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Ailurophobia – "Cat fear; a morbid dread of cats and a consciousness of their presence even when they are not around."
Webster's Universal Dictionary and Thesaurus, 1993
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A storm was forming that sweltering day when Officer Rodriguez arrived at the white-clapboard house across the street from the derelict textile mill with the boarded-up windows and graffitied brick walls. With the exception of the alarming amount of rubbish that had swallowed most of the tiny front yard, and the great army of feral cats that could be seen patrolling in the overgrown garden whose flowers had long been strangled by weeds, the house was not at all unlike the other sad sagging structures that stood side-by-side along the street.
Rodriguez had been dispatched to the residence after more than one neighbor had complained of a “gut-wrenching” odor emanating from the house, which from a first impression appeared to be abandoned and unoccupied, save for the scores of mange-covered felines that peered out in silence from dark gaps in the rain-dampened clutter and watched with suspicious green eyes from paint-peeling window sills and along the edge of the roof. They emitted low rumbling growls and serpentine hissing sounds as he approached the house. Their house.
The neighbors were right about the overpowering stench and the officer had to restrain himself from vomiting as he climbed the rickety steps of the front porch. He knocked on the wooden door, which was partially blocked by the piles of old furniture, rusted trunks, and broken plastic crates filled with an assortment of useless junk and garbage. He waited a few moments and then pounded on the door with his fist while calling out in a loud voice, “Hello? Is there anyone home?” The door was not locked and the force of his fist upon it caused the door to swing open. The putrid stench was stronger now and nearly overpowered his senses.
He switched on his flashlight and slowly and cautiously stepped foot inside the foul darkness within. Nearly gagging from the smell of ammonia and decomposing garbage, he once again inquired if anyone was in the house and identified himself as police officer Rodriguez. He waited a few moments, listening for a reply of any kind or even perhaps a faint cry for help, but he was answered only by silence.
Like the yard and the front porch, the interior of the house was cluttered with what appeared to be decades’ worth of odd accumulations, some stacked so high that they came close to touching the cracked plaster ceilings. The beam of the flashlight also revealed huge piles of feces, which covered almost every inch of the floors like a horrific carpet.
Rodriguez proceeded deeper into the depths of the house with a sick feeling beginning to gnaw at his stomach. He made his way through the mountains of old magazines, outdated telephone directories and bundles of yellowed newspapers, nearly knocking over a tower of boxes overflowing with clutter and arrived at a closed door at the far end of what had probably been at one time a hallway. The stench grew even stronger now and he could hear the sound of someone or something moving about on the other side of the door. He drew his Glock semi-automatic pistol and again called out, but no reply was forthcoming. The sound of thunder rumbled outside as he pushed open the door with his booted foot and aimed the beam of his flashlight into the dark room.
Rodriguez was far from being a rookie cop. He was a seasoned veteran who had devoted over twenty years of his life to the police force and had seen more than his share of blood and tears in the proverbial urban jungle – not only from his numerous years on the job but also from his growing up in the mean streets of the same unforgiving hellhole of a city that he now was paid to patrol. He had always considered himself to be tough and unshakable. He had seen scores of victims of accident, murders, and suicides, and he wasn’t squeamish at the sight of blood. He had always prided himself on being conditioned to respond to a variety of situations and be under complete emotional control while doing so. He never once fathomed there could be an event so disturbing, a sight so horrifying, that it could unnerve a man such as himself – a man who once believed that he possessed nerves of steel. But now a cold sweat had overtaken him and his heart was pounding.
On the filthy bloodstained floor before him lay the owner of the house – or rather what was left of her. She was an elderly woman who had long ago lost her husband and, at some point, her sanity as well. She had lived in the house by herself for many years with little or no human contact, hoarding junk and living in squalor and loneliness with only feral cats to keep her company. She had recently died and the dozen or so cats that had been trapped in the closed room with her were feeding on the last scraps of flesh from her decomposing corpse, their eyes glowing eerily in the beam of the flashlight.
Driven mad with hunger, the cats all at once turned from the body of their dead mistress and lunged at Rodriguez, hooking their sharp claws into the dark blue material of his uniform and biting him with fangs that had now acquired a taste for human flesh.
The horrified police office began firing his gun at his feline attackers and using his flashlight as a club to smash in some of the cats’ skulls. His mind was reeling, and he lost his footing and fell onto the widow’s maggot-infested remains. The cats continued to pounce upon him and sink their little razor-like teeth into his arms and legs, growling and screeching as they tore into his flesh. He managed to return to his feet and continued shooting and frantically clubbing to save his life. He fired shot after shot, and even after the last cat lay dead on the floor and the smell of gun smoke and singed fur joined the toxic stench of death, garbage, feces, and urine, he continued shooting until the magazine of his gun was empty and clubbing at the air with his flashlight until the batteries died and he was swallowed up by the foul darkness. He then stumbled out of the house in a daze, and as a jagged bolt of lightning streaked angrily across the storming sky above the textile mill across the street, he regurgitated the coffee and doughnuts he had consumed for lunch.
* * *
“Anastasia, don’t stand there daydreaming all day!” growled the balding man standing on the front porch of the old white-clapboard house. “Hurry up with your stuff before it starts to rain. Goddamn it, Anastasia!”
The golden-haired girl snapped out of her trance-like state and gasped slightly. With quickness she shifted her gaze from the strange eyes that she was sure had been staring at her from behind the cracked windowpane to the hulking form of her father standing on the dilapidated front porch. His tattooed arms were crossed and upon his face was worn a certain expression of annoyance and brewing anger, which the young girl had grown all too familiar with.
“I’m hurrying, Daddy,” she replied, almost apologetically, in a timid, thirteen-year-old voice. As she neared the porch an uneasy feeling that unseen eyes were watching her grew within her and the inside of her head began to buzz in a peculiar manner. She stopped and closed her eyes for a few moments, making a silent wish for it to stop.
“Anastasia!” her father belted out in a gruff voice that was pungent with the stench of whiskey. “I mean it, young lady! Get your ass in here right now with that box of your junk or I swear to God I’ll take off this belt and give you another good beating! Is that what you want?”
Anastasia Waverly opened her eyes and then quickly and obediently brought the cardboard box holding her collection of beloved teddy bears and other stuffed toy animals into the house and into her new bedroom. As she placed the box upon the old calico quilt that was draped over her bed, the buzzing in her head seemed to intensify, now mingled with bits and pieces of faint and distorted voices.
Doing her best to ignore the mounting noises within her head, she returned outside to retrieve the remainder of her possessions from the rented moving van without uttering a single word. Since her bittersweet homecoming, Anastasia had feared the return of the voices; however, this time she would not tell her father for she knew he would only send her back to that place where wire-covered windows dissected the afternoon sunlight into disjointed rays, and the dark hours were held together by the repetition of white shoes echoing dreamily down endless corridors of dismal gray.
Anastasia picked up a carton containing her desk lamp, some books, a small radio, and an old wooden picture frame that held an even older photo of her dark-haired mother, who had died in a tragic automobile accident on Anastasia’s ninth birthday. While on the way to the zoo, a cat had darted out in front of the family car, which her father was driving. He swerved to avoid hitting the animal and lost control of the vehicle. The sounds of crunching metal and breaking glass filled Anastasia’s ears as the car collided with a tree, killing her mother instantly. It wasn’t long after that when the faceless voices began whispering things to her. At first she was convinced that her mother was speaking to her from beyond the grave, but then gradually other voices joined in and the constant distortion within her head became so severe that she had to be taken out of school and sent away to “that place.”
Nearly a year had passed since the local newspaper ran the sensationalized headline: POLICE OFFICER SHOOTS MAN-EATING CATS IN HOARDER'S HOUSE OF HORRORS. Anastasia's father, John, kept a copy of the grisly newspaper story in his toolbox, but made it a point to keep the horrific history of the house a well-kept secret from his daughter in order to spare her any emotional disconcertion. A middle-aged building contractor who was sometimes employed and sometimes sober, he had purchased the house for a ridiculously low price at a real estate auction. His winning bid had been made with the intention of fixing up the house while living in it with his daughter and then re-selling it for a decent profit.
While Anastasia remained unaware of the past horrors connected to her new home, she nevertheless sensed there was something not quite right about the place and felt no fondness for it whatsoever. In fact, she thoroughly despised it. She found the physical condition of the building quite appalling and not at all like the pretty yellow house in which she and her parents lived happily before the accident that claimed her mother’s life. The ugliness contained within the dreary interior of this new house seemed to mirror the ugliness she saw in her father’s eyes ever since that bleak November afternoon when her mother’s casket was lowered into the ground and a bitter cold rain fell like tears weeping from the heavens above.
The first nine days in the new house passed without incident, and then, on a Saturday evening when Anastasia was in her bedroom reading Edgar Allan Poe's, The Black Cat, and listening to the radio, the first taste of evil came to call. A chill that was as icy as death's grip slowly seeped into the room, drawing the girl's attention away from her book and causing hundreds of tiny goose pimples to rise up on the flesh of her arms. Her body
began to shiver and she struggled to keep her teeth from chattering. The music that was playing on the radio began to crackle with static and fade away until the only sounds that emanated from the speaker were strange hissings and growls.
Anastasia closed her book and placed it on top of her nightstand table. She then turned the knob on her radio to locate another station, but no matter where on the dial she stopped, the sounds continued. She switched the radio off; however, not only did the hissing and the growling continue, they intensified, building up and pounding inside her head like waves crashing angrily upon the shore until her brain felt that it was being shredded into small pieces, and nausea twisted her insides. And then, something out in the hallway that had taken the form of a small dark shadow ran past the door of the girl's bedroom without producing any sound.
Filled with enough curiosity to kill a cat, Anastasia rushed out into the hallway where she glimpsed the tail end of the shadow-thing disappear through the crack of a slightly ajar door at the end of the hallway. At that very moment, the intense cold and the near-deafening noises inside her head came to a sudden end. Warmth and silence returned. She crept down the corridor until she reached the room into which the strange shadow-thing
had run. She slowly pushed against the heavy, paint-peeling door, which coughed out a few stuttering creaks as it opened to reveal a room of murky darkness.
Leaving the light of the hallway behind, Anastasia cautiously entered the room and ventured deeper into the thick mass of darkness that engulfed her. She fumbled around inside of it until her hand located the hanging chain of the light fixture on the ceiling. She pulled down on it. With a click, the bulbs lit up the room and revealed the thing that lay on the floor just inches from her feet. Her heart began to pound wildly, and she stared at the thing with a mixture of horror and disbelief.
It was a wretched monstrosity of something that had once been human. Its face had been entirely eaten away, leaving only a grinning skull framed by a matted tangle of hair and dried clots of blood. What little flesh remained on its limbs and torso was greenish in color and in an advanced state of putrefaction.
Anastasia stared down at the thing. She wasn't sure if what she was seeing was real or not, so she squeezed her eyes shut several times in an attempt to make it go away. But the gruesome sight in front of her remained in place. And then a disembodied voice, like wind through dead trees in winter's bleakness, began to murmur, "Come to me, Anastasia. Stay with me, for always."
Anastasia covered her ears with her hands, but she was unable to block out the voice.
"Come to me Anastasia. Don't be afraid. Come."
And then the thing on the floor began to slowly rise up into a sitting position and it turned its head to gaze upon the trembling girl with its horrible dead eyes.
Overcome by terror, Anastasia let out a scream that echoed throughout the house and took off running as fast as her feet could carry her. She dashed down the hallway, past her bedroom where the music was once again playing on the radio, and into the small grimy kitchen, where her father sat, drinking from a half-empty bottle of whiskey.
"What the hell is going on?" John Waverly yelled, slamming his bottle down upon the table. He grabbed his hysterical daughter by her arm, stopping her in her tracks. She screamed and struggled to break free from his grip, but he held on to her tightly. "Goddamn it, Anastasia!" he growled. "What in hell's name is wrong with you?"
"I saw it! I saw it!" Anastasia screamed, pointing to the hallway with her finger. "The thing in the room at the end of the hall!"
"What thing?” he asked, shaking his head. “What the hell are you talking about, girl?"
"It was on the floor!" Anastasia cried out. Tears were drenching her cheeks. "It was dead! But it was alive too! I saw it! It's in there! Oh, Daddy! Don't let it get me! Please!"
Anastasia's father grew annoyed. "Calm down and stop all this crazy babbling of yours!" he barked. "There's nothing in that back room. You're starting to see things that aren't there again. I had a feeling you should have stayed in that place, Anastasia. Bringing you home was a bad idea."
"No, Daddy!" cried Anastasia. "This time it was real. I know it was! You have to believe me!"
"All right then, you show me this whatever-it-is that you think you saw in there," John Waverly grumbled as he dragged the terrified girl from the kitchen and down the entire length of the hall. She shrieked and struggled to break free from his grip, but he held on to her arm tightly, his strength being no match for hers. When they reached the room at the end of the hallway, he pushed the door open with his foot and shoved her inside. "Look!" his voice boomed as he pointed around the room with his hand. "There's not a goddamn thing in here except a stain on the floor that I have to sand out and that old box of junk over there that you were supposed to have hauled out to the alley for me yesterday. I can't even count on you to do something as simple as that. You're as useless as you are screwed up in that head of yours!"
The tears began to well up in Anastasia's eyes as emotions of hurt and anger clawed violently at her insides. "I hate this house and I hate you!" Anastasia blurted out at her father as she fled to the sanctuary of her bedroom. She slammed the door shut and then balled herself up in the corner and sobbed uncontrollably for almost an hour until drowsiness overcame her and she drifted off to sleep. The calm of her slumber, however, was soon bedeviled by a bizarre and disturbing nightmare of a skeletal hand bursting forth from the dirt of a grave to grab her ankle and pull her underground. It was the same dream that haunted every one of her sleeps since the automobile accident that claimed her mother's life.
Morning brought with it a dismal sky of gray. A sunny day had been forecasted by the television weatherman the night before; however, it seemed to Anastasia that the rays of the sun all too often refused to shine down upon this grimy part of the city. The gloom matched her mood as she fulfilled her promise to her father and dragged the heavy cardboard box of junk across the overgrowth of the backyard to the alley. She shut and locked the squeaky wooden gate that cried out for oil and was trudging her way back to the house when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and spotted a cat scurrying along the top of the cinderblock wall that separated the backyard from the filthy graffiti-covered alley. Its long hair was as white as snow and contrasted with the dark red and brown bricks of the old buildings that back dropped it.
The cat paused for a moment and stared into Anastasia's eyes before leaping from the top of the wall and disappearing into the lofty blades of un-mowed grass and stinging nettles.
"Here kitty, kitty!" Anastasia called out as she searched through the high weeds of the back yard for the illusive feline. She suddenly felt a firm hand clamp down on her shoulder, which caused her to quickly spin around with a gasp. A cold chill surged through her body as her eyes beheld the sight of a black-haired man towering above her. He wore a slashed and bloodstained blue uniform like that of a police officer, and Anastasia could see that his face and hands were covered with scratches and teeth marks, and one of his eyes was nothing more than a hollow socket out of which squirming white maggots began to drop.
"Anastasia," he whispered in a monstrous voice. "They’re waiting inside the walls."
Anastasia began to hyperventilate and stood frozen with fear for several moments, which felt like an eternity, before breaking free from the spell that held her captive. She let out a loud high-pitched scream and took off running back to the house. To her horror, she found that the back door would not open.
The man began to run towards her.
Anastasia frantically jiggled the knob and pulled on it again and again to open the door, but it failed to budge. The maggot-eyed man was getting closer and closer by the second.
The door became unstuck and Anastasia dashed inside the house. She quickly shut the door and locked it, and then peered out the window into the backyard. The man was nowhere to be seen. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air. Anastasia began to wonder if she had actually seen him or had he merely been an imaginary vision? And then she again felt a firm hand clamp down on her shoulder. She let out a cry of terror, and then sighed with relief when she realized that the man standing behind her was only her father.
"Did you get rid of that box of junk?" he asked.
Anastasia fought to regain her composure. She didn't want to tell him about the man in the back yard for she knew he wouldn't believe her. "Yes, Daddy," she replied. "I put it in the alley like you asked me to."
"It's about time," grumbled her father as he started to walk away. "I'm going down to the cellar to get some work done and I don't want you bothering me."
"Yes, Daddy," said Anastasia, looking down at the floor. "I won't bother you."
After her father left the room, she hurried back to the window and pulled aside the curtain to look out. She found the maggot-eyed man waiting for her with his face pressed against the windowpane. He grinned, and a maggot dropped from his parted lips. Anastasia squeezed her eyes shut and told herself that he really wasn't there. When she re-opened her eyes, he was gone.
Downstairs in the musty confines of the cellar, John Waverly was cutting wooden baseboards with his power miter saw when he was suddenly overcome by the peculiar sensation of eyes upon his back. He turned his head to look but found no one there. He shook his head and set up another piece of wood to be cut. He was hardly a man who believed in the existence of such things as ghosts. However, shortly after moving into the old widow’s house where she was devoured by her own cats, he had begun to notice cold drafts and peculiar odors that would suddenly manifest and then mysteriously vanish without explanation. There were also several times that he heard scratching sounds emanating from empty rooms, but they would always cease abruptly the moment he'd enter the room and turn on the light. He figured there were probably mice inside the walls.
Once again, the sensation of being watched washed over him, raising the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. It was far stronger this time and filled him with a sense of uneasiness. He made an effort to ignore it and carry on with his work. However, a loud creak coming from the stairs compelled him to stop what he was doing and look over his shoulder. The unexpected sight of his daughter standing directly behind him with a wild
gleam in her eyes unnerved him. He gasped and then exhaled a sigh of exasperation. “Goddamn it, Anastasia!" he yelled. "Don’t creep up on me like that! I thought I told you not to bother me while I was busy working.”
“Daddy, may I please have a cat?” the girl asked, smiling sweetly and trying to sound as polite as possible. Her eyes expressed a wistful look. “Please? Please?”
“No! You may not have a cat, please, please,” her father replied, imitating her in a whining nasally voice. “Now leave me the hell alone so I can get back to my work.” A look of disgust contorted his sweaty unshaven face.
“Please, Daddy,” Anastasia pleaded. “I promise I’ll feed the cat and clean up after him and I’ll never...”
“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” growled her father. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, no goddamn cats!”
“Oh please, Daddy, please! Why can’t I have a cat?” Anastasia asked.
“You know damn well why not.”
“No, I don’t,” said Anastasia with dejection. “I don’t understand one little bit.”
Her father bellowed with anger, “I hate cats! They’re all filthy little bastards, good for nothing! I’d shoot every last one of them if I ever got the chance.” Before his daughter could interject another plea, he snarled, “If it wasn’t for some son of a bitch cat your mother would still be alive and maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t be the way you are.”
The words were venomous and jagged and burned in Anastasia’s ears until she was unable to contain her tears. “Why are you always so mean to me?” she cried. “Sometimes I wish you were the one who was dead instead of my mother!”
“You ungrateful little bitch!” her father bellowed as the back of his calloused hand slapped Anastasia across the face with such force that the girl flew backwards and landed against a bundle of baseboards leaning against a sawdust-covered workbench. He then ordered her to her room and threatened her with an even harder slap if she failed to obey him. With the palm of her hand pressed against her stinging reddening cheek, she ran up
the basement stairs sobbing as the sound of the power miter saw resumed.
Anastasia dashed into her bedroom, slammed the door shut behind her, and then flung herself onto her bed. She curled herself up into a fetal position and sobbed until her teary eyes filled with redness and were stinging. Suddenly she envisioned the walls and the ceiling of the room splattered with copious amounts of blood and bits and pieces of human tissue. Red droplets oozed from the cracked plaster above and splashed upon her face and body. She wrapped her arms around her pillow and hugged it while at the same time shutting her eyes and praying for the blood to disappear. And then there came the sound of a whispering voice, and Anastasia squeezed her pillow harder and gently chanted under her breath, "Go away, go away, go away..."
The whispering was barely audible at first, but Anastasia could tell that it was the voice of a woman. She ceased her chanting and wondered if perhaps her mother was trying to return to her from beyond the grave, but as the voice grew a bit louder, it didn't sound like her mother at all. It was a much older voice and one that she had never heard before. Anastasia was unsure if the whispering she was hearing was real or just inside her head, but she listened intently, trying her hardest to decipher what it was saying to her. It gradually grew more audible and instructed her to go to the window. She was frightened to do so at first, but then gathered up her courage and crept to the window and slowly pulled back the curtain.
To Anastasia's surprise and delight, she discovered a small black kitten waiting for her on the outside ledge of the window. It looked at her with eyes that were as green as jade and emitted a tiny meow. Without hesitation, the girl lifted up the sash and picked up the kitten. She bestowed a kiss upon it and rubbed her left cheek against its silky fur.
"You heard my request, and you came to me," Anastasia said to the kitten. She spoke in a low whisper to prevent her father from overhearing her. She knew all too well if he found out she had brought a kitten into the house, he would be furious. "You're such a beautiful little thing and I know you can understand every word I'm saying to you. I'm going to name you... Avenger."
Anastasia returned to her bed and gingerly placed the kitten upon her pillow. She then laid down on her side with her face next to it and, as she lovingly stroked its fur of pitch, she noticed that the room had returned itself to normal and the bloody gore that had covered the walls and ceiling just a short while ago was now gone without a trace.
The minutes stretched into hours and Anastasia remained in her bedroom, petting and playing with her new furry companion. She ventured out to the kitchen when the coast was clear to gather up some food and a saucer of milk, which she sneaked back to her bedroom and gave to the kitten.
At the supper table that evening, not a single word was spoken between father and daughter. They both ate their meals in silence, avoiding eye contact with each other. The ticking of the clock upon the kitchen wall seemed to intensify inside Anastasia's ears until it was pounding like the thunderous heartbeat of some great monster poised to strike its prey.
After supper, John Waverly headed off to the living room with his bottle of whiskey in hand and switched on the television to a pro-wrestling match. Anastasia washed the dishes as quickly as possible and then returned to the sanctum of her bedroom, where Avenger greeted her with a loving purr.
"I love you, " she said to the kitten as she cuddled it in her arms like a baby. "I won't let anybody ever hurt you. I promise."
She then placed Avenger on the pillow next to her face and stroked its shiny black fur. The gentle purring it resounded sounded like music to Anastasia. The sound made her temporarily take her mind off the cruelty of her father, who was in the other room slowly getting intoxicated, and the dreadful run-down house that he had brought her to. The purring continued on and on like a tiny vibrating motor, lulling Anastasia to sleep.
Shortly after the clock chimed the first quarter of the midnight hour, Anastasia awoke in the darkness from her usual nightmare. Her body was drenched in a cold sweat and her heart was pounding. She reached underneath her pillow for her flashlight, turned it on, and was relieved to find Avenger still on her pillow, fast asleep. Just then, one of the floorboards in her bedroom emitted a creak and Anastasia could make out the silhouette of something moving in the cloak of blackness that had draped her room. She turned the flashlight in the direction of the sound and felt an unparalleled horror race through her body like an icy chill when the hazy beam of the light illuminated the faceless and partially eaten cadaver from the room at the end of the hall. It was now in her bedroom, standing at the side of her bed. It whispered, "Anastasia, come with me."
Anastasia began to moan as if in pain as the hideous thing extended its rotting limb and then its bony hand clamped around her slender wrist. She accidentally dropped the flashlight, which returned the room to total darkness, and began screaming while trying to free herself from the dead thing's cold and horrible grasp.
"Leave me alone!" Anastasia screamed. "Let go of me! I don't want to be dead like you!"
She heard her father bellow from the living room, "What the hell is going on in there?" She then heard footsteps coming down the hallway. They grew louder as they approached her bedroom door. And then, all at once, the dreadful dead thing that had been holding onto her wrist disappeared.
"Anastasia!" her father yelled from the other side of her door. "Who are you talking to in there?"
"It was just a bad dream, Daddy," Anastasia called out as she hurried to hide Avenger underneath her calico quilt. "Everything's okay now."
The bedroom door flew open and John Waverly staggered in and switched on the light. His whiskey bottle, which was almost empty now, was still in his hand. He gazed around the room and then stared at his daughter with his drooping bloodshot eyes. "What's going on in here?" he asked, slurring some of his words.
"Nothing," Anastasia replied, trying her best to appear unruffled. With one hand, she held on to the kitten, which was struggling to emerge from the confines of the heavy coverlet. "It was just another one of those nightmares, that's all."
The inebriated man took a swig of whiskey from the bottle and then wiped the wetness from his lips with the back of his shirtsleeve. "I was gonna tell you in the morning, but I might as well say it now. I made a decision where you're concerned," he stated bluntly. "You haven't been acting right since you come back home, and I just can't take any more of it, you hear me? It was a mistake for them to let you out... a big mistake! Those goddamn shrinks should have kept you locked up... in that place."
Anastasia felt her body begin to tremble. "What are you saying, Daddy?"
The man took another swig from his bottle. "I'm saying that you need to go back to the sanitarium. Maybe they can do something for you. I sure the hell can't!"
"But, Daddy," cried Anastasia with tears welling up in her eyes. However, before she could utter another word, her father interjected.
"Don't 'but Daddy' me," he snapped. "It's not going to work this time, Anastasia. I've made up my mind about it. You're going back whether you like it or not, and that's all there is to it."
Silence fell over the room for a moment and then Avenger let out a succession of tiny meows from underneath the quilt. Anastasia's face went pale as her father's reddened with anger.
"Did I just hear a goddamn cat in this room?" he growled.
Anastasia quickly shook her head from side to side with a look of fear in her eyes.
"Don't you lie to me, young lady! I told you I won't have a goddamn cat in this house and I meant it. Now where is the little bastard? You'd better tell me!"
Avenger let out another round of panic-stricken meows, and John Waverly rushed over to his daughter's bed and yanked down the covers, revealing the tiny black kitten. His daughter shrieked out a long cry of "no!" as he snatched up the kitten by the scruff of its neck and gazed upon it with a look of contempt. "I knew it!" he shouted. "Well, I'm going to put an end to this crap right now!"
"What are you going to do to my kitten?" asked Anastasia, tearfully. "Don't hurt him, Daddy. Please! He hasn't done anything bad to you."
"I'm going to do to this furry little sack of shit what I should have done to you when you were born," her father replied as he staggered from the bedroom with the kitten in one hand and his beloved bottle of whiskey in the other.
Anastasia leapt out of bed and followed her father down the hallway and into the bathroom. He placed the bottle on top of the toilet tank and then, with his free hand, lifted up the hard plastic lid of pink. He proceeded to drop the helpless kitten into the toilet bowl, and it immediately cried out and hissed and thrashed about in a desperate attempt to escape from the cold water. Anastasia let out a horror-stricken scream as she witnessed her father crouch down and, with both of his hands, hold the struggling kitten under the water in an attempt to drown it.
"Don't you dare hurt him!" she screamed; her eyes growing wild and glazed over. "You're nothing but a monster! Let him live! I’m warning you!"
She picked up the whiskey bottle and swung it at the back of her father's head with all her might. It produced a loud thud as it made impact, and with a dazed look in his eyes, the intoxicated man lurched forward, releasing his grip on the fighting feline, and crashed into the toilet before landing on his side on the black and white honeycomb of the hexagon ceramic tiles that covered the bathroom floor. Avenger sprung from the toilet bowl with a splash of water and then took off running until he was out of sight. Some of the droplets hit Anastasia's face and mingled with her tears.
"Avenger!" Anastasia called out as she took off to search for the terrified kitten, but she was stopped dead in her tracks by the sight of the door at the end of the hallway beginning to open. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as possible. "If this is a dream," she said, "please, God, let me wake up. Don't let me die."
"You rotten little bitch!" a groggy and inhumane voice barked from behind her.
Anastasia turned around to find her father standing there, tottering, with his brown leather belt in his hand. The top part of his shirt was soaked with blood.
"It's time I taught you a good lesson," he growled in an ominous tone. "One you'll never ever forget!"
The teenage girl cried out in pain as the leather strap stung her and caused bright red lash marks to welt up on her flesh. The whipping sent her crumpling to the floor of the hallway. She attempted to shield her face with her arms as blow after blow from the belt was delivered to her with drunken rage.
By this time, the door at the end of the hallway stood wide open and from the blackness behind it emerged dozens of small dark creatures made of shadow. They moved with great speed down the dimly lit passageway and then took on the form of large cats – some black, some white, some tan. There were cats with tiger-like stripes, some with calico markings. There were shorthaired cats, longhaired cats, ginger tabbies, Persians, Siamese, and tuxedo cats. They emitted howls and screeches that were as terrifying as they were ear-piercing as they pounced upon John Waverly, ripping at his skin with their razor-like claws and sinking their sharp teeth into his flesh. He dropped his belt and fell to the floor, waving his arms and screaming, "Anastasia! For the love of God, help me!"
The demon cats were unrelenting and continued slashing and biting until the screaming and struggling of their victim ceased and he lay lifeless in a pool of his own blood. They then began to feast upon his corpse, ripping his flesh from his bones with their little fangs and devouring him, piece by piece, with ravenous appetites.
Avenger reappeared and lapped up some of the blood that was spreading across the floor of the hallway. After it had its fill, the kitten licked its chops with its little pink tongue, and then jumped into Anastasia's lap, purring softly.
Anastasia smiled and stroked the kitten's silky black fur as her father's blood inched closer to where she sat. "Good kitty," she said, enraptured.