Soon, as the car was about to enter Zhidan Garden, the driver, on a whim, suddenly sped up to overtake another car, completely missing the traffic police standing there. The car was promptly stopped, and the officer shouted “illegal lane change” before pulling out his notebook. However, the driver, who must have been driving for twenty or thirty years, saw the police officer like he was meeting his parents, not at all intimidated. He jumped out of the car and started arguing loudly. The two immediately began to bicker.
Seeing this would not be resolved quickly, I got out of the car to move my luggage. Reluctantly, I dragged the two large suitcases out of the taxi and called out to the guard at the entrance to keep an eye on one of them while I carried the other into the community. Just then, a large dump truck loaded with sand roared past, its momentum causing me to glance back inadvertently. At that moment, I caught sight of a black shadow darting out from the green space near the entrance, startled by the truck, and — in a split second — I saw clearly it was a black cat — crushed under the massive wheel with a sharp screech of brakes, suddenly silencing the surrounding noise and construction sounds. The cat was squashed almost flat, its body grotesquely deformed, with only its head protruding outside the wheel, a pool of blood gushing out, the horrific scene vividly imprinted in my mind. I had seen the entire process of the poor cat’s death with my own eyes. The truck driver glanced back, restarted the engine, and the heavy wheels rolled over the cat again and again as the truck continued its thunderous journey, leaving behind a flattened, dirty corpse in the middle of the road.
