| |
––––––––
In spite of his fear that he was becoming his father, he had to admit: knowing he would be coming home to her later was nice. He still left the TV on, of course—although he did so now to keep Sadie company rather than to take the edge off a lonesome apartment—and his solitude still got to him on occasion, especially now that the holidays were in full swing, but, mostly, he was just enjoying his little experiment in cat ownership—more so than he would have guessed. He still worried about Bonnie and Clyde—his parakeet and goldfish, respectively—despite the fact that he’d suspended the birdcage from the ceiling and relocated the tank to the highest shelf of the entertainment center; but even that, like his loneliness, had subsided since Sadie’s arrival, mostly because she’d proven to have such a chill temperament.
None of which changed the fact that he’d taken his third step now toward becoming his father, a man who’d never met a stray he hadn’t eagerly taken in and who lived barely a mile away in a house overrun by animals and their odors. A house which, as a boy, had been the envy of his friends—but which now reeked of cat piss and dog excrement ... so much so that it was difficult even to keep caregivers. He’d never understood it, frankly, this need of his father’s (of anyone) to keep and maintain animals—my God, wasn’t life complicated enough? And yet here he was, David E. Smithson Jr., keeping and maintaining animals—a regular chip off the old block, he supposed.
No matter. The fact was he was glad for the company, and he showed his appreciation before heading off to his nightshift the same way he had every night since bringing Sadie home from the shelter—by feeding her some Feline Caviar Buffalo Cat Treats and scratching her behind the ears; after which she purred contentedly and brushed against his leg—covering his uniform with hair, but that was okay. He’d bought a lint roller. And then he was off, locking the door behind him and saying, “Now you be a good girl. No parties.” But if she meowed anything in response, he was unable to hear it.
––––––––
When he got home at 7:30 am, he found Sadie right away—sitting like a fuzzy triangle in the corner of the living room, apparently sound asleep. At least that’s what he’d thought until he knelt beside her and found her not only awake—but staring at the birdcage intently. Nor had she moved so much as an inch as he’d approached, which was unusual in itself.
“Sadie ... Hey.” He snapped his fingers next to her head, twice, and still there was nothing. “Hello? Earth to Sadie?”
At last she came out of it, stirring as if from a trance, and he scratched her behind the ears. “What was that?”
And she growled at him, not hard, and not long, but enough to make him pull his hand back.
“Hey!”
And then she leapt forward, shaking herself, and trotted away from him, padding first into the hallway and then the bathroom, where a moment later he heard her scratching in her cat box.
Well, that didn’t take long, he thought, and laughed a little to himself. The bloom was apparently off the rose.
He’d walked into the kitchen and begun unpacking the groceries when the doorbell rang—not just once but multiple times, as though the person ringing it were trying to be annoying. Harry.
“It’s open,” he hollered.
Harry poked his head around the door. “I, ah, thought I heard grocery bags. Borrow a soda?”
“Come in,” sighed David. “Hurry up, before the cat gets out.”
His neighbor crept in quickly and shut the door. “My God, he actually did it. Well, that’s that, then. You’re on your way.”
David tossed him a soda. “Hardly. I just—”
He paused as Bonnie flew between them and landed near Sadie’s dish, after which he and Harry just looked at each other.
“Hey, David. Your bird’s out.”
David peered at the cage, perplexed: sure enough, its little door hung wide open. He strode closer and stood on the end of the couch to inspect it.
“That’s weird,” he said, rubbing the latch between his fingers. “It’s almost like ...” He paused.
Harry popped open a can of soda and joined him. “What?”
David frowned, examining the parts. “The latch. It’s like it’s been melted. Look,” He made room for Harry on the couch and the man hopped up next to him. “Check it out. It’s just sloughed away like butter.”
Harry looked at it, squinting. “That is weird. And look at this,” He reached into the cage and fingered the rearmost bars. “These are warped, too.” He dabbed at them with his fingertips. “They’re still warm. You been pointing heat rays at your parakeet or what?”
“Maybe Sadie has heat vision,” David joked.
There was a distinct chirp followed by a tentative meow, and they looked toward the kitchen. “Uh-oh,” said David. He hopped down from the coach and hurried toward them—but was instantly relieved when he saw the two just checking each other out ... amiably, it seemed. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“And now for the bad news,” said Harry, and laughed.
“What do you mean?” asked David, watching them carry on.
Harry finished his soda and crushed the can in his fist. “The bad news is ... she’ll be no good as a mouser.”
And then they both laughed, and David let them be as he began preparing dinner and Harry invited himself to stay.
––––––––
By the time David’s lunch hour rolled around the snow was coming down in sheets and the radio had warned of more to come, possibly as much as 6 inches. He was quite frankly exhausted from trudging through it when he collapsed in his chair next to the heat radiator in Building #4 and sat his lunch pail on the floor.
Because that was the thing about snow in his line of work—he was a night watchman for Community Colleges of Spokane—you had to do your rounds. If you didn’t, the evidence, or lack thereof, was there for all to see. He stripped off his shoes and socks, thinking about Bonnie, and sat them on the radiator, wondering where the parakeet had disappeared to, and if, when she turned up, Sadie would be as docile in an empty house as she had been while he and Harry watched. He picked up his lunchbox and sat it on his lap, thinking about the cat’s weird behavior when he’d gotten home: the frozen manner, the dazed eyes, and thinking, too, about the melted latch.
You been pointing heat rays at your parakeet or what?
Maybe Sadie has heat vision.
He had to laugh a little. She had been staring at it when he’d gotten home. He unlatched the pail but paused before opening it. But really—how had the thing gotten like that? Did he have a poltergeist? Was that it?
He watched as the snow drifted down, turning the campus into a necropolis. Then he opened the lunch pail and looked at its contents, wondering how many baloney sandwiches a guy could eat before he loosened up his budget and opted to live a little. No matter. He had vegetable soup in his little Thermos and a chilled Pepsi right outside the door —he’d placed it in the snow at the beginning of his shift—so how bad could it be? He unscrewed the cap of the Thermos and swished his spoon around in the broth—when he was distracted by an enormous gray cat, just looking at him through the glass.
Well, hello there, he thought, even as he lifted a spoonful to his mouth—and realized suddenly that it contained not just canned vegetables but Bonnie’s little head.
––––––––
He was still brooding over it even as he pulled into his driveway, wondering how the thing had gotten there and when precisely she’d killed it—and why the soup, for God’s sake? His mind felt numb as he thought about it: There’d been no blood on the counter, he was sure of that. So that meant she had killed Bonnie elsewhere and literally carried the head for whatever distance to his soup, probably when it was still on the stove, but again, why, in God’s name?
He looked up at his apartment window after he’d gotten out of his truck, he didn’t know why, and saw Sadie sitting in the sill, staring down at him, it seemed. Hey, you little psychopath, he thought, as the snow fluttered down and clung to his face. Have you been a good girl?
He was relieved to find, a few minutes later, that she had: for nothing appeared amiss either in the kitchen or the living room. The bedroom, too, seemed in perfectly good order—although Sadie was no longer at the window, which did beg the question: Where on earth was she, exactly? He began calling out her name as he moved toward the bathroom, and was surprised by how little his voice sounded, how nervous.
“Sadie? Saaadie?”
He felt a wave of apprehension as he entered the bathroom, he wasn’t sure why, but was pleased to find it normal in every respect—there wasn’t even any discernable cat box odor. He laughed a little at his own paranoia. What had he expected? ‘REDRUM’ scrawled across the mirror in cat shit?
“Saaadie ... here, kitty-kitty ...”
He felt her before he saw her, just sort of a chill that ran up his spine, causing his arms to break out in gooseflesh, and craned his neck after re-entering the bedroom—and she hissed as they made eye contact. Nor was that all that he found disturbing: for she had somehow scaled the tallest bookshelf in the home in order to gain her present position—and yet not a trinket had been disturbed, not even the little glass flamingo perched on its single leg. Then she meowed almost forlornly and it occurred to him that she was stuck up there—that she was, quite frankly, probably just scared.
“Easy does it, girl,” he said, as gently and non-threateningly as he could. He took a tentative step closer. “You want down, is that it? We—we can do that. But you got to be nice, okay? You can’t—shred my arms to ribbons if I try to help, all right?”
She hissed as he took another step and he paused, thinking better of it. His uniform. Then he went to the open closet to fetch his old civilian coat—the one he wore when he was working on his truck—and promptly froze. For the truth of it was: he was having difficulty processing just what it was he was seeing.
––––––––
“Get rid of her, dude. Seriously,” Harry said as he examined David’s spare uniform, which had been riddled with burn holes as if someone had taken a lighter to it. “Just take her out to the country and drop her off. I’ll go with you.”
David stopped pacing long enough to look at the clock, which read 10:30 pm—meaning he had exactly one-half hour before he had to be at work. “Jesus, Harry. It’s the middle of winter. I can’t just abandon her. We don’t even know if she’s respons—”
“Dude. The melted latch. Your parakeet. This crazy shit,” Harry indicated the burnt uniform. “Somehow I don’t recall you having these problems before.”
He looked at Sadie, who was sitting in the corner of the living room and staring at the fish tank atop the entertainment center—a spot from which she hadn’t moved since they’d gotten her down from the bookshelf. “And move that tank. She puts a hole in it and all that water’s going to short your electronics. And then poof! We got a fire. And I live in this building too, you know?”
David looked from the cat to the tank to the clock again. “Fuck. I gotta go. Can you help me with it in the morning?”
“I don’t trust her until morning,” said Harry, flatly. “Leave me your key ... and I’ll—I’ll look in on her. All right?”
David just looked at him. At last he dug out his keys and separated the one for his apartment. “Don’t lose it. It’s the only one I got. And don’t drink all my soda.”
And then he was gone, back out into the world—as the snow piled down and Sadie stared at the fish tank and Harry paced back and forth nervously.
––––––––
David found himself going way too fast on the way home—in no small part because of what he’d read in the college library. For what he’d read made a certain kind of sense: this notion of some cats being almost co-dependent; of feeling a sense of ownership with regards to their human masters. To the point that anything which might take them away could be viewed as a threat, and thus lead the animal to act out ... by defecating on furniture, say. Or dropping severed parakeet heads in their vegetable soup.
All he knew for certain was that he’d had a very bad feeling most his shift—a feeling which had been exasperated when he’d dialed Harry and only gotten his voicemail. Now, as he sprinted up the stairs toward his apartment, he was genuinely worried.
The first thing he noticed was the door to Harry’s unit hanging open, which initially flooded him with relief—until, that is, he called his friend’s name, and there was no answer. He crept into his unit slowly and checked all the rooms—nothing.
It’s fine, he thought. Just means he’s at your place ... probably snuggled up with the damned cat.
He eased Harry’s door shut and moved across the hall to his own—and heard water boiling before he’d even finished opening the door. That’s when he noticed Harry standing in the middle of the room, just standing there as though he hadn’t a care in the world—even though half his head was missing and his left eyeball was dangling. Even though Sadie was perched on the edge of the coach nearby and staring up at the fish tank—her eyes rolled back in her skull—as the tank boiled over and the electronics began to spark and short-circuit.
Crazy old Harry, just standing there, as dead as he was wide-eyed, and with a small fire burning in what was left of his partially-exposed brain. A fire which must have at last melted whatever was holding him up, for his knees buckled as David watched and he crumpled to the floor, startling Sadie from her trance and prompting her to pounce on him reflexively, after which she glared at him over the man’s corpse and he felt a burning between his eyes—and knew he had to get away.
And then he was running, out the door and into Harry’s apartment, the door of which he swung closed behind him—before sliding down the wall in a kind of mental exhaustion and attempting to catch his breath, which he’d just begun to do when he smelt burning wood and realized a hole was being seared into the lower portion of the door.
Come on, then, bitch, he thought, half-crazy with desperation, and loosed the Maglite from his belt. You want a ticket to the great kitty condo in the sky—well, come on!
And then she was coming, for the hole had expanded to let her through even as flames raced up the rest of the door, and he brought the club-like flashlight down hard and fast—striking her in the head as brutally as he could so that she yowled and hissed and tried to swipe at him ... but finally retreated beneath his continuing blows. At which instant he scrambled to his feet and grabbed a blanket from the couch, which he promptly used to beat the out the fire.
What followed was a silence in which he could only stare at the hole warily, certain he had wounded her but not nearly convinced the threat was over. At last he moved into the kitchen and took a butcher knife from the sink. Then he crouched near the door, and, after listening for several moments—and hearing nothing—began calling out to her.
“Saaadie. I’m right here, honey. Come on ...”
Several more minutes passed and still there was nothing. He leaned closer to the hole.
“Come on, sweetie. You know we’re not finished yet ...”
He gripped the knife and waited as the silence buzzed in his ears.
Wasn’t it at least possible that he’d already killed her? Blows like those ... and from a Maglite ... they would have laid low the strongest man, much less a 10-pound Main Coon.
He didn’t stop to think about it before he looked through the hole and the tip of his nose was flayed away. And then she was upon him, bursting through the hole and attacking his face, biting at his cheeks, sinking her claws into his scalp—even as dropped the knife and tried to shield himself desperately.
And then he was up, somehow, he was stumbling toward the window, and he somehow managed to yank her from his face before, holding her by the scruff of the neck while cocking his arm back—he launched her at the glass.
She hit like a rock and the glass shattered ... and then, just as suddenly as it had all begun, it was over, and he was standing there with his face and uniform cut to ribbons while watching snow billow gently into the room. Finally, once he’d caught his breath, he approached the window and looked down.
A story below, what had once been Sadie burned in the snow, its ashes spiraling in the breeze and the flames which were consuming her popping and hissing.