Olivia

Lauren’s voice reaches deep into my dream. It has the biting edge of panic. ‘Help,’ she hisses. ‘Olivia, he’s taking us away.’

I twitch an ear. The dark is quiet around me. I had been dreaming of sweet cream and it was very pleasant. I am not perhaps at my most receptive.

What?

‘Ted,’ she says. ‘He’s taking us outside, to the woods. You have to help.’

Oh, I say coldly. I’m just a stupid cat, I’m afraid. I can’t help.

‘Please,’ she says. ‘Please, you have to. I’m afraid.’ Her voice is like scratched glass. ‘Please, Olivia. It’s happening now. He’s making us into gods. This is our last chance.’

I say, I don’t exist. So that sounds like a you problem.

She starts to cry, in broken ragged sobs. ‘Don’t you understand that if he kills me, you die too? I don’t want to die.’ She sniffs. And despite myself I feel a little sorry for her. She is a hurt child. She didn’t mean what she said.

I’ll try, I say slowly. But I can’t promise anything. Now leave me alone. I have to focus.

As usual, everyone is relying on the gd cat. Honestly, teds are gd useless.

I crouch in the dark. I am hoping it will help. The crate was a sort of door between Lauren and me, once. Perhaps it can be opened again. I listen to the sound of the house – the drip of the tap, boards creaking, a fly caught in between plywood and glass. I smell the linoleum in the kitchen, and the air freshener Ted uses when he remembers. I sheathe and unsheathe my claws. They curve out in beautiful wicked points. I don’t want to wear the horrible ted-suit and have hands. Horrible. Got to.

Right, I mutter. Time.

I look up at the landing and try to think about something I love. I try to think about the lord, and then I try to think about the cream that coated my tongue all lovely and white and thick in the dream. But I can’t concentrate. My tail lashes and my whiskers twitch. My thoughts are everywhere.

Come on, I whisper, closing my eyes.

All I can think of is Lauren. Not how she looks, because I have never seen her. I think of how clever she is, making this plan to save us, and how annoying, especially when she calls me stupid cat.

Nothing happens. No good. I tried my best! I should really go back to my nap. Bad things are happening, and it seems best to sleep until they stop.

But each time I close my eyes and try to sink back into my comfortable doze, doubt needles me wide awake again.

I have tried everything, I say out loud. I can’t do anything else! I am answered only by silence. But I can feel His opinion. I row with unhappiness because I know the lord disapproves of dishonesty.

I push with my head and the freezer door lifts up an inch. A slice of light greets me, blinding.

As soon as I’m out, I can hear Lauren screaming. Her voice fills the walls, runs through the carpet under my feet. Her fear comes in through the portholes in the plywood, and I can hear it running out of the faucet in the kitchen. I have to help her.

The thought of climbing inside the Lauren-sack is truly horrible. My tail stiffens in distaste. So gross! That smooth piggy pink skin in place of my nice coat. Those creepy things instead of paws! I hiss, horrified at the violent intimacy of it. But she’s counting on me. Think, cat.

I go to the Bible. I nudge it off the table. As it falls to the floor with a great crash, I feel the house shake. It’s like an echo, but louder.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Gd it. Sometimes it’s annoying, being right. An idea has been forming in my mind for a while. I may be just an indoor cat, but I have seen the many faces of the lord, and I know there are strange things in the world. Lauren thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t. We are not like a staircase. We’re like the horrible doll on the mantelpiece. Lauren and I fit inside one another. When you tap on one it reverberates through all of them.

Think, think!

When I opened the refrigerator door I was angry. Maybe angrier than I have ever been. I didn’t feel the cord connecting me to Ted. I was myself, alone.

So I make myself angry. It’s not hard. I think about Ted and what he’s done to Lauren. It’s really difficult to think about. She was right about one thing; what a stupid cat I am, really. I believed his lies, didn’t want to know the truth. I just wanted to sleep and be stroked. I was a coward. But I don’t want to be a coward any more. I’m going to save her.

My tail bristles, becomes a spike of rage. The fire begins at the tip, spreads down the length of my switching tail, into me. It’s not like the heat when Lauren hurt me. I made this feeling. It’s my fire.

The walls begin to shudder. The crashing sound begins far away, and then it is all around me. The hall shivers like a bad TV picture. The floor is a sea, tossing.

I pad to the front door, slipping and yowing. Just because I am deciding to be brave doesn’t mean I’m not scared. I am so scared. What I see through my peephole isn’t really the outdoors. I understand that now. Now, I see with a shiver that the three locks are not fast. The door is unlocked, of course. I don’t have to go up, I have to go out. And everyone knows how you get in and out of a house. I give a little row. I didn’t really want to be right. I stand on my hind legs and pull on the handle with my paws. The door swings wide. The white flame greets me. I am blinded; it’s like being inside a star. The cord is a line of fire, burning about my neck. What will happen? Will I burn up? I kind of hope so. I don’t know what’s out there.

I step out of the house. The cord burns hot as a furnace, surrounds me in a forge of white heat. The world tosses and flips. Blinding stars suck me out into nothing. Nausea rises and I choke. All the air is crushed from my lungs.

The blinding white retreats; the stars shrink to small holes in the hot dark, through which I catch flashes of movement, colour, pale light. Moonlight, I think. So that’s what it looks like.

The world tosses like a boat on rough seas. Ted’s familiar scent fills my nose. We are being carried on his back, in a bag I think, or a sack – there are small holes stabbed in it, for air I suppose. I am too big. My skin is exposed and hairless like some kind of worm. My paws have become long fleshy spiders. My nose is not an adorable soft bump but a horrible pointy thing. Worst of all, where my tail should be there is a blank nothing.

Oh Lord. I wriggle but I can’t move. I think we’re restrained, tied up maybe. All around, there is sound. Leaves, owls, frogs. Other things I don’t know the name of. It all has a clarity I have never heard before. The air is different too. I can feel that, even through the bag. It’s cooler, sharper somehow – and it’s moving.

Lauren sobs, and I feel it burst up through my unfamiliar chest, my cavernous ribcage. I feel the tears coming from my tiny weak eyes. It’s just as horrible as I thought it would be.

I made it, I tell her silently. I’m in the body.

‘Thank you, Olivia.’ She squeezes me tightly, and I squeeze back.

Lauren, why is the air moving, like it’s alive?

‘It’s wind,’ she whispers. ‘That’s wind, Olivia. We’re outside.’

Oh my goodness. Oh gosh. For a moment I am too overwhelmed to think. Then I ask, Where are we?

‘We’re in the woods,’ she says. ‘Can’t you smell it?’

As she says it, the scent hits me too. It is incredible. Like minerals and beetles and fresh water and hot earth and trees – God, the scent of the trees. Up close, it’s like a symphony. I could never have dreamed it.

‘He has the knife,’ Lauren says. ‘Can you believe it? He buried it.’

Maybe he’s just taking us for a walk, I say, hopefully. Maybe he’s got the knife because he’s scared of bears.

‘Kittens don’t come back from the woods,’ she says.

We are quiet after that. More than anything I want to go back inside. But I can’t leave Lauren alone. I have to be brave.

He walks for an hour on rough ground. He climbs steep rock faces and wades across streams, goes through valleys and over hills. Very quickly we are in the wild.

He stops in a place that smells of stone where trees speak to one another in the night, over the sound of running water. From what I can see through the tiny opening at the neck of the sack, we’re in a shallow gulley with a waterfall at the end. Ted makes camp with a lot of rustling and groaning. Light flickers through the dark fabric that contains us. Fire. Overhead, I can hear the wind stroke the leaves.

I can’t see much but I can feel the vastness of the air. Wind crashing into clouds. I wish I’d never known the truth, I say to Lauren. The outside is terrifying. There are no walls. It goes on and on. How far does it go, the world?

She says, ‘It’s round, so I guess it goes on until it comes back to you again.’

That’s terrible, I say. I think that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Oh LORD, preserve me …

‘Focus, Olivia,’ she says.

Is he going to let us out of this bag? I ask. To pee or whatever?

‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t think he will.’ I can hear her mind running furiously. ‘It’s a change of plan,’ she whispers. ‘That’s all it is. We pivot. We adjust. He has the knife. I felt it against his hip. So you get it from him, is all, and kill him. Same plan. Better, actually, because we’re in the middle of nowhere and no one will come to help. We can make his plan work for us, see?’ I wonder if she’s been at Ted’s bourbon because she sounds exactly like he does when he’s drunk. Fear can make you slur your words as badly as drink does, I guess.

I think of the body, our weak, thin body, against Ted’s bulk, his might. The wind strokes my fur with cold fingers. I breathe it in. It is both ancient and young at once. I wonder if it is the last thing I will feel.

Wind is lovely, I say. I’m glad I got to feel it. I wish I had got to taste real fish, though.

‘I wish you had too,’ she says.

I can’t do it, Lauren. I thought I could but I can’t.

‘It’s not only for us, Olivia,’ Lauren says. ‘It’s for him. Do you think he wants to be like this? Do you think he’s happy, being a monster? He’s a prisoner too. You have to help him, cat. Help him one last time.’

Oh, I say, oh dear …

‘OK then,’ Lauren says, soft and resigned. ‘Maybe it won’t be so bad.’

I think about the round world, which if you travel far enough, only brings you back to the same place.

Be a brave cat, I whisper to myself. This is why the LORD put you here. I take a deep breath. I’ll do it. I’ll get the knife, and then I’ll kill him.

‘Clever cat,’ she says. Her breath comes fast. ‘You have to be quick. You only get one chance.’

I know.

Beneath, in the dark, Night-time growls. I feel his great flanks writhing as he strains against his bonds.

What is your problem? I ask, terse. I’m busy. I don’t have time for you right now.

His answer is a roar that rings in my ears, sends shocks down my spine. It is my time, it is my time, it is my time, he roars. But I have him pinned down tight; he won’t get free.

Ted is restless. He keeps us close, tied up against his back. The fire glows hot, sending red needlepoints of light through the sack. I feel the rumble of his voice as he speaks softly to himself.

‘Mommy, are you still here?’

As dawn is about to break he drifts into an uneasy doze. I feel the deep give and take of his breath. He is at peace. Above, the sky holds its breath.

Can you see anything? I ask.

‘It’s in his left hand,’ she murmurs. I reach out with ours. It is revolting, using the hand – like wearing a glove of rotten meat. I take the knife from his loose palm. It is lighter than I expected.

I reach around and drive it into his stomach. The point punctures flesh with a crisp sound like an apple bitten into. I thought it would be soft, flesh, but inside Ted is a mess of objects and textures. There is resistance; it is hard to thrust the blade in. It is even more horrible than I could have imagined. I hardly hear myself crying, over Ted’s screaming. The sound drives a bird from a nearby bush, plummeting upwards into the sky. I wish I could go with it.

The first thing is the pain. The nerves in our body are alight with it. The black cloth drops away. Lauren and I fall face first onto the rough floor of the forest. Our cheek is thurst hard into the mess of slick leaves and twigs; we’re half in and half out of the stream; water runs cold over our legs. Our heart chugs unevenly, like a car about to stall.

Lauren? I say. Why are we bleeding? Why can’t we get up?