The Cat of Bel-Ak-Shey
by Eric Dodd
The cat yowled and hissed, back arched, eyes a poisonous green.
"Stay away from that cat, deek. They say cats be Firstlife." The stall vendor threw a sandal at the cat, which dodged easily and ran off with a hateful glance. "They say cats find source nodes. Bad luck." The stall vendor hawked and spat into the dust. "You buying or you looking?"
Gez had money, but wasn't interested in the cheap wares strewn across the ancient wooden stall table. He looked down the narrow alley, trying for a glimpse of the cat. Source nodes. Dangerous, but if he found an untapped one, he could become ... anything. Better than he was. He shook his head at the stall vendor, and walked into the alley.
The walls of the buildings stretched high above, leaning and twisting, some curved, if they were grown, and some straight, if they were built. The alley was choked with sloughed-off building scales, bricks, trash, and sand. The Island of Bel-Ak-Shey was hot and dry, with little vegetation, so there were only a few straggling cacti and succulents hidden amongst the refuse.
Gez followed the twists of wall closely, turning his bladelike body sideways at points, scrambling over rubbish piles, going deeper into the gloom as the sky-reaching buildings tilted overhead to meet at some point lost in the haze of pollution and filth and dust. A source node. Gez had been searching for one for most of his life, but so had everyone else he knew. Tapping nodes was the one sure way a person could elevate oneself beyond the grime and dirt of the regular life of the Island. If it didn't kill, or cause madness.
He crawled nimbly over a large building scale fallen slantwise against a wall, and spied the cat grooming itself atop a pile of plastic bags. It was said that cats were Firstlife, that they came from a different place, eons ago. Some people said that people came from somewhere else, too, but that was equally unlikely. Gez didn't care. The Island was one of millions on the World, and the World was infinite, so why care where people or cats came from?
Cats were supposedly fond of source nodes. He didn't need some ignorant stall vendor to tell him that. Gez was a rarity amongst his friends -- he could read, and he traded certain items and favors with an apprentice at the Librorium so that he could read the books there sometimes, late at night. The books were mostly lies, but they did agree upon one thing: if you wanted to find a source node, look for cats.
The cat, perhaps sensing Gez' attention, looked up from bathing its red and black fur, hissed, and darted away, down and through a very narrow gap between two buildings. Gez leapt down, hopped across the rubble and checked the gap. It was larger than his head, so he knew he could fit his body through. He shoved himself through, squeezing and turning, never worrying, and emerged into a small, squarish courtyard. The cat was nowhere to be found. Gez moved cautiously into the center of the courtyard, and looked around. Overhead was only a faint beige patch of sky, far away and framed by the mass of buildings. He walked to the opposite wall, looking at the crack-mazed surface of the building for potential hiding spots.
From behind him, he heard a scratching sound, and he turned, only to see the cat leap at him, claws extended, fangs already gnashing the air. Gez threw his arm up to protect his face, but the cat had leapt slightly to the left, and landed on Gez' exposed neck and shoulder, clawing and biting, and still screeching its horrible yowl. Gez grunted, twisted, and grabbed the cat. Blood ran into Gez' eyes from a scratch on his forehead. He squeezed, and flung the animal away from him. He shook his head to clear the blood from his eyes, and stumbled against a wall, only to hear a CRACK! as the thin scale gave way. Unbalanced, he tumbled into the open darkness at the base of the building.
Gez landed a few meters down, into a pile of dust and soft debris. He wiped the blood from his eyes, and willed them to adjust to the darkness. His hair stood on end, and his skin prickled. The node! He thought. He realized he could see his hands in the gloom, lit by a flickering blue light. He looked to his left, and saw it. The source node appeared as a faint blue crack in the air, or a spider web, or some fabulously complicated geometric figure. I've found it, he thought. It's mine now.
Gez crawled to the glowing node, outstretched his hand, and felt the first wisps of power touch his hand. It hurt more than anything he had ever experienced, yet felt oddly comforting. He felt the node ransack his mind, demanding an answer to a question. PURPOSE? Gez could not answer. PURPOSE? Gez felt his mind flattening, smearing out, becoming thin. He seized upon the last thought he was aware of thinking, a view of a building he thought beautiful, tall and twisted, scales glittering in sunlight. PURPOSE. Gez felt himself stretch and expand, and then felt no more.
In the once-barren courtyard, a new building stood, four hundred meters tall, beautiful, scales glittering in the sunlight. Its hallways were roamed by many cats, who found it to be a good home.
Showing posts with label Bad Cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad Cats. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
What Happens on Saturday Night Around Here by David Wiseman
What Happens on Saturday Night Around Here
by David Wiseman
Ol’ Creeper’s going to kill somebody tonight
he has knives in his mouth.
Slicks back his hair for stalking, eases
on out the door.
Slides from bush shadow to chimney corner
seeking the small and scared who sneak
from shadow to shadow, nibbling
at the edges of life.
Sits back on his haunches, and runs
his ragged tongue over his lips.
He will wait and slink all night
snapping to action
at just the right moment, sinking
his knives deep and breaking bones.
He plays with the wounded,
and in the morning drinks
milk to wash the blood from his mouth.
by David Wiseman
Ol’ Creeper’s going to kill somebody tonight
he has knives in his mouth.
Slicks back his hair for stalking, eases
on out the door.
Slides from bush shadow to chimney corner
seeking the small and scared who sneak
from shadow to shadow, nibbling
at the edges of life.
Sits back on his haunches, and runs
his ragged tongue over his lips.
He will wait and slink all night
snapping to action
at just the right moment, sinking
his knives deep and breaking bones.
He plays with the wounded,
and in the morning drinks
milk to wash the blood from his mouth.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Cat Eyes by John Miller
Cat Eyes
By John Miller
On Thanksgiving I walked to the gas station because dad’s car blocked mine in the driveway. Everyone was either talking religion and politics or sleeping off the turkey. My kids were in the fenced backyard playing with my brother’s step-children, and it seemed safe to slink off alone. I wondered why I was a loner while I walked to buy a pack of cigarettes. I thought about asking my brother if he wanted to go with me, but I remembered he’d quit smoking two years ago… supposedly. Sometimes when I drove him to his third-shift job—they only had one car—he borrowed cigarettes from me or bought a pack himself. I couldn’t ask if he wanted to buy smokes in front of the family.
Two blocks down and two lefts later I saw an old woman on her hands and knees in her backyard. I was in an alley, a shortcut meant to quicken the nicotine into my bloodstream. How I wished for a cigarette when I saw an old man lying next to her, and I wondered what I should do. I frowned and approached her, and I wondered whether that old man had died. “I’ll bet that’s her husband,” I muttered to myself. I wasn’t about to do CPR on him, and not just because I didn’t know how to perform it.
“Problems?” I asked as I stepped into her backyard with a sigh.
She looked up at me with blood-red eyes, and I jolted when I saw black cat-eye pupils that ached with intense need… sort of like hunger. To stall for time and to get a grip on myself—surely I had gone insane—I reached into my coat pocket and took out an empty pack of cigarettes.
“You look like you could use a smoke,” I told her holding the empty pack before me.
She reached out as I dropped the empty pack and muttered, “Oh, sorry!” The shadow of a plane from the nearby airport swept over us when the empty pack struck the yard. I intended to run as soon as her eyes left mine to reach for the pack, perhaps to hand it back to me, common courtesy and all that. Her eyes never left mine, and I realized the rumbling I heard wasn’t the jet passing overhead, but came from her own lips. The savage growl grew louder as she rose, and I saw blood drip from her long and ragged claws. I was closer now, had a better view of the old man in the grass. Something purple had been ripped from his body, torn away like a chunk of meat from a thick slab of sirloin. The torn hole in his side faced opposite the way I had approached them, and now I saw the purple clump next to his body. From anatomy class in college I knew it was a kidney.
It’s funny how the mind reacts to stress and fear. Shock entered my system and it cloaked my mind somewhat from the terror that threatened to overcome my facilities. A part of my brain screamed in desperate panic for me to run screaming, but another part filled with grotesque fascination as to what sort of creature the old woman was. Logic told me the old woman had the power to bring me down since she was strong enough to overpower the old man—although old, he was quite large. If she could pull a chunk of flesh out of his body like a grizzly bear, what could she do to me?
When she took a precarious step toward me and looked down around the area of my own kidneys, the screaming and panicked portion of my brain overrode the analytical part.
I ran like hell.
Do you remember when you were a child running from an adult, the sound of heavy footfalls behind you and the realization that no matter how fast you were, no matter how quick your little legs moved, the adult behind you was faster? You knew you had it. That is what it felt like as the old woman chased me and her shoes slammed against the earth just behind me. I heard her footfalls that fell faster than my own long strides, and my skin crawled in anticipation of her bloody touch.
At the alley I dodged left, and she skirted past me like a ravenous wolf that had just missed its prey. I saw sharp canines in her elongated mouth, her jaw mutated, and her blood-red eyes filled with unholy need to rend my flesh and suck the meaty pulp from my kidneys. I barked a laugh of relief to have escaped death—if only momentarily—and I also laughed at the thought of how smoking kills people, and how my desire to buy cigarettes had brought me face-to-face with death.
Make no mistake: smoking kills!
I don’t know what other people would have thought in that situation, but panic did something to my brain, filled it with chemicals and stress and possibly endorphins—shit, I don’t know. Any logical response I would have had lost out to maniacal laughter and a bout of giddiness. Until the old woman’s shoes found traction in the alley’s loose gravel, and she loped after me again.
Somehow I made it to the street. The loose gravel of the alley offset the traction of the old woman’s shoes, but my sneakers had no problem and I never slid once. In the street, however, I heard something scratch on the concrete. When I turned right to head back home—as if that were possible—I sneaked a look back and saw the old woman had discarded her shoes, and her calves had elongated to something that resembled the lower legs of a wolf’s hindquarters. Long, dangerous claws raked the pavement. Scratchity, scrathity, thump-thump! Scratchity-scratchity, thump-thump! Her claws scratched and paws struck the pavement. Her shadow slid up beside my own as I ran, then her shadow enveloped mine. I felt her hot breath on my neck like some rancid beast from hell, Cerberus or something.
In novels authors tell how fear goads people into almost superhuman feats of speed, bouts of fury for survival, or something of the sort. In real life fear thickens movement and makes it sluggish, like a deer caught in the headlong glare of a car’s headlights at night. I’m not talking about normal fear or even a bout of terror, but primal horrific horror that clamped down on the muscles of my legs and constricted my lungs and throat. I felt my face turn red and I knew I was dead. I wondered if my kidney would look like the old man’s with a slightly different hue.
That was when I saw Jimmy Johnson, the town drunk.
Jimmy never drove a car anywhere because of the countless DUI citations. He rode his ten-speed bike everywhere he went, usually just to the grocery store and local bars. Jimmy burst around the corner with a plastic sack of alcohol suspended from the handlebars, and his face frowned when he saw me. I don’t think he saw the old woman behind me because my body blocked his view, but it registered on his face that collision was inevitable. I leapt high, but at that speed I barely jumped and his handlebars rammed my hip. Shock gelled everything in slow-motion, and I saw his expression’s slow turn to sheer terror when he saw her. As my body turned upside-down, I saw the old woman’s body and realized I was wrong—she hadn’t the legs of a wolf at all, but the legs of a big cat, a lion to be exact. “Don’t lions have round eyes?” the thought floated in my head as my body hovered in space, somersaulted, and plummeted to the ground.
I landed on my ass in a splatter-pattern of red, and I skidded eight feet. Before I quit sliding, I leapt up and sprinted. I felt my buttocks and realized it wasn’t my blood I had landed in, and I risked a glance back. Jimmy still pedaled his bike, but without a head. I saw dark fluid in the plastic sack suspended from his handlebars, and the bulge of the sack seemed the right size for a human head. A broken bottle of vodka littered the street, the acid smell strong enough to reach me from that distance.
The old woman had her back to me, and she had a furry tan-colored head and pointed cat-ears now. A long tail looped from beneath her dress—I hadn’t even realized she’d been wearing a dress in my panic. She turned and charged me again, her body now a large lioness whose dress impeded her movement.
I made it to the corner and sprinted right. The dress she wore bound her hindquarters, and it allowed me to remain in front of her by a good twenty feet. She swiped at her dress with her paw-like hands and snarled in frustration, and her crimson cat-eyes met mine again as I rounded the corner. Distracted, I slammed into a car in the middle of the street, and I slid up its hood. I tried to keep going but two car doors opened and four strong arms held my own. I saw the lights of a squad car.
“Help me, please!” I screamed. “She’s after me!”
“Who’s after you?” the policeman to my right demanded. “I think you scratched the hood of my car, buddy.”
“Probably drunk or hallucinating on drugs,” the red-haired officer retorted.
“What?” I asked, perplexed. I shook my head in confusion and pointed with my thumb over my back. “The cat-woman!”
“Oh, the cat-woman,” the dark-haired officer retorted. “We know all about her.”
“You do?” I said, overjoyed.
The intersection I had just sprinted from was empty. No cat-woman. “She must smell the cops,” I thought. I thought of Jimmy Johnson’s headless body, and I wondered if he still rode his bike on his way home. I began to laugh when they helped me into the back of the car, and the laughter soon became maniacal once again.
“Sure we know all about her,” the officer said. “She believes she can turn into a giant cat with red eyes.”
“She’s a real nut-case,” the red headed officer said.
“But it’s true!” I exclaimed as he shut the door on my face.
They’d locked me inside the squad car with no way out—the doors had no handles, and wire mesh kept me from climbing into the front seat. At least I wasn’t handcuffed, but that wouldn’t do me much good if the old woman—the cat-woman—came back for me. She could break the glass of the windows and… a scream filled the air. My hackles rose along my neck and gooseflesh bulged on my skin. What scared me the most was the scream was my own, and I saw the whites of my eyes in the rearview mirror.
Fifteen minutes later the fire department showed up. “What are they doing here?” The large fire engine rounded the corner, and I saw firemen get out a hose. The house and bushes on the corner blocked half the fire engine, and I couldn’t see what the firemen did. “They can’t be washing away Jimmy’s blood! Don’t they need forensic evidence or something?” I had watched enough CSI Miami to know the importance of maintaining a crime scene. The way the firemen looked at me as they ambled by, secretive expressions, the way their lips hinted at smiles, brought the realization that something was very wrong.
An hour later the police officers came back. I looked up through the glass at “Red” who opened the door for me.
“Everything’s back to normal,” he told me with a feral smile. “Old Lady Jenkins doesn’t have much going for her upstairs, but she’s harmless.”
“But she really did turn into a jungle-cat!” I blurted.
He eyed me with suspicious narrowed eyes, and that’s when I saw them: cat-eyes that starred back at me from Red’s smiling face. Red’s feral smile broadened and he placed a heavy hand upon my shoulder as he pulled me out. I slumped over the trunk of the squad car away from him. Firemen laughed at me. My head swam. He leaned over my listless body, looked at me with those cat-eyes—those fucking vertical slits of nightmare—and I felt myself in a game of cat-and-mouse beneath his scrutiny.
“You saw her transform, eh?” he whispered in a hoarse voice. “Then she’ll be coming after you. You see, the boys in blue and I call her ‘mom’, and the boys at the fire station love her, too. She made us what we are today.”
He let my listless body go, and I slid to the street. He stepped back, and I saw the firemen laughing at me as they wound their fire hose into the fire engine. Shadows elongated from the firemen, the light from the fire engine on the other side of their synchronized work. They got into their fire engine and I watched it slowly pull away.
Red and his partner got into the squad car and took off. I still leaned against the police car as I sat, and when the car left I fell backwards. My head struck the pavement hard, bounced once, and I saw stars on a clear day. The sun shone down. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was think, “What the hell? What the hell happened here today?” A shadow slid over me, the sun high above and behind whoever approached. The person became a silhouette against the bright sun when I looked. A hand appeared to help me up, and I almost took it when I saw withered old flesh and long yellowed nails—the old woman.
I screamed and crawled on my back away from her. She just looked down and stepped to my side. I saw her fully once the sun didn’t hang behind her.
“Would you like to learn from me, young man?” she asked with a knowing smile. “There’s a lot you can learn from an old lady.”
My only response was to scream… and I haven’t stopped screaming yet. Screams fill my dreams, the nightmares of crimson cat-eyes that plague me. The psychologist hasn’t helped, but no one can unless I can convince them to believe me. I lost my children, my two sons. Supposedly I’ve gone crazy. That hurt the most, especially the knowledge that Daniel and Sam live in that same city with those… things. My children send me letters with pictures. I see them… their eyes. And I watch, careful to make sure they haven’t become one of “them.” I’ve contacted the Church to inquire about exorcism. The priest laughed at me when I suggested he exorcise the entire city. So I’m alone in this padded cell with no one to trust, no one to confide in.
I received a letter from Daniel yesterday, my oldest son. He’s coming to see me tomorrow. I saw the picture of him. He had red glowing eyes. My psychologist said it was just a trick of the camera, but I know better—Daniel’s one of them now. I have to free him. Death is the only option.
I have to kill my son.
If only they’d let me out of this damned straitjacket.
By John Miller
On Thanksgiving I walked to the gas station because dad’s car blocked mine in the driveway. Everyone was either talking religion and politics or sleeping off the turkey. My kids were in the fenced backyard playing with my brother’s step-children, and it seemed safe to slink off alone. I wondered why I was a loner while I walked to buy a pack of cigarettes. I thought about asking my brother if he wanted to go with me, but I remembered he’d quit smoking two years ago… supposedly. Sometimes when I drove him to his third-shift job—they only had one car—he borrowed cigarettes from me or bought a pack himself. I couldn’t ask if he wanted to buy smokes in front of the family.
Two blocks down and two lefts later I saw an old woman on her hands and knees in her backyard. I was in an alley, a shortcut meant to quicken the nicotine into my bloodstream. How I wished for a cigarette when I saw an old man lying next to her, and I wondered what I should do. I frowned and approached her, and I wondered whether that old man had died. “I’ll bet that’s her husband,” I muttered to myself. I wasn’t about to do CPR on him, and not just because I didn’t know how to perform it.
“Problems?” I asked as I stepped into her backyard with a sigh.
She looked up at me with blood-red eyes, and I jolted when I saw black cat-eye pupils that ached with intense need… sort of like hunger. To stall for time and to get a grip on myself—surely I had gone insane—I reached into my coat pocket and took out an empty pack of cigarettes.
“You look like you could use a smoke,” I told her holding the empty pack before me.
She reached out as I dropped the empty pack and muttered, “Oh, sorry!” The shadow of a plane from the nearby airport swept over us when the empty pack struck the yard. I intended to run as soon as her eyes left mine to reach for the pack, perhaps to hand it back to me, common courtesy and all that. Her eyes never left mine, and I realized the rumbling I heard wasn’t the jet passing overhead, but came from her own lips. The savage growl grew louder as she rose, and I saw blood drip from her long and ragged claws. I was closer now, had a better view of the old man in the grass. Something purple had been ripped from his body, torn away like a chunk of meat from a thick slab of sirloin. The torn hole in his side faced opposite the way I had approached them, and now I saw the purple clump next to his body. From anatomy class in college I knew it was a kidney.
It’s funny how the mind reacts to stress and fear. Shock entered my system and it cloaked my mind somewhat from the terror that threatened to overcome my facilities. A part of my brain screamed in desperate panic for me to run screaming, but another part filled with grotesque fascination as to what sort of creature the old woman was. Logic told me the old woman had the power to bring me down since she was strong enough to overpower the old man—although old, he was quite large. If she could pull a chunk of flesh out of his body like a grizzly bear, what could she do to me?
When she took a precarious step toward me and looked down around the area of my own kidneys, the screaming and panicked portion of my brain overrode the analytical part.
I ran like hell.
Do you remember when you were a child running from an adult, the sound of heavy footfalls behind you and the realization that no matter how fast you were, no matter how quick your little legs moved, the adult behind you was faster? You knew you had it. That is what it felt like as the old woman chased me and her shoes slammed against the earth just behind me. I heard her footfalls that fell faster than my own long strides, and my skin crawled in anticipation of her bloody touch.
At the alley I dodged left, and she skirted past me like a ravenous wolf that had just missed its prey. I saw sharp canines in her elongated mouth, her jaw mutated, and her blood-red eyes filled with unholy need to rend my flesh and suck the meaty pulp from my kidneys. I barked a laugh of relief to have escaped death—if only momentarily—and I also laughed at the thought of how smoking kills people, and how my desire to buy cigarettes had brought me face-to-face with death.
Make no mistake: smoking kills!
I don’t know what other people would have thought in that situation, but panic did something to my brain, filled it with chemicals and stress and possibly endorphins—shit, I don’t know. Any logical response I would have had lost out to maniacal laughter and a bout of giddiness. Until the old woman’s shoes found traction in the alley’s loose gravel, and she loped after me again.
Somehow I made it to the street. The loose gravel of the alley offset the traction of the old woman’s shoes, but my sneakers had no problem and I never slid once. In the street, however, I heard something scratch on the concrete. When I turned right to head back home—as if that were possible—I sneaked a look back and saw the old woman had discarded her shoes, and her calves had elongated to something that resembled the lower legs of a wolf’s hindquarters. Long, dangerous claws raked the pavement. Scratchity, scrathity, thump-thump! Scratchity-scratchity, thump-thump! Her claws scratched and paws struck the pavement. Her shadow slid up beside my own as I ran, then her shadow enveloped mine. I felt her hot breath on my neck like some rancid beast from hell, Cerberus or something.
In novels authors tell how fear goads people into almost superhuman feats of speed, bouts of fury for survival, or something of the sort. In real life fear thickens movement and makes it sluggish, like a deer caught in the headlong glare of a car’s headlights at night. I’m not talking about normal fear or even a bout of terror, but primal horrific horror that clamped down on the muscles of my legs and constricted my lungs and throat. I felt my face turn red and I knew I was dead. I wondered if my kidney would look like the old man’s with a slightly different hue.
That was when I saw Jimmy Johnson, the town drunk.
Jimmy never drove a car anywhere because of the countless DUI citations. He rode his ten-speed bike everywhere he went, usually just to the grocery store and local bars. Jimmy burst around the corner with a plastic sack of alcohol suspended from the handlebars, and his face frowned when he saw me. I don’t think he saw the old woman behind me because my body blocked his view, but it registered on his face that collision was inevitable. I leapt high, but at that speed I barely jumped and his handlebars rammed my hip. Shock gelled everything in slow-motion, and I saw his expression’s slow turn to sheer terror when he saw her. As my body turned upside-down, I saw the old woman’s body and realized I was wrong—she hadn’t the legs of a wolf at all, but the legs of a big cat, a lion to be exact. “Don’t lions have round eyes?” the thought floated in my head as my body hovered in space, somersaulted, and plummeted to the ground.
I landed on my ass in a splatter-pattern of red, and I skidded eight feet. Before I quit sliding, I leapt up and sprinted. I felt my buttocks and realized it wasn’t my blood I had landed in, and I risked a glance back. Jimmy still pedaled his bike, but without a head. I saw dark fluid in the plastic sack suspended from his handlebars, and the bulge of the sack seemed the right size for a human head. A broken bottle of vodka littered the street, the acid smell strong enough to reach me from that distance.
The old woman had her back to me, and she had a furry tan-colored head and pointed cat-ears now. A long tail looped from beneath her dress—I hadn’t even realized she’d been wearing a dress in my panic. She turned and charged me again, her body now a large lioness whose dress impeded her movement.
I made it to the corner and sprinted right. The dress she wore bound her hindquarters, and it allowed me to remain in front of her by a good twenty feet. She swiped at her dress with her paw-like hands and snarled in frustration, and her crimson cat-eyes met mine again as I rounded the corner. Distracted, I slammed into a car in the middle of the street, and I slid up its hood. I tried to keep going but two car doors opened and four strong arms held my own. I saw the lights of a squad car.
“Help me, please!” I screamed. “She’s after me!”
“Who’s after you?” the policeman to my right demanded. “I think you scratched the hood of my car, buddy.”
“Probably drunk or hallucinating on drugs,” the red-haired officer retorted.
“What?” I asked, perplexed. I shook my head in confusion and pointed with my thumb over my back. “The cat-woman!”
“Oh, the cat-woman,” the dark-haired officer retorted. “We know all about her.”
“You do?” I said, overjoyed.
The intersection I had just sprinted from was empty. No cat-woman. “She must smell the cops,” I thought. I thought of Jimmy Johnson’s headless body, and I wondered if he still rode his bike on his way home. I began to laugh when they helped me into the back of the car, and the laughter soon became maniacal once again.
“Sure we know all about her,” the officer said. “She believes she can turn into a giant cat with red eyes.”
“She’s a real nut-case,” the red headed officer said.
“But it’s true!” I exclaimed as he shut the door on my face.
They’d locked me inside the squad car with no way out—the doors had no handles, and wire mesh kept me from climbing into the front seat. At least I wasn’t handcuffed, but that wouldn’t do me much good if the old woman—the cat-woman—came back for me. She could break the glass of the windows and… a scream filled the air. My hackles rose along my neck and gooseflesh bulged on my skin. What scared me the most was the scream was my own, and I saw the whites of my eyes in the rearview mirror.
Fifteen minutes later the fire department showed up. “What are they doing here?” The large fire engine rounded the corner, and I saw firemen get out a hose. The house and bushes on the corner blocked half the fire engine, and I couldn’t see what the firemen did. “They can’t be washing away Jimmy’s blood! Don’t they need forensic evidence or something?” I had watched enough CSI Miami to know the importance of maintaining a crime scene. The way the firemen looked at me as they ambled by, secretive expressions, the way their lips hinted at smiles, brought the realization that something was very wrong.
An hour later the police officers came back. I looked up through the glass at “Red” who opened the door for me.
“Everything’s back to normal,” he told me with a feral smile. “Old Lady Jenkins doesn’t have much going for her upstairs, but she’s harmless.”
“But she really did turn into a jungle-cat!” I blurted.
He eyed me with suspicious narrowed eyes, and that’s when I saw them: cat-eyes that starred back at me from Red’s smiling face. Red’s feral smile broadened and he placed a heavy hand upon my shoulder as he pulled me out. I slumped over the trunk of the squad car away from him. Firemen laughed at me. My head swam. He leaned over my listless body, looked at me with those cat-eyes—those fucking vertical slits of nightmare—and I felt myself in a game of cat-and-mouse beneath his scrutiny.
“You saw her transform, eh?” he whispered in a hoarse voice. “Then she’ll be coming after you. You see, the boys in blue and I call her ‘mom’, and the boys at the fire station love her, too. She made us what we are today.”
He let my listless body go, and I slid to the street. He stepped back, and I saw the firemen laughing at me as they wound their fire hose into the fire engine. Shadows elongated from the firemen, the light from the fire engine on the other side of their synchronized work. They got into their fire engine and I watched it slowly pull away.
Red and his partner got into the squad car and took off. I still leaned against the police car as I sat, and when the car left I fell backwards. My head struck the pavement hard, bounced once, and I saw stars on a clear day. The sun shone down. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was think, “What the hell? What the hell happened here today?” A shadow slid over me, the sun high above and behind whoever approached. The person became a silhouette against the bright sun when I looked. A hand appeared to help me up, and I almost took it when I saw withered old flesh and long yellowed nails—the old woman.
I screamed and crawled on my back away from her. She just looked down and stepped to my side. I saw her fully once the sun didn’t hang behind her.
“Would you like to learn from me, young man?” she asked with a knowing smile. “There’s a lot you can learn from an old lady.”
My only response was to scream… and I haven’t stopped screaming yet. Screams fill my dreams, the nightmares of crimson cat-eyes that plague me. The psychologist hasn’t helped, but no one can unless I can convince them to believe me. I lost my children, my two sons. Supposedly I’ve gone crazy. That hurt the most, especially the knowledge that Daniel and Sam live in that same city with those… things. My children send me letters with pictures. I see them… their eyes. And I watch, careful to make sure they haven’t become one of “them.” I’ve contacted the Church to inquire about exorcism. The priest laughed at me when I suggested he exorcise the entire city. So I’m alone in this padded cell with no one to trust, no one to confide in.
I received a letter from Daniel yesterday, my oldest son. He’s coming to see me tomorrow. I saw the picture of him. He had red glowing eyes. My psychologist said it was just a trick of the camera, but I know better—Daniel’s one of them now. I have to free him. Death is the only option.
I have to kill my son.
If only they’d let me out of this damned straitjacket.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Jenny's Magic by Michael Merriam
Jenny's Magic
by Michael Merriam
"What--what happened?" the little girl asked, staring up at the large orange tomcat.
The cat seemed to smile down at her, looming over her where he sat in a tree. He leaned further over, his large green eyes blinking owlishly at her where she lay on the grass.
"We've struck a deal," the orange tomcat said. "You said, 'I wish I could understand what cats say.' When I asked if you really would give anything, you sighed and said you would a second time." The cat's whiskers twitched in amusement. "So I granted your wish."
Jenny stood. "I can understand you!"
"Yes," agreed the cat. "All it cost was your magic."
Jenny stopped the little dance she had begun. "My magic? What do you mean, my magic?"
"I meant what I said," the cat replied. He groomed a paw, giving it several licks before turning back to her. "You won't miss it.
"But I didn't know."
The orange cat swished his tail. "It doesn't matter if you knew. A deal is a deal."
The cat jumped down from the tree and dashed away.
"Wait!" she cried out. "You can't just take my magic and leave." She chased the cat, but he slipped between some shrubs and was gone.
Jenny sank down onto the grass. "But I didn't even know I had magic," she whispered.
#
Jenny told her mother the tale of the orange tomcat stealing her magic. Her mother made appropriate noises of sympathy, then shooed Jenny from the room.
Her father had been more useful. He told her to find the cat and trick him into giving her magic back.
After lunch she packed a small bottle of orange juice and a dozen graham crackers in a backpack. Satisfied with her provisions, she went in search of the cat who had tricked her.
As Jenny walked toward the park, she noticed how the day, which had started out with the promise of bright sunshine, seemed grey. The petunias in her mother's flower bed looked tired and droopy. The dank smell of moldy bread filled her nose and refused to budge.
This made Jenny's own mood gloomy as she trudged along the sidewalk. She began to think it was hopeless. After all, how could she expect to find the cat again? He was probably blocks away by now.
"He's probably using my magic to make himself invisible," Jenny muttered.
"Oh, no, we don't need human magic to be invisible. We can do that on our own."
Jenny looked down at a small calico sitting at the end of a walk leading to an old house. The calico swished her tail slowly.
"What?" Jenny said.
"Cats can become invisible at will, it's part of our magic," the calico said.
"How did you know I was talking about another cat?"
"What else is there to talk about?" the calico said. "You are searching for Grimtooth."
"Grimtooth?" Jenny asked.
"The one who tricked you into giving up your magic."
Jenny sat down on the sidewalk. She pulled her juice from the backpack and took a drink. It had a sour, tart taste that surprised her. Jenny scowled at the bottle of juice, then regarded the calico. "Can you tell me where to find him?"
"No, but you should have no trouble if you look properly at the problem."
"The problem is, I've lost my magic," Jenny said.
"And now you want it back," the calico replied, standing and stretching.
"But how to find him?"
"Well, if it were my magic, I would call back what was mine, not look for who took it."
"So I should call for my magic," Jenny agreed. "But it isn't my magic anymore."
"Isn't it?" the calico asked, rubbing against Jenny's leg. "Although he tricked you out of it, it is still your magic, from you."
"So since it's my magic, I can find it?" Jenny seemed to be getting the idea.
The tiny calico purred loudly. "Very good."
Jenny took another sip of juice and pulled out the stale graham crackers. "But to call my magic I'll need my magic!" she exclaimed. "And he took my magic." Jenny's eyes started to water.
The calico climbed into Jenny's lap. "This is no time for tears, kitten. The loss of your magic makes your world seem joyless, but you must use what you have left to find the rest."
Jenny stopped sniffling and ran a small hand down the cat's back. "You mean I still have some magic?"
The calico sighed and curled up in Jenny's lap, purring. "Of course you still have magic. How do you think you can understand the language of cats? To speak to a magical creature, you must use magic." The tiny cat rolled over so Jenny could scratch her stomach. "I suppose I will be in trouble for talking to you directly. We have rules about these things. I'm supposed to talk in riddles."
"Well, thank you," Jenny said.
"You're welcome," the cat replied, climbing from Jenny's lap. "Grimtooth should never have tricked you; you're only a kitten."
Jenny stood and watched the cat walk to the house at the end of the walk and start scratching at the door.
Jenny's mood was improved, and she walked to the park with a lighter step. She found the spot where she had met the orange cat and considered.
If she did find the cat, she needed a way to trick him into giving her magic back. Jenny was worried. Grimtooth was clever. Would she trick him, or would she make matters worse? Jenny decided to consult her father.
#
"You will need to find the cat's weakness," her father said, "I'd start with either something you know cats dislike or something cats can't resist."
Jenny took this advice to heart. She made a list of all the things cats hated. She checked her fairy tale books and encyclopedia. She made a quick trip outside for one item, then returned to her room and sought out the second thing she wanted. Jenny placed both objects in her closet before running downstairs for dinner.
#
Jenny lay awake. When she could wait no more, she slipped from bed and crossed her room. She went to the closet and pulled out the items. She opened one of her windows.
Jenny took a handful of fresh catnip and rubbed it along the windowsill. She hoped it would help call Grimtooth to her.
She had read in one of the stories that the number three was magical, and in another that names held power. Combined with her magic, she thought it would enough to call him. She leaned out the window and whispered, "Thief who stole my magic, Grimtooth, Grimtooth, Grimtooth, come to me now."
She watched the darkness for the cat, but all she saw was night and shadows, and all she heard was the rustling of the trees. Jenny started to return to bed, when two glowing eyes appeared on the lawn.
"Grimtooth?"
"What do you want?" the cat hissed.
"I want my magic back."
"You gave it up fairly. It is mine now." The cat slunk closer to the window, his nose sniffing the air.
"I didn't give it up; you tricked me. And you didn't even trick me properly. In the stories the victim always has a chance, but I didn't understand what was happening."
Grimtooth glared at her, his nose twitching rapidly. "It doesn't matter if I did it properly or not. Good-night, kitten." The cat turned away, his tail held high.
"I'll call you again. I'll call you until you give me back my magic," Jenny whispered fiercely.
The cat spun around and stalked her direction, tail low to the ground in annoyance. "That would be very foolish, human child. You should not anger me."
"I'm not afraid of you."
Grimtooth settled under the window and bunched his muscles. "You should be. I could sneak into your room as you sleep and draw the breath from your lungs, or claw out your eyes and bite off your tongue." The cat sprang toward her.
Jenny reached for the second item and stepped away from the window.
Grimtooth landed on her windowsill, his back arched and his fur on end. He crouched and hissed.
Jenny raised the water rifle and fired.
The startled cat lost his footing and tumbled gracelessly to the bedroom floor. Jenny ran over and put her back up against the open window. She blasted him again, and Grimtooth dived under her bed. She closed the window, trapping the cat in the room.
Jenny knelt down and peered under her bed. A pair of glowing green eyes regarded her.
"I didn't want to do this, you know," Jenny whispered. "I just want what's mine."
"I shan't give it back to you," Grimtooth hissed. "You would just waste it. You don't even know what you've lost."
"I know ever since you stole it, everything seems dreary and boring. You took my happiness away."
"No, I took your magic. I took your sense of wonder." The cat swished his tail. "May I come out from under the bed?"
"Okay," she said. "I've got the doors and windows closed, so don't even bother trying to get away."
Grimtooth crawled out from under the bed. He jumped up on it and started grooming.
Jenny settled on the bed next to him. "So you took my sense of wonder?"
"Yes. That is human magic. Humans can be amazed at the world around them. Cats cannot. We have a highly developed sense of mystery, and we are more magical than most creatures, but we cannot experience wonder. A sunrise is a sunrise. One mouse tastes much like another."
"It must be terrible to live like that."
"Humans live without it all the time," said Grimtooth. "They allow themselves to believe that things are more important. They pretend to be happy. But they forget what happiness is."
"I won't forget," Jenny protested.
"Oh, but you will. The other humans will tell you it's all childish rubbish until you agree. Then you will be just like them. You'll grow up, have kittens of your own, and spend your days chasing what you think is happiness. Your magic will be wasted. That's why it's best to stop this foolishness and allow me to leave."
"You're not leaving until I have my magic back."
The cat regarded her. "I shall set up a noisy ruckus. Your parents will awake and set me free." Grimtooth jumped up on the windowsill. "Now, be a good kitten, and open the window."
"No."
"Very well," Grimtooth said. He took a deep breath, preparing to howl at the top of his lungs.
"If you wake up my parents, I'll tell them you bit my hand," Jenny said quickly. "I'll act sick and make myself throw-up. They'll think you've got rabies."
"You wouldn't," Grimtooth muttered.
She placed her fingernails against her skin and started to squeeze. "I'll do it."
"You're evil," Grimtooth said.
"I'm nine," Jenny countered.
Grimtooth locked his eyes on Jenny's. "Very well."
Jenny started to smile, but a buzzing filled her head and the world went black.
#
Jenny awoke on the floor of her bedroom. The sun shone through the window, warming her face. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Grimtooth lay curled up in a ball on her bed, watching her. The cat stood, jumped from the bed, walked across the room, and leapt to the windowsill.
"Meow."
Jenny stood and walked to the window. She pulled it open, and the smell of fresh-cut grass and morning flowers filled her nose. Grimtooth leapt to the ground below. He turned toward her, hissed, and bounded away.
Jenny looked out at the new day and smiled in wonder at its possibilities.
by Michael Merriam
"What--what happened?" the little girl asked, staring up at the large orange tomcat.
The cat seemed to smile down at her, looming over her where he sat in a tree. He leaned further over, his large green eyes blinking owlishly at her where she lay on the grass.
"We've struck a deal," the orange tomcat said. "You said, 'I wish I could understand what cats say.' When I asked if you really would give anything, you sighed and said you would a second time." The cat's whiskers twitched in amusement. "So I granted your wish."
Jenny stood. "I can understand you!"
"Yes," agreed the cat. "All it cost was your magic."
Jenny stopped the little dance she had begun. "My magic? What do you mean, my magic?"
"I meant what I said," the cat replied. He groomed a paw, giving it several licks before turning back to her. "You won't miss it.
"But I didn't know."
The orange cat swished his tail. "It doesn't matter if you knew. A deal is a deal."
The cat jumped down from the tree and dashed away.
"Wait!" she cried out. "You can't just take my magic and leave." She chased the cat, but he slipped between some shrubs and was gone.
Jenny sank down onto the grass. "But I didn't even know I had magic," she whispered.
#
Jenny told her mother the tale of the orange tomcat stealing her magic. Her mother made appropriate noises of sympathy, then shooed Jenny from the room.
Her father had been more useful. He told her to find the cat and trick him into giving her magic back.
After lunch she packed a small bottle of orange juice and a dozen graham crackers in a backpack. Satisfied with her provisions, she went in search of the cat who had tricked her.
As Jenny walked toward the park, she noticed how the day, which had started out with the promise of bright sunshine, seemed grey. The petunias in her mother's flower bed looked tired and droopy. The dank smell of moldy bread filled her nose and refused to budge.
This made Jenny's own mood gloomy as she trudged along the sidewalk. She began to think it was hopeless. After all, how could she expect to find the cat again? He was probably blocks away by now.
"He's probably using my magic to make himself invisible," Jenny muttered.
"Oh, no, we don't need human magic to be invisible. We can do that on our own."
Jenny looked down at a small calico sitting at the end of a walk leading to an old house. The calico swished her tail slowly.
"What?" Jenny said.
"Cats can become invisible at will, it's part of our magic," the calico said.
"How did you know I was talking about another cat?"
"What else is there to talk about?" the calico said. "You are searching for Grimtooth."
"Grimtooth?" Jenny asked.
"The one who tricked you into giving up your magic."
Jenny sat down on the sidewalk. She pulled her juice from the backpack and took a drink. It had a sour, tart taste that surprised her. Jenny scowled at the bottle of juice, then regarded the calico. "Can you tell me where to find him?"
"No, but you should have no trouble if you look properly at the problem."
"The problem is, I've lost my magic," Jenny said.
"And now you want it back," the calico replied, standing and stretching.
"But how to find him?"
"Well, if it were my magic, I would call back what was mine, not look for who took it."
"So I should call for my magic," Jenny agreed. "But it isn't my magic anymore."
"Isn't it?" the calico asked, rubbing against Jenny's leg. "Although he tricked you out of it, it is still your magic, from you."
"So since it's my magic, I can find it?" Jenny seemed to be getting the idea.
The tiny calico purred loudly. "Very good."
Jenny took another sip of juice and pulled out the stale graham crackers. "But to call my magic I'll need my magic!" she exclaimed. "And he took my magic." Jenny's eyes started to water.
The calico climbed into Jenny's lap. "This is no time for tears, kitten. The loss of your magic makes your world seem joyless, but you must use what you have left to find the rest."
Jenny stopped sniffling and ran a small hand down the cat's back. "You mean I still have some magic?"
The calico sighed and curled up in Jenny's lap, purring. "Of course you still have magic. How do you think you can understand the language of cats? To speak to a magical creature, you must use magic." The tiny cat rolled over so Jenny could scratch her stomach. "I suppose I will be in trouble for talking to you directly. We have rules about these things. I'm supposed to talk in riddles."
"Well, thank you," Jenny said.
"You're welcome," the cat replied, climbing from Jenny's lap. "Grimtooth should never have tricked you; you're only a kitten."
Jenny stood and watched the cat walk to the house at the end of the walk and start scratching at the door.
Jenny's mood was improved, and she walked to the park with a lighter step. She found the spot where she had met the orange cat and considered.
If she did find the cat, she needed a way to trick him into giving her magic back. Jenny was worried. Grimtooth was clever. Would she trick him, or would she make matters worse? Jenny decided to consult her father.
#
"You will need to find the cat's weakness," her father said, "I'd start with either something you know cats dislike or something cats can't resist."
Jenny took this advice to heart. She made a list of all the things cats hated. She checked her fairy tale books and encyclopedia. She made a quick trip outside for one item, then returned to her room and sought out the second thing she wanted. Jenny placed both objects in her closet before running downstairs for dinner.
#
Jenny lay awake. When she could wait no more, she slipped from bed and crossed her room. She went to the closet and pulled out the items. She opened one of her windows.
Jenny took a handful of fresh catnip and rubbed it along the windowsill. She hoped it would help call Grimtooth to her.
She had read in one of the stories that the number three was magical, and in another that names held power. Combined with her magic, she thought it would enough to call him. She leaned out the window and whispered, "Thief who stole my magic, Grimtooth, Grimtooth, Grimtooth, come to me now."
She watched the darkness for the cat, but all she saw was night and shadows, and all she heard was the rustling of the trees. Jenny started to return to bed, when two glowing eyes appeared on the lawn.
"Grimtooth?"
"What do you want?" the cat hissed.
"I want my magic back."
"You gave it up fairly. It is mine now." The cat slunk closer to the window, his nose sniffing the air.
"I didn't give it up; you tricked me. And you didn't even trick me properly. In the stories the victim always has a chance, but I didn't understand what was happening."
Grimtooth glared at her, his nose twitching rapidly. "It doesn't matter if I did it properly or not. Good-night, kitten." The cat turned away, his tail held high.
"I'll call you again. I'll call you until you give me back my magic," Jenny whispered fiercely.
The cat spun around and stalked her direction, tail low to the ground in annoyance. "That would be very foolish, human child. You should not anger me."
"I'm not afraid of you."
Grimtooth settled under the window and bunched his muscles. "You should be. I could sneak into your room as you sleep and draw the breath from your lungs, or claw out your eyes and bite off your tongue." The cat sprang toward her.
Jenny reached for the second item and stepped away from the window.
Grimtooth landed on her windowsill, his back arched and his fur on end. He crouched and hissed.
Jenny raised the water rifle and fired.
The startled cat lost his footing and tumbled gracelessly to the bedroom floor. Jenny ran over and put her back up against the open window. She blasted him again, and Grimtooth dived under her bed. She closed the window, trapping the cat in the room.
Jenny knelt down and peered under her bed. A pair of glowing green eyes regarded her.
"I didn't want to do this, you know," Jenny whispered. "I just want what's mine."
"I shan't give it back to you," Grimtooth hissed. "You would just waste it. You don't even know what you've lost."
"I know ever since you stole it, everything seems dreary and boring. You took my happiness away."
"No, I took your magic. I took your sense of wonder." The cat swished his tail. "May I come out from under the bed?"
"Okay," she said. "I've got the doors and windows closed, so don't even bother trying to get away."
Grimtooth crawled out from under the bed. He jumped up on it and started grooming.
Jenny settled on the bed next to him. "So you took my sense of wonder?"
"Yes. That is human magic. Humans can be amazed at the world around them. Cats cannot. We have a highly developed sense of mystery, and we are more magical than most creatures, but we cannot experience wonder. A sunrise is a sunrise. One mouse tastes much like another."
"It must be terrible to live like that."
"Humans live without it all the time," said Grimtooth. "They allow themselves to believe that things are more important. They pretend to be happy. But they forget what happiness is."
"I won't forget," Jenny protested.
"Oh, but you will. The other humans will tell you it's all childish rubbish until you agree. Then you will be just like them. You'll grow up, have kittens of your own, and spend your days chasing what you think is happiness. Your magic will be wasted. That's why it's best to stop this foolishness and allow me to leave."
"You're not leaving until I have my magic back."
The cat regarded her. "I shall set up a noisy ruckus. Your parents will awake and set me free." Grimtooth jumped up on the windowsill. "Now, be a good kitten, and open the window."
"No."
"Very well," Grimtooth said. He took a deep breath, preparing to howl at the top of his lungs.
"If you wake up my parents, I'll tell them you bit my hand," Jenny said quickly. "I'll act sick and make myself throw-up. They'll think you've got rabies."
"You wouldn't," Grimtooth muttered.
She placed her fingernails against her skin and started to squeeze. "I'll do it."
"You're evil," Grimtooth said.
"I'm nine," Jenny countered.
Grimtooth locked his eyes on Jenny's. "Very well."
Jenny started to smile, but a buzzing filled her head and the world went black.
#
Jenny awoke on the floor of her bedroom. The sun shone through the window, warming her face. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Grimtooth lay curled up in a ball on her bed, watching her. The cat stood, jumped from the bed, walked across the room, and leapt to the windowsill.
"Meow."
Jenny stood and walked to the window. She pulled it open, and the smell of fresh-cut grass and morning flowers filled her nose. Grimtooth leapt to the ground below. He turned toward her, hissed, and bounded away.
Jenny looked out at the new day and smiled in wonder at its possibilities.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Unwanted Pet by Jeanna Tendean
The Unwanted Pet
by Jeanna Tendean
Disgusted, he watched it, though hidden from it’s view. He stayed hidden from it most days. He realized that wanting it had been a colossal mistake.
It never shut up or stopped eating. It laid around all day stinking up the room.
And the cries it made when it mated turned his stomach sour like rotting fish did.
The worst part, though, was that it tried to touch him with its filthy paws and mouth.
So one night, when it drifted off to sleep, he quietly crept up and smothered it to death.
And then the cat was happy and free to roam about…
by Jeanna Tendean
Disgusted, he watched it, though hidden from it’s view. He stayed hidden from it most days. He realized that wanting it had been a colossal mistake.
It never shut up or stopped eating. It laid around all day stinking up the room.
And the cries it made when it mated turned his stomach sour like rotting fish did.
The worst part, though, was that it tried to touch him with its filthy paws and mouth.
So one night, when it drifted off to sleep, he quietly crept up and smothered it to death.
And then the cat was happy and free to roam about…
Monday, August 16, 2010
Bad Cat Week Starts with Mr. Whiskers by Graeme Reynolds
Mr. Whiskers
by Graeme Reynolds
Mark drifted in warmth and darkness. Images flashed through his mind; random, jumbled but tied together by a subconscious narrative thread that defied logic.
He could hear knocking. Steady, regular. It tugged at him, puncturing the womb that his mind floated in. Awareness leaked in.
No, he thought, not knocking. His mind processed the sound, rising from the depths of his dream. There was a weight on his chest, restricting his breathing. The weight twitched in time to the sound.
Hyunk! Hyunk! Hyunk!
The fog cleared from his mind in an instant. His eyes snapped open and saw two flat green disks stating back at him.
Hyunk! Hyunk! Kaff! Squelch!
The cat’s mouth opened and a lump of partially digested food, grass and hair appeared on the duvet. The severed head of a mouse stared at him with dead black eyes.
“Oh God! Gerrofoutofityabastard!” he yelled, throwing back the covers.
The cat leaped from the bed and vanished into the darkness. Within moments he could hear it being noisily sick somewhere else in the house. He looked at the alarm clock. 4.15am. Mark groaned.
“Please Mark”, he whined in a falsetto imitation of Joanne. “Look after Mr. Whiskers while I go away. It’s only for a couple of days and he’ll be no trouble.”
Yeah, right. So far the thing had stolen his dinner from the plate, sprayed acrid urine across his laptop and now blown chunks of mouse all over the duvet. This was not Mark’s definition of being no trouble.
He got out of bed and felt something warm squelch under his feet. He put on the bedroom light, and sure enough, there was the rest of the mouse – stretched out over the floor of the bedroom - a drawn out string of entrails with sporadic patches of blood soaked fur that poked out from between Mark’s toes.
“Aw man, that’s gross!” he muttered, and hopped to the bathroom to clean his foot.
Jo had inherited the cat; a scraggy, flea-bitten ginger tom, from her aunt about a month ago, after the silly old cow had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck. Mark had disliked the cat instantly. There had been times when he had caught it looking at him with a strange expression on its face that made him uneasy. When Jo had to go away on a business trip, she had pleaded with him to house sit and look after the animal. He was regretting his decision.
He walked back to the bedroom, pulled on a pair of shorts and headed downstairs, ensuring that the lights were on so that any other presents lying around on the floor could be avoided. Sure enough, on the stairs was a reddish brown mass with wisps of steam curling from it.
Nice, he thought, stepping around it and continuing down the stairs. A flash of orange fur between his feet made him stumble, and for a moment he teetered, stepping backwards to catch his balance.
Squelch!
”Oh for…are you trying to kill me?”
The cat flicked its tail at him and wandered off into the living room. Mark was sure it was laughing. Cursing, he hopped to the downstairs bathroom to clean his foot again, and then headed to the living room. Mr. Whiskers was lying on Mark’s suit jacket that had fallen from the door where he had hung it the night before. The cat scratched itself and clouds of ginger fur filled the air, coating the expensive black material with a layer of hair and flecks of dandruff.
“OK Mr. Whiskers, I think it’s time you went outside for a while,” he said, and reached towards the animal.
Mr. Whiskers disagreed. The cat arched its back and growled at him, swiping Mark’s outstretched hand with razor-sharp claws. Blood welled up in the parallel tears in his skin. The cat ran past him before he had a chance to react, disappearing into one of the other rooms.
“Bastard cat! I’ll deal with you later,” he growled after the retreating animal. He headed to the bathroom to dress his wound, leaving spots of blood on Jo’s expensive cream carpet in his wake.
After ten minutes or so, the bleeding had stopped. Mark’s head was thick with fatigue, but there was no point in going back to bed. He had to be up in an hour, and there was still the matter of cleaning up the mess.
Jo kept the cleaning things in the cellar, along with her suitcases and a bewildering array of junk that she refused to simply throw away. Holding his injured hand, he opened the cellar door and peered into the darkness below. At the bottom of the steep wooden stairs lay Jo. Dressed in her business suit, her legs bent beneath her, and her head at an unnatural angle.
“Oh my god! Jo!” he yelled, and ran down the stairs to reach her.
Something orange and hairy entangled itself in Mark’s legs and he plummeted head first down the stairs. As he fell he saw Mr. Whiskers on the staircase, licking his genitals.
“I’m going to kill that fucking cat,” he thought before he landed beside his girlfriend with a wet snap.
Mark lay on the concrete floor twitching. He couldn’t move his body – couldn’t even blink. Blackness closed in around the edge of his vision as he watched the cat strutting down the stairs. The animal brought its face up to his, filling his vision with malicious flat green disks.
Mr. Whiskers turned around and raised its tail into the air.
“No!” he thought, “It wouldn’t!”
It did.
The acrid urine hit Mark square in the face, burning his eyes and nostrils. Mark watched Mr. Whiskers saunter back up the stairs, pausing at the top to glance back at the dying man. The last thing Mark saw was a grin on the cat's face, and a last contemptuous flick of the tail before the darkness claimed him.
by Graeme Reynolds
Mark drifted in warmth and darkness. Images flashed through his mind; random, jumbled but tied together by a subconscious narrative thread that defied logic.
He could hear knocking. Steady, regular. It tugged at him, puncturing the womb that his mind floated in. Awareness leaked in.
No, he thought, not knocking. His mind processed the sound, rising from the depths of his dream. There was a weight on his chest, restricting his breathing. The weight twitched in time to the sound.
Hyunk! Hyunk! Hyunk!
The fog cleared from his mind in an instant. His eyes snapped open and saw two flat green disks stating back at him.
Hyunk! Hyunk! Kaff! Squelch!
The cat’s mouth opened and a lump of partially digested food, grass and hair appeared on the duvet. The severed head of a mouse stared at him with dead black eyes.
“Oh God! Gerrofoutofityabastard!” he yelled, throwing back the covers.
The cat leaped from the bed and vanished into the darkness. Within moments he could hear it being noisily sick somewhere else in the house. He looked at the alarm clock. 4.15am. Mark groaned.
“Please Mark”, he whined in a falsetto imitation of Joanne. “Look after Mr. Whiskers while I go away. It’s only for a couple of days and he’ll be no trouble.”
Yeah, right. So far the thing had stolen his dinner from the plate, sprayed acrid urine across his laptop and now blown chunks of mouse all over the duvet. This was not Mark’s definition of being no trouble.
He got out of bed and felt something warm squelch under his feet. He put on the bedroom light, and sure enough, there was the rest of the mouse – stretched out over the floor of the bedroom - a drawn out string of entrails with sporadic patches of blood soaked fur that poked out from between Mark’s toes.
“Aw man, that’s gross!” he muttered, and hopped to the bathroom to clean his foot.
Jo had inherited the cat; a scraggy, flea-bitten ginger tom, from her aunt about a month ago, after the silly old cow had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck. Mark had disliked the cat instantly. There had been times when he had caught it looking at him with a strange expression on its face that made him uneasy. When Jo had to go away on a business trip, she had pleaded with him to house sit and look after the animal. He was regretting his decision.
He walked back to the bedroom, pulled on a pair of shorts and headed downstairs, ensuring that the lights were on so that any other presents lying around on the floor could be avoided. Sure enough, on the stairs was a reddish brown mass with wisps of steam curling from it.
Nice, he thought, stepping around it and continuing down the stairs. A flash of orange fur between his feet made him stumble, and for a moment he teetered, stepping backwards to catch his balance.
Squelch!
”Oh for…are you trying to kill me?”
The cat flicked its tail at him and wandered off into the living room. Mark was sure it was laughing. Cursing, he hopped to the downstairs bathroom to clean his foot again, and then headed to the living room. Mr. Whiskers was lying on Mark’s suit jacket that had fallen from the door where he had hung it the night before. The cat scratched itself and clouds of ginger fur filled the air, coating the expensive black material with a layer of hair and flecks of dandruff.
“OK Mr. Whiskers, I think it’s time you went outside for a while,” he said, and reached towards the animal.
Mr. Whiskers disagreed. The cat arched its back and growled at him, swiping Mark’s outstretched hand with razor-sharp claws. Blood welled up in the parallel tears in his skin. The cat ran past him before he had a chance to react, disappearing into one of the other rooms.
“Bastard cat! I’ll deal with you later,” he growled after the retreating animal. He headed to the bathroom to dress his wound, leaving spots of blood on Jo’s expensive cream carpet in his wake.
After ten minutes or so, the bleeding had stopped. Mark’s head was thick with fatigue, but there was no point in going back to bed. He had to be up in an hour, and there was still the matter of cleaning up the mess.
Jo kept the cleaning things in the cellar, along with her suitcases and a bewildering array of junk that she refused to simply throw away. Holding his injured hand, he opened the cellar door and peered into the darkness below. At the bottom of the steep wooden stairs lay Jo. Dressed in her business suit, her legs bent beneath her, and her head at an unnatural angle.
“Oh my god! Jo!” he yelled, and ran down the stairs to reach her.
Something orange and hairy entangled itself in Mark’s legs and he plummeted head first down the stairs. As he fell he saw Mr. Whiskers on the staircase, licking his genitals.
“I’m going to kill that fucking cat,” he thought before he landed beside his girlfriend with a wet snap.
Mark lay on the concrete floor twitching. He couldn’t move his body – couldn’t even blink. Blackness closed in around the edge of his vision as he watched the cat strutting down the stairs. The animal brought its face up to his, filling his vision with malicious flat green disks.
Mr. Whiskers turned around and raised its tail into the air.
“No!” he thought, “It wouldn’t!”
It did.
The acrid urine hit Mark square in the face, burning his eyes and nostrils. Mark watched Mr. Whiskers saunter back up the stairs, pausing at the top to glance back at the dying man. The last thing Mark saw was a grin on the cat's face, and a last contemptuous flick of the tail before the darkness claimed him.
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