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"You don't have many options," Oliver said. "You already paid the registration fee for 12...

He was right. It was my idea to attend the fundraiser for Bless the Beasts Local Animal Shelter. Live music, cocktails, appetizers--a hundred dollars a head, unless you book a table for twelve--all for a great cause. The latest case was too lurid, to horrible to contemplate. Clearly, the man was mental. Cat feces on the floor of his house were six inches deep. Dead cats were stashed in freezers in the garage. Half-dead cats lay starving in cages or on filthy beds and chairs. Rescuers had to wear haz-mat suits to come in and save the living. How did the sicko himself survive this? Dead cats were found in the fridge, next to the food he presumably ate. This was the worst case seen in our state for years, but it was far from the only case. At least once a year, another home full of hoarded animals would turn up. Sometimes, toddlers were found in the same house, with the most deplorable conditions.

Now I couldn't attend the fundraiser because another hoarder had been found, and I was needed immediately. Who could justify a night of dancing and music when so much work had to be done?

I let the other eleven go. Sometimes, we had to stop the work or risk compassion fatigue, or worse, a homicidal mission to eliminate all these animal abusers in our world. It would be easier for me to shoot a man dead than to see one more mangled dog shredded after a fight, one more cat strung up from a tree, one more squirrel set on fire.

I booted up and typed the location into our GPS, then headed into Butler County for the latest horror story.

This time, the disaster included horses and cattle. Oddly, they didn't look underfed or diseased, but they were agitated, restless, and three horses had jumped a fence. The trucker who almost hit one of them reported this one.

"Whoever this subhuman monster is," my partner Jean said, "I swear I'll accidentally kill him before we leave."

We found him in the barn, pinned under a fallen beam. His pale blue eyes fixed on us, unblinking, then shimmered with tears. "There is a God," he cried out in a raspy voice.

Jean gasped, a hand over her heart.

He threw her a nod. "I think my wrist is broken."

His whole body looked broken, pinned as he was under a solid oak beam, light streaming down upon him from a gap where the roof let in the sky.

Oliver, thank God, wasn't far behind. I heard the roar of his F-150 and the scrunch of gravel, then the engine shutting down and the scrunch of gravel under Oliver's boots. I ran over to tell him we needed to call an ambulance. My phone wasn't getting good reception out here. He immediately started punching 9-1-1 while running into the barn.

"Do you live alone?" Jean was asking the man. She had cradled his head with one hand and held a now-empty water bottle in the other.

He gave a small nod, his eyes squeezed shut.

"An ambulance is on the way," Oliver said. "I still have them on the line. We need to get more information from you, if you feel up to talking."

For five days this man had lain here, no water, no pain killers, no food, no cell phone, no neighbors checking in on him, no family calling and wondering why he didn't pick up the land line in the kitchen.

"a filled in crossword"....?

Carol has no idea where to go with that one.

Heading out the door anyway in a few minutes for a "Missing Persons Awareness" event in a town nearby.

This guy especially haunts me:

Weekend Freewrite Prompt First Sentence:

"You don't have many options," Oliver said. "You already paid the registration fee for 12...

Weekend Freewrite - 6/8/2019 - Prompt 2 - The Interference

He threw her a nod. "I think my wrist is broken."

The Weekend Freewrite -6/8/2019 - Part 3 - The Dramatic Twist

a filled in crossword

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The several prompt approach to freewriting is an exercise to take us out of what our usual thinking pattern and open new neuropathways in a sense. It forces us out of our comfort level and we write in a style or genre or about topics we never would on our own.
This kind of freewrite helps to open the creative forces and let go of any restrictions we put on ourselves...