Two days after we closed the casket on my sister, I lay in my apartment in a pile of blankets and dirty tissues, watching Friends on Netflix. Mom and Dad want me home, I know they do, but…
I need to be alone with the raw, gaping wound in my chest.
I’m trying to muster up a smile at Chandler’s antics—it’s an episode that elicited a belly laugh three weeks ago—when I hear the first yowl in the hallway.
I thumb the volume button, but the sound carries over the laugh track. A neighbor will deal with it. My body is granite, heavy and thick on the bed. My eyes burn as though I’ve expended all my tears, but I know if I wait long enough, they’ll come again.
A scratching, this time at my front door.
“For fuck’s sake.” No one in my building knows about the drunk driver or Veronica being airlifted or the defeated expression on the surgeon who came to tell us they lost her, but I’m angry at the neighbors for not dealing with—
What is it, even? A cat?
Fuck.
I push myself from the bed. The cool air around my ankles makes me shiver. I hate feeling. Veronica will never feel again. She’ll never giggle about how much she hates Ross and Rachel, as we share popcorn. She’ll never lecture me on how I should find a roommate, that it isn’t safe to live alone. She’ll never make faces across the Thanksgiving dinner table.
We always said we would take care of one another, always, yet I wasn’t there in the car when she needed me the most. She died alone.
There they are, the tears.
Blinking them away, I undo the chain and slam the door open harder than I mean to.
Sitting on its haunches is a sleek, brown cat with a ticked coat, large ears, and liquid yellow eyes. It tilts its head in an almost human-like gesture that seems to inquire, strangely, why I am standing before it.
“Mrs. Baker?” I shout down the hall toward my nearest neighbor.
Before the cat can get any ideas in its head, I close the door and tromp down the hall. What will I say? My sister died. You deal with this stray.
I knock on her door. The cat stares at me, unmoving. The door jerks open, held in place by the chain.
“Whaddya want?”
It’s Mr. Baker, and from his breath, he’s drinking. Not the time—or the person—I want to share my grief with. “Uh, there’s a cat out here. Is it yours?”
“Hate cats.” He coughs thickly into his hand. “Not ours.”
“Who’s at the door?” comes Mrs. Baker’s voice.
“Neighbor. Says there’s a cat out there.”
“Tell her we don’t have a cat!”
“I did!” He shakes his head. “Old lady thinks I can’t…” The rest trails off, and I have no desire to ask him to repeat it.
But I don’t want to leave the cat in the hall to cause more ruckus. “Could you call animal control?” It seems extreme, but I’m desperate. I really, really can’t deal with this. Even standing here with Mr. Baker squinting at me makes my chest feel like it’s being slowly crushed. I need to be back in my bed before the tears start again.
“Naw, just leave it alone. It’ll run off.” The door shuts.
The tears rise in my eyes, and blinking doesn’t keep them from sliding down my face. “Superb,” I whisper.
The cat never broke its gaze. I’m starting to get seriously creeped out.
“Shoo.” I wave a hand at it.
It doesn’t move.
I could try other neighbors, walk up and down the hallways looking for its owner—something I would have done at a time I didn’t feel like my whole body was being absorbed by invisible quicksand—but I can’t handle more human interaction tonight.
“Please, just be quiet. I need to sleep.”
I crack open my door, one eye on the cat in case it makes any suddens move. Backing into my apartment, I push the door closed. It’s almost shut when the cat leaps forward, streaking toward me, around the foot I try to block it with, and into my living room.
“Fuuuuuuu—”
This is the last thing I need. A stray cat taking up residence in my apartment to make racket at all hours of the night—not that I can sleep anyway; I haven’t slept for three days—and shit all over my floor. I whirl around, searching for it, determined to grab it and toss it out even if it claws my arms all to hell—but it’s not in the living room. I storm around my kitchen counter, trying to control my frustration so as not to scare the creature, but it’s nowhere to be found.
The sadness wells up again, and a profound, bone-deep exhaustion settles over me. My apartment isn’t that large, but how will I find a stray cat that doesn’t want to be found? I can’t deal with this. I don’t want to deal with this. Oh, God, why did this have to happen?
Grief constricts my throat, tears well up in my eyes, and I run into my bedroom. The last thing I remember before falling into a dreamless sleep is tears dripping down my cheeks onto my pillow.
#
I awake to the glow of the television. Sucking in a breath, I sit up. Apparently grief-induced insomnia has taken its toll.
A dull thud echoes from the living room.
Part of me wants to roll over and go back to sleep, but the rational me knows I have to deal with this before it gets out of hand. I stumble out of the bedroom, blinking sleep out of my eyes, round the corner and see—
I forgot to shut the door.
My heart jumps into my throat, and my eyes scan the living room. I don’t see a cat, but I do see a strangely shaped potted plant next to my couch.
No. I blink the sleep out of my eyes. I don’t have plants. I can’t keep them alive. Another thing Veronica used to tease me about.
It’s a shoe.
Someone is in my apartment.
I don’t know what to do. Go into my bedroom and call the police? Make a dash for the apartment door? Before I lose my nerve, I reach out a hand, flip on the light, and say, “Whoever you are, get the fuck out of here.” I’m thinking, This is my home. I’m thinking, If I act in command of the situation, I am in command of the situation.
A sullen-looking man rolls away from the couch and fluidly stands up. “Uh. Sorry.” It’s another neighbor, same floor but on the other side of the building. A bachelor, lives alone, throws parties the rest of the building tries to ignore.
Fury burns in my wildly beating heart. “The fuck are you doing here?” I don’t care, though. I just want him to leave.
He must see the terror in me because the corner of his mouth lifts in a pitiless smirk. He moves forward in a sinuous motion.
“I know where you live.” Backing toward my bedroom door, I brace myself to fight, though I’ve never been in a fight before in my life and I’m in the worst shape possible to defend myself. His arm moves from his side, slowly lifting toward me.
And then a ball of teeth and fur flies past my shoulder.
Is it the cat?
But no, this is no cat. It has too many limbs, too many claws, too much fur. It’s bigger than the man’s head and all muscle. When it lands on my neighbor’s face, he screams an unholy screech. The ball of fur shifts. Red eyes narrowed into slits stare out of the cat-thing’s gigantic, bulbous head.
Run to your bedroom. Words in my head, like gravel and slime.
And I do.
As I lay panting next to my bed, eyes squeezed shut, an image of my sister appears in my mind. “I said you shouldn’t live alone.” She smiles sadly at me. “And I also said I’ll always take care of you. I hope having to rescue you doesn’t become our thing. To help keep you out of trouble, I’ve sent Anubis as a gift. Sorry I can’t stay, sis, but he’ll keep you safe for now.”
The living room is eerily silent.
My eyes flick to the door as a golden-brown cat trots around the corner. It licks a paw and mews.
I hold my breath for a long moment and then extend a hand toward it.
With a chirrup and the cat equivalent of a smile, it bumps into my hand and rumbles a purr that settles in my chest, easing away some of the knotted grief I’ve been carrying.
—
Samantha grew up in a small town in Iowa but became an expat for her Canadian husband, whom she met in the Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game Star Wars: Galaxies (before the NGE, of course). She’s the mother of a preschooler and twin toddlers—a houseful of girls will definitely keep her husband on his toes.
In October 2017, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Modern medicine is amazing, which means her prognosis is good, and she’s continuing treatment indefinitely. You can find out more about her short fiction and novels, as well as read about her breast cancer journey at http://www.saboviec.com/.
A very moving story. It hooked me with the first sentence and held me to the end.