Who Was Yukio Asano? (Part 1)

"I'm scared, Shimmy." He sat at the lip of my litter box, kicking his legs back and forth. "Anything can happen."

What was that noise? A mouse beneath my feet? I held my breath. The hardwood floor diminished, the gaps between boards folded into quarrel and blather.

In his right hand, the President of the War on Terror held the copy of the Constitution my cousin Winter sent me in the mail a few months ago.

He kicked his vainglorious legs back and forth at the edge of my box. The living-room radiator clackled. I heard a bat breathing in the walls. I stared at his blood-dimmed right hand.

An inclined wooden board with leather straps, flanked by a baggy sheet of cellophane, sat next to my box.

The back porch is full of leaves in prudent bunches arranged like cranberries.

Not today. Not with the President of the War on Terror prattling on the edge of my litter box with a copy of the Constitution in his hand.