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On November 5th, 1995, I gave birth to my son, Lenny. It was an unwanted pregnancy, heat of the moment kind of thing. The child however wasn't untwanted. As unstable as the situation I was living in I couldn't get rid of him.
Welfare had been helping with some of the money coming in, but I worked long hours. Overtime, at night, during the day, morning, all day every day. It never seemed like enough for a child. To be honest I didn't feel like enough for Lenny. That's when I took Lenny, my 5 month old, to a pet shelter. I let him pick whatever animal he wanted, since I figured it would probably be a cat or dog, something easy to look after.
Eventually Lenny decided on a little snowshoe kitten, which happened to be born on the same day he was. It felt like fate. Taking the kitten home I didn't realize how much effort both babies would be.
Years later we all managed just fine. Scarce, but fine. Lenny named the kitten Spark only about a year ago. I had no ideas for names and since Spark had no recall anyway I decided just to leave it alone.
I still worked long hours away from Lenny, hiring a babysitter occasionally when daycare wasn't open. Today I went to work and dropped off Lenny, just to get stopped by one of the daycare workers.
"Y'know, Lenny is old enough to be enrolled in kindergarten now"
The lady said, I was stunned for a moment. Lenny was 5 now, time had flown by. As of September, Lenny was going to school. I had known that Lenny has really bad attachment issues, towards Spark in specific. They spent all day together since forever. He already had problems at daycare, so I needed to come pick him up many times.
School would probably benefit him, I would think. Throughout his entirety in elementary school he was bullied, picked on, and had the worst experience. Constantly getting into fights where he'd come home bruised, beaten, whatever. Not much I could do about it I figured, there wasn't another school for miles, and the teachers did nothing about the bullying.
Something I had noticed was everytime I came home from work, Lenny and Spark would be off somewhere else. I had asked him about it, turns out they had been playing down by the river near our house. It was a salmon river, it would be full of salmon during summer, early fall as a breeding thing I gathered. So it was one of the rivers that flooded very often. Which I hadn't known about.
Now Lenny was in middle school and Spark was getting older. The bullying continued, Lenny was a complete shut-in, he never talked to me about anything now. He was shy, timid, and paranoid. I didn't know what to do, I tried talking, I tried leaving him alone but nothing was working.
One Horrible day, it started just as you'd expect, nothing was going right. Lenny went to school as usual and I went to work. I was miserable the whole day and I could only assume Lenny was too. Once I had gotten home, long after the school day ended I waited for Lenny to come home. But he never did.
Late at night I went to the river to find him, but all I found was Lenny's broken glasses by the water's edge. Panicked and confused I walked along the riverside for hours until the sun came up. All I had was his glasses. I went to the police to try and find him and Spark, but nothing happened.
I was worried and sad. I decided to go around my small town and put up missing posters of Lenny and Spark. Many nights later the police found Lenny's body, along with Sparks. I was devastated. Worse than devastated. My entire life felt like it crumbled before me, I was left with nothing and nobody.
A few days later I decided to check the newspaper, they had written about Lenny. Just about the discovery of his body. I kept the newspaper this time around, feeling hurt and disappointed. I had no clues on what could've happened, the most I gathered was that he and Spark fell in the water and drowned.
I got back an autopsy report, I was right. He had inhaled water and died, but not before seemingly getting beat again. He had a concussion and had broken ribs, which could've been from being bashed by rocks but I knew. I knew he had been pushed in. The same bullies that had been targeting him for a decade must've followed him or something, there's no way he'd have been that careless.
Months past, I was taking a walk by the river, mourning the loss of my babies. That's when I smelt something so disgusting and indescribable, like a rotting deer or something. Curiosity got the better of me, I walked towards the smell, scrunching my nose from how bad it was. That's when I saw him, Lenny, and Spark, as one creature. A Cat-man. I was so stunned I felt like I was dreaming. He looked to be eating something, or someone. It was definitely a body.
I felt sick to my stomach, as I stared for a moment longer the Cat-man fled. He could run incredibly fast, I was flabbergasted. I wanted to chase him, to see what was going on but he was gone before I could move.
I soon contacted the police about the body, at that point it was out of my hands. I found in the newspaper weeks later it had been one of Lenny's bullies, or abusers. The name I had recognized, it was interesting. Maybe their spirits came to get revenge.
The obituary didn't provide many details, but it did mention the big had died slowly by a large slash to the chest. He had been left to die for a day or two, until getting eaten by what the police assumed to be a coyote or cougar. As much as I wanted to, I didn't tell anybody anything about the man I saw. I felt an odd sense of protection I needed to give him, that meant not telling the police anything.
I couldn't even bring myself to think how it was possible. I didn't wanna call the cat man I saw Lenny or Spark, even if I felt in my heart that it was at least one of them doing this, I decided to give him a new name. River, River the Slasher.
Soon after, I started regularly picking up the newspaper after work. More and more deaths piled up, all surrounding the school that Lenny used to go to, all the people he had mentioned hurt him in some way. Then after it became just random people, that's when I stopped reading. It had been years and years as the deaths piled, this killer had been continuing his pursuit long after Lenny died. I just assumed it was a food source. As unsafe as I did feel in this town, I think in my heart I knew it was my babies.