Hallow Cat
The middle of the night. A seven year-old girl sleeps soundly in a pleasant ranch-style house on a cul-de-sac. She is dreaming the dreams of a typical little girl, of walking upon streets paved with bubble gum, or beating up on her big sister, or perhaps being able to fly. Only the simple ticking of the "#1 Dad" clock from the kitchen can be heard.
Her father and stepmother sleep in the master bedroom across the hall. Except the father is not sleeping at all: he stares blankly at the ceiling, blue-gray in the light of the moon through the window. His mind does not let him forget that queer Saturday evening not one week ago when, boiling with anger, he threw their pet cat into their burning wood stove, completely incinerating it. He feels regret now, not so much for the cat but for his poor wife who had cherished it for over sixteen years.
How could a man ever subject the family pet to such a demise? It was the crude euthanasia of a cat which had become insufferably ill. For years, it threw up multiple times per day, and toward the end of its pathetic existence no longer could control its bowels or bladder. Its messes frequently brought his wife to tears, and him to outrage. Last Saturday night, as the cat puked up an awful pile in the middle of their lovemaking session, the father reached the end of his wits.
Now the father sits up in alarm as he hears a strange noise coming from the little girl's bedroom. It sounds at first like faint tribal drumming, but as he focuses his hearing the father realizes it is a rhythmic gagging noise, wet and spastic, nearly identical to the noise the pet cat made whenever it regurgitated a hairball. Leaping to his feet, he races into his daughter's bedroom to see what's the matter.
He enters the room and switches on the pink princess lamp. There is the little girl upon her bed, on hands and knees, distressed and choking. Her whole body convulses with every contraction of her throat muscles; her limbs quiver to hold her up. The father rushes to her side and instinctively attempts to take her head into his hands to discover what might be lodged in her throat, but she will not let him; she turns her head away and continues to gag and twitch, saliva dribbling freely from her lips.
He calls out for help. Nobody comes. He calls again. Both his wife and older daughter remain in a stuporous sleep, as if unconscious, impervious to the commotion. He wants to go rouse them, but he cannot leave his struggling daughter. He is powerless.
Suddenly the object emerges from the little girl's throat and plops onto the pillow: a gooey, hairy mess of partially digested matter. She collapses upon the bed in exhaustion. The father tries to speak to her but she is unresponsive; she only coils up reflexively and begins taking huge gulps of air. Desperate to offer some comfort, he strokes her hair and pats her back gently. Sweat soaks through her pajamas; her stench is unusually rank.
A quick examination of the bolus of matter reveals small bones, including a little pointed skull, resembling those of a rodent. The bones are mixed with hair and little brown bits. The father tries to engage his daughter once again. This time her head whips around at him quickly. With frightening dilated eyes she lets off a seething hiss and swipes her fingernails across her father's face. He falls back upon the floor in horror as the girl leaps off the bed and scurries out of the room on all fours.
The father is stupefied. He sits there for a few long moments, collecting his thoughts, demanding of his mind some rationality. "My little girl is not possessed," he tries to assure himself. At once the house has become eerily still, not a sound coming from the living room to where his daughter escaped. The thick darkness from the hall seems to force itself into the pink-lit bedroom.
Well, maybe he hears something. Indeed, he listens intently — it is the sound of a crackling fire. He examines the opposite wall through the doorway: the sides of his eyes catch vague moving shadows. Timidly he goes toward the door and, the pounding of his heart preceding him, steps into the hall.
Out in the living room, in front of the antique wood stove, the little girl is sitting on her knees. The father cannot believe what he sees: somehow the wood stove has become fully enkindled. His daughter stares at it fixedly. The rolling flames cast a wild orange flicker upon her face. Embers spew from the stove, briefly swirl and flow about her, snuff out, get replaced by more. She makes no movement, she doesn't even blink; she just watches the flames beckon her with their little dance.
Like all fathers and their daughters, the connection between this man and his little girl is an enduring thing. While he watches her before the fire, he can sense this connection with her — primitive and subconscious, like a lion sensing its lost cub. Somehow the father knows his feeling of terror is his daughter's terror, that the aching inside his chest is her heart. What can he possibly do to rescue her, roaming lost in this transient psychosis?
Then, slowly, quietly, the little girl turns her head toward her father. She begins whispering jumbled things, as if hallucinating. Her gaze is sinister — it holds the father captive in his place, like a deer frozen in headlights. With each of the little girl's deep breaths, the fire seems to reach toward her, covet her ever so closely. All the while, the little girl has been carefully shifting her body into a deep squat. Eventually her weight rests fully upon the fronts of her soles.
At last, she says to him, in hauntingly intelligible, death-measured tone: "Daddy, I am the worst thing that's ever happened to you."
The father has no time to react. With a sudden powerful push of her legs, the little girl springs herself into the fiery stove. Flames burst out in a dazzling display as the girl pulls her body inside, her charred hand reaching out from within to close the iron door behind her. The father screams in terror, his limbs seizing up cold; then, breaking free, he lunges down the hall to save her.
The daughter is twisted awkwardly inside the stove, her weight pressed upon on the latch, preventing him from being able to open the door. He peers helplessly into the stove's little window, and sees her staring back at him. The eyes he knows so well, once careless and tender, imprisoned within a fiery furnace; there is shock and confusion in them, the urgent confusion of a seven year-old, like the pain has suddenly ripped the little girl out of her trance. She begins howling in profound torture, squirming desperately.
Only it is too late. Her scorched eyes already begin to fall behind the curtain of flames. Her sinew-skeleton hand, completely engulfed, stretches toward the little window in her last moments of consciousness, and disintegrates before his eyes. The father, overtaken, crumples to the ground.
The room fills with angry black smoke. Lying frozen in terror on the floor, the father grips his face with his hands and fingernails, drawing blood. His eyes dart madly around the room, seeing only smoke and soot and orange flecks of light. The smoke begins to coalesce in front of him. It takes on a most auspicious shape: the shape of a cat's head. And in the center of the cat-form, two murderous orange pupils.
The next few moments, an eternity. As the flames in the wood stove begin to wane, the cat-form dissipates apathetically. The father, his face scratched and deathly, lies quiet in the moonlight. He swears he hears a whisper coming from the wood stove. "I hunger," it utters menacingly. He turns his head to look, but sees only the ash sculpture of his daughter amid the red-hot cinders — the last inscription upon his mind before he slips into a state of eternal madness...
Her father and stepmother sleep in the master bedroom across the hall. Except the father is not sleeping at all: he stares blankly at the ceiling, blue-gray in the light of the moon through the window. His mind does not let him forget that queer Saturday evening not one week ago when, boiling with anger, he threw their pet cat into their burning wood stove, completely incinerating it. He feels regret now, not so much for the cat but for his poor wife who had cherished it for over sixteen years.
How could a man ever subject the family pet to such a demise? It was the crude euthanasia of a cat which had become insufferably ill. For years, it threw up multiple times per day, and toward the end of its pathetic existence no longer could control its bowels or bladder. Its messes frequently brought his wife to tears, and him to outrage. Last Saturday night, as the cat puked up an awful pile in the middle of their lovemaking session, the father reached the end of his wits.
Now the father sits up in alarm as he hears a strange noise coming from the little girl's bedroom. It sounds at first like faint tribal drumming, but as he focuses his hearing the father realizes it is a rhythmic gagging noise, wet and spastic, nearly identical to the noise the pet cat made whenever it regurgitated a hairball. Leaping to his feet, he races into his daughter's bedroom to see what's the matter.
He enters the room and switches on the pink princess lamp. There is the little girl upon her bed, on hands and knees, distressed and choking. Her whole body convulses with every contraction of her throat muscles; her limbs quiver to hold her up. The father rushes to her side and instinctively attempts to take her head into his hands to discover what might be lodged in her throat, but she will not let him; she turns her head away and continues to gag and twitch, saliva dribbling freely from her lips.
He calls out for help. Nobody comes. He calls again. Both his wife and older daughter remain in a stuporous sleep, as if unconscious, impervious to the commotion. He wants to go rouse them, but he cannot leave his struggling daughter. He is powerless.
Suddenly the object emerges from the little girl's throat and plops onto the pillow: a gooey, hairy mess of partially digested matter. She collapses upon the bed in exhaustion. The father tries to speak to her but she is unresponsive; she only coils up reflexively and begins taking huge gulps of air. Desperate to offer some comfort, he strokes her hair and pats her back gently. Sweat soaks through her pajamas; her stench is unusually rank.
A quick examination of the bolus of matter reveals small bones, including a little pointed skull, resembling those of a rodent. The bones are mixed with hair and little brown bits. The father tries to engage his daughter once again. This time her head whips around at him quickly. With frightening dilated eyes she lets off a seething hiss and swipes her fingernails across her father's face. He falls back upon the floor in horror as the girl leaps off the bed and scurries out of the room on all fours.
The father is stupefied. He sits there for a few long moments, collecting his thoughts, demanding of his mind some rationality. "My little girl is not possessed," he tries to assure himself. At once the house has become eerily still, not a sound coming from the living room to where his daughter escaped. The thick darkness from the hall seems to force itself into the pink-lit bedroom.
Well, maybe he hears something. Indeed, he listens intently — it is the sound of a crackling fire. He examines the opposite wall through the doorway: the sides of his eyes catch vague moving shadows. Timidly he goes toward the door and, the pounding of his heart preceding him, steps into the hall.
Out in the living room, in front of the antique wood stove, the little girl is sitting on her knees. The father cannot believe what he sees: somehow the wood stove has become fully enkindled. His daughter stares at it fixedly. The rolling flames cast a wild orange flicker upon her face. Embers spew from the stove, briefly swirl and flow about her, snuff out, get replaced by more. She makes no movement, she doesn't even blink; she just watches the flames beckon her with their little dance.
Like all fathers and their daughters, the connection between this man and his little girl is an enduring thing. While he watches her before the fire, he can sense this connection with her — primitive and subconscious, like a lion sensing its lost cub. Somehow the father knows his feeling of terror is his daughter's terror, that the aching inside his chest is her heart. What can he possibly do to rescue her, roaming lost in this transient psychosis?
Then, slowly, quietly, the little girl turns her head toward her father. She begins whispering jumbled things, as if hallucinating. Her gaze is sinister — it holds the father captive in his place, like a deer frozen in headlights. With each of the little girl's deep breaths, the fire seems to reach toward her, covet her ever so closely. All the while, the little girl has been carefully shifting her body into a deep squat. Eventually her weight rests fully upon the fronts of her soles.
At last, she says to him, in hauntingly intelligible, death-measured tone: "Daddy, I am the worst thing that's ever happened to you."
The father has no time to react. With a sudden powerful push of her legs, the little girl springs herself into the fiery stove. Flames burst out in a dazzling display as the girl pulls her body inside, her charred hand reaching out from within to close the iron door behind her. The father screams in terror, his limbs seizing up cold; then, breaking free, he lunges down the hall to save her.
The daughter is twisted awkwardly inside the stove, her weight pressed upon on the latch, preventing him from being able to open the door. He peers helplessly into the stove's little window, and sees her staring back at him. The eyes he knows so well, once careless and tender, imprisoned within a fiery furnace; there is shock and confusion in them, the urgent confusion of a seven year-old, like the pain has suddenly ripped the little girl out of her trance. She begins howling in profound torture, squirming desperately.
Only it is too late. Her scorched eyes already begin to fall behind the curtain of flames. Her sinew-skeleton hand, completely engulfed, stretches toward the little window in her last moments of consciousness, and disintegrates before his eyes. The father, overtaken, crumples to the ground.
The room fills with angry black smoke. Lying frozen in terror on the floor, the father grips his face with his hands and fingernails, drawing blood. His eyes dart madly around the room, seeing only smoke and soot and orange flecks of light. The smoke begins to coalesce in front of him. It takes on a most auspicious shape: the shape of a cat's head. And in the center of the cat-form, two murderous orange pupils.
The next few moments, an eternity. As the flames in the wood stove begin to wane, the cat-form dissipates apathetically. The father, his face scratched and deathly, lies quiet in the moonlight. He swears he hears a whisper coming from the wood stove. "I hunger," it utters menacingly. He turns his head to look, but sees only the ash sculpture of his daughter amid the red-hot cinders — the last inscription upon his mind before he slips into a state of eternal madness...
posted by Row of Streetlights at 12:51 AM
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