Moondogs - Alexander Yates [149]
Monique stood in a haze above the limp animal. She had no doubt it was Shawn’s tokay. It must have been hiding in his backpack when she’d thrown her things in and zipped up. It had been trapped since then, getting hungry and mean. Blood trickled down from the bite on her fingers, pooling at the tips and falling to the carpet in fat drops. She went into the bathroom to clean up. It wasn’t the cuts so much as the thought of the animal’s spit inside her that was awful. She washed thoroughly, wincing as she worked hand soap right into the wound, shaking from the sting. She wrapped her two fingers in a half roll of toilet paper—the first few layers turning red—and finished the bandage with a dry washcloth and safety pin. Then she sat on the covered toilet, giving the animal time to die if it hadn’t already.
When she emerged from the bathroom she saw that the gecko had managed to right itself and move a few inches in the direction of the bed. It was in bad shape. The sharp, snake-like jaw looked like a busted clasp, unhinged from the skull. Both eyes had burst. The three legs that still moved did so in disagreement, as though trying to lead it on three divergent escapes. Monique knew she had to kill it. She considered what method would be easiest for them both.
The gecko had stopped twitching by the time she picked it up by the tail, but she could tell it was still breathing. She left the bungalow-style room and walked out on the moonlit gravel. She remembered some amateur landscaping accented with large stones by the old administration building and headed in that direction. Most of the stones were too big, but she found one roughly the size of a toaster. She laid the gecko on the gravel and worked the stone out of its spot, squatting and lifting. She held the stone over the animal, closed her eyes, and dropped it. She opened her eyes and saw she’d missed—only the tip of its tail had been crushed. She lifted the stone again and made herself look when she dropped it.
It felt wrong to just leave the animal there, crushed beneath a stone, so she dug it a shallow grave in the landscaping. That also felt wrong. The animal was plump in her hands, skin surprisingly warm for a reptile, legs resting on her fingers lightly. On their first day in Manila they’d held a funeral for the cat—the one who arrived from the trans-Pacific flight dead in her carrier. The one who was replaced by Leila’s lovebird and Shawn’s gecko, now both, oddly, in Monique’s hands. Joseph had said some words at the cat’s funeral, and Shawn had mocked him for it, and he’d been really hurt. He’d said that the cat was a good cat and that she hadn’t suffered. Monique couldn’t say either thing about the gecko, so instead of speaking she just looked up. Mount Pinatubo was a dark shape against dark clouds. The moon was fullish and had a ring around it. At first she thought the ring was just normal moonlight, refracted through her tears. But no. It was a ring.
Monique laid the gecko beside the hole and dug deeper, working her good fingers through the mulch and gravel. She was sobbing. She didn’t want to be here, alone in a strange place that wasn