say that nobody told her. “You’re in my home under my roof. At least have the respect to tell me how you found out.” I raised an eyebrow as I asked her, “Are you a spy?”

She gave a hearty laugh as she took another bite. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I won't tell you. I believe, ‘I don’t talk about myself, so I won’t ask you about yourself’ were your exact words when we first met.”

I sighed, “Maybe true, but the information you just told me is quite confidential and if you won’t tell me, then I must ask you to leave.”

She dropped her fork and smiled. It was a strange smile. “A little bird told me.”

A bird, huh. Must’ve been Frank. “Let me guess. His name is Frank Dulworst.” She nodded. I gave myself a mental note to get rid of him after tomorrow’s luncheon at the museum.

“C’mon, you can’t seriously be an organ harvester.” She said with fear in her voice, “It’s illegal around these parts. You could lose the winery and your home. Your father would’ve wasted fifty years of his life for nothing.”

I pointed a finger at her, “Don’t say a word about that old dog. He may’ve started the business, but I’m keeping it alive. He went bankrupt twice, remember.”

“But he raised you while he was bankrupt.”

            I gave a chuckle, “You have a point there, Katherine. I was a spoiled pup back then.”

            “Yes, you were.” I remember back when I was a pup. Katherine and I met when we were both only a few years old. Katherine’s mother slept with my father and they dated for a few months. A few days before their wedding, the mother was kidnapped and murdered. I soon discovered that her organs were taken out of her body and sold on the black market. It seems ironic that the people who sold her organs were the doctors and nurses at the hospital that she worked at for ten years. After the death, my father gave Katherine up to a friend of his for adoption. He didn’t like the idea of having a daughter.

            After a few years, we met again and over time became really great friends… until she turned eighteen. She disappeared and never told me why. Even to this day, she hides underneath a black veil that I can never pull up and discover what’s inside.

            “So, aren’t you going to answer me?”

            “Sure.” I pushed my plate forward. “As long as you put this in the sink for me.” She gave me a chuckle and took the plate. “The reason how I am able to deal with the prisoner I have in my basement is pretty simple, dear. I step away from humanity. I know it sounds immoral, but you must look at it through my eyes. The world we live in is made up of humans and furs. Humans are mindless beasts who pat their hands on a book and say they know to handle life, yet they constantly go to war with each other. Now, furs are programmed with genetic codes that were given to us a few decades ago. That code is based off the ways of their culture, their ways of life, and that life is corrupt. We need to rebel.”

            “So we need to kill them?” She asked from across the kitchen as she cleaned the dish I was eating from. “That doesn’t make any sense. They haven’t done anything bad. They go to war for good reasons.”

            I waved a hand at her and said, “Not exactly. They do it for idiotic reasons. They go to war for beliefs that make absolutely no sense and they fight over simple things like belongings and land…”

            “And so do we.” Katherine informed me.

            I groaned, “Sadly, we do, but that needs to change.”

            She dropped the plate in the sink and turned around with a fist on her hip. “What does this have to do with the human you kidnapped that’s in your basement and dying?”

            I simply said, “Rebellion, sweet Katherine. Sweet and merciful rebellion.”

            “There’s nothing merciful about kidnapping a human!” She yelled as she pounded her fist on the granite counter. Her anger was understandable, but it was also weak.

            “Mercy is a word designed by battle crazed humans that felt bad for what they did to their own kind. I am trying to prove that mercy is something earned, not automatically assigned.”

            “Earned, huh.” She twiddled with her paws as she said that, like she was waiting for her mind to come up with something to back it up, but it couldn’t, so all it said was, “Earned, huh.”

            “You must see it from my perspective.”

            “I do.” Katherine quickly said. “You’re trying to justify hatred by blaming mistakes on humans and announcing that all furs are perfect.”

            I sighed. She had no idea what I was talking about. I stood up and walked over to her side as she went back to cleaning the dishes. I wrapped my arm around her neck with a limp and said, “Sorry, Kathy, but you don’t…”

            “It’s Katherine.” She snapped.

            “Katherine,” I said back slowly, “sorry, but you don’t understand.”

            She growled, “Then tell me why you are killing humans and stealing their organs.”

            A good question. I knew the answer, but it was a difficult and very complex answer. I couldn’t merely say a simple sentence or two on why I am doing what I’m doing. The synopsis would be too corrupted with errors that I might as well say, “So I can collect enough points for an extra life.” That’s not why, though. It’s much deeper. The definition has more meaning. Humans may’ve created us, but they are flawed. They have mistakes. We were made to not make mistakes, and I’m not making a mistake when I finally decide to tell her,

            “I am killing them and selling their organs because I have earned my mercy. They lost their mercy when they made something greater than themselves.”

            She was lost for words. After a few moments of silence, I asked her, “Want to join the rebellion.”

Author's Note

Word count is 1406. It might change, but that is what it's currently.

Reviews

[emmajoy]

What an amazing story, and, and, and, so finely written! You've not only written a tale but you've put so many hints, so many touches of ethic and belief, and there's such original thought about the main characters being in control of another certain specis - because .. won't say more because reviews give clues to would be readers. I'll ask other friends to read this, it really should be appreciated for what it is an original and finely created piece of literature!

[cartera]

The beginnings of Animal Farm for the modern age, I feel. cop that for Global warming.
......
Well written with dialogue handled very well.
ATB
Alex.

[M.E.Lyle]

Hauntingly creepy. I was captivated wondering; what are these things. Well, I'm spooked now. Almost afraid to turn my computer off for fear it might snap right back on by itself. Great stuff.

[Cathy Wattam]

This is the start of a great storyline. I was entranced reading it. There are however, several errors which need sorting but aside from those, this is a cracking piece of writing. Keep it coming!

[Alex Crow]

Interesting...what are these....Katherine and Stanton? Wolves of extreamly high intellagence?

[FJ Davis]

An interesting twist on the ominous, too-quickly-evolving computer scenarios. "They lost their mercy when they made something greater than themselves," brings those conventional horror stories to mind.
I think I began to figure out what was going on when Katherine said, "You know what I mean, you damn mutt." For some reason, this did not sound to me like something Katherine would say. Then, I went back and spotted "vixen" and "fox."
As I read along, I picked up everything from "a little bird" to "toy" in the basement to "old dog."
My suggestion would be to change Katherine's "mutt" line; you can probably get away with the rest of those, obviously, much needed references.
Except for some minor housekeeping--in the form of more editing--I believe you have created something very special, here, Mr. Wolf.
Odd, I just got a chill typing your name.