Sometimes at the beginning of a story it needs to be a dark and stormy night. Most of the time the author should avoid this particular cliché unless it's a children's story. This story however, most wouldn't read to a child.

In a lot of places, it was a beautiful day, but in Scumdump it was a dark and stormy night. Dark because of a power outage, stormy because of a terrible autumn storm that was refusing to be on its way. The rain was coming down in large droplets, that is, when it was raining, if it wasn't raining it was hailing. The wind was somewhere around 90 k/m in some places and you would be likely to be sent flying if you didn't take cover.

In the particular part of Scumdump where the storm was at it's worst there was a small crevasse between two low rent apartment buildings. Within the crevasse was a drenched cardboard box that contained 4 terribly sad kittens. Said kittens had just opened their eyes to see the world for the first time the previous day, that was when their mother was still taking care of them. She hadn't been seen since. The kittens would never know what became of their mother, but just for the record I will tell you.

Just before the storm started the mother of the kittens realized she was going to need to feed herself if she was going to continue to feed her remaining 4 children. 2 had died shortly after being born due to the harsh cold. The mother of the kitten's master was a lonely pathetic man that had only purchased the cat to rid his apartment of the awful rat problem it had. When he saw that the mother of the kittens was pregnant he promptly grabbed the cat by the neck, slammed her into the first box he could find and dropped her right out the window into the cramped alleyway below. Luckily for the mother cat, he lived on the second floor. She was still pregnant at the time, and the kittens would be born quite shortly.

When the mother cat went hunting she wasn't having much luck, she was off her game and very tired. Every garbage can or dumpster she searched there was nothing of use, nor was there any live game for her to chase. While crossing one of the streets, a preteen boy decided it would be fun to swing her around his head by the tail, and due to her malnourishment she was not fast enough to get away. When he was done with her he launched her unceremoniously through the nearest window like a rock from a sling. She wasn't dead instantly, she had just enough time to think of her newly born kittens one last time before she shut her eyes for the last time.

The cardboard box the kittens were in was filled with an inch of water at any given time during the storm. Most of the time there were ice chunks present. In their innocence the kittens would try to lift their paws out of the attacking liquid, but have nowhere to set them down again except from where they brought them. One of the kittens found it was warmer to lay with the 2 kittens that wouldn't wake up. At one point, a rat seeking shelter decided to examine the inside of the kitten's box. Lucky for the kittens he viewed them as a threat and only bit one of them and ran off.

Surely someone would have walked by and helped these kittens right? No one would just leave them, no one except Lee Scott (current CEO of Wal-Mart), on his way to kill some hookers. Upon seeing the kittens he considered torturing them to death, but he didn't have time, and the weather was bad, so all he did was hock a mean loogie on them and was on his way. It didn't matter to the kittens too much; it was, after all, just another glob of unpleasant liquid landing on them.

At this point it was beginning to be difficult to meow for the kittens. The pain was too great on them, it was a wonder they survived as long as they did. This was when some being had mercy on them and the cardboard box split open at the sides. The water came gushing out and swept the startled kittens into the gutter where eventually they were washed away into darkness.

No one cared.

It started to snow.

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