Feline

He laid contorted with jaw agape, plasma drooling from his veins and gathering in a pool that surrounded his cranium, oozing and inching its way toward his torso. The pain had ceased, yet still his muscles contracted and twitched, his eyelids flicked and joints flexed, as his carcass received the final exercise that it would ever experience.

The cat leapt onto the back of its former captor, lifted a paw to its face and began to daintily preen, gloating all the while over its own handiwork. The man would never have the opportunity to neglect it again, and the feline knew that it would now have the rule of the roost. It groomed its whiskers quickly, with only moments to spare before fleeing the crime scene, its tail happily whipping behind as it shuffled down the hallway and made its grand escape.

When the police and ambulance workers arrived, the feline hovered in the shadows, grinning through lips stained with the salty crimson juices that had seeped from its victim. The cat was satisfied and returned to its bedding where it slumbered, nocturnally replaying the day's events. When the cat awoke, it lied there, gears cranking, as it pondered the fate of the woman...