Anthony's Cat
“Verminous Puppets” by Adam Dee
Anthony's Cat
Joshua Pantano
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Description of gore
Implied violence to animals
When Anthony woke up, his body was completely stiff. He could hardly move, yet his eyes flitted back and forth. Same old apartment. Same old support beams in the ceiling. Same old… cat. The cat was sitting on one of the wooden beams again, licking the dirt off of its gray paw. Half of its head was missing, missing on the right side, right below its eye and tearing away at its mouth, and its tongue hung lazily out of the hole in its face, dragging on the dirt on its paw, dragging on the fur. It was coated with mud, and the ends pointed in a thousand different directions. A long time ago, the cat’s face and body might have been covered in blood, but now it was dried and its death was only a distant memory. That distant memory persisted and stayed the same. It was always the same.
“Please,” Anthony managed to murmur, “go away. Please, I’m begging you. Please.”
The cat gave its paw one final lick, then hunched its back and looked down at him. Its green eyes stared directly into his. He didn’t want to stare back. They always burned him. Always.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he uttered. “Please.”
The cat’s tail wiggled. Suddenly, it jumped off the rafters and came down right upon his chest. It slowly came closer and closer, falling for a thousand years, paws and back outstretched, and its eyes never broke away from him—not even for a second. But when it finally came down, it passed directly through his body, like a ghost. It almost felt like nothing, yet a furious cold burned through him nearly a second after it occurred. Then it was over. Over like it had never happened.
He laid back in his bed for a moment, numb, then sat up in his bed and felt the tears begin to well up. All he could think about were the green orbs, and they permeated his skull, permeated his memories. Every single night. Always the same. It was always the same. And he felt that it would happen this way forever, even if he left or moved or died or went away. It wouldn’t change. He thought about taking himself away from it all, to do what he knew was wrong. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, so he wept.
A knock on his bedroom door. He looked up, hands resting beneath his chin, glistened with tears. The door opened slowly. Anthony’s roommate stood behind it, and although a tight, pinched smile was locked on her pale, circular face, her eyes bobbed lazily up and down. They were only half-open, like broken curtains.
“Hey buddy, you good? It’s like 2:00 a.m.,” she said.
He stared at her with shaky eyes and his voice trembled. He wanted to shrug her off and go back to bed, but he couldn’t keep it in anymore. “I’m being haunted by a cat, Emily,” he uttered.
Her lips pursed. She nodded her head up and down like she hadn’t even heard what he said. “Wow,” she said. “Uh, want to talk about it over a snack?”
A scone had somehow appeared in Anthony’s hand as he found himself seated at the breakfast table. Emily ran a hand through her short black hair and took a sip of tea, and watching her like a lost child, Anthony ran a hand through his hair too, but it got caught in the wild curls that danced around the top of his head, so he pulled it away. He let out a breath through his nose.
“So…” she said, placing her mug on the table, “what’s the deal with this cat? You haven’t been feeding strays, right? You know that always attracts more.”
Anthony shook his head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just, well, every night I get visited by the same spirit. It’s a cat, or I think it is, anyway. And it’s got a massive hole missing in its head, and-and-and it always stares at me and jumps down from the rafters and flies right through me.” He squished the scone. “Do you understand what I mean?”
She rubbed her chin. “I can be completely honest with you, right?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Well, if we weren’t friends, I would assume that you broke out of an asylum or something.”
“Come on! I’m not kidding, you know. Would I joke about something like this?”
“Maybe you accidentally developed a sense of humor while you were sleeping.”
“But would I really joke about a ghost cat?”
“I didn’t say you developed a good sense of humor.”
He put his head in his hands. “God, it’s pointless. I don’t know why I thought you’d be any help,” he grumbled, throwing the scone onto the table. It was only lukewarm. He began to get up from the table, mind racing with abstract thoughts. Green eyes shined.
A hand rested on his shoulder. It was Emily’s, and as he looked at her, a soft smile formed on her face. Her bright blue eyes shined.
“All right, I believe you,” she said. “Let’s figure this out, okay?”
The apartment had only two bedrooms as well as a kitchen and a living room—the kitchen was technically part of the living room—but on one of the back walls of the living room, there was a single closet. Its wooden door was dark, but white piney patches snuck through in the spots where the paint had rotted away, and as Emily opened it, a strange, mothy smell snuck out. She dug around inside, tossing aside the ancient artifacts within it: the handle to an umbrella, an empty bottle of pills, the blade to a shovel, a stuffed monkey missing an eye. Finally, she pulled out a shoebox that once held a pair of winter boots; the boots had long since gone missing.
“I told you about my childhood cat, right? Kitty?” she said.
“Its name was Kitty?” Anthony asked.
She shrugged. “I was not the most creative child. Anyway, I used to be obsessed with keeping food around the house for Kitty in, like, the weirdest places. I would stash cans in cabinets, under the sofa—I don’t know. Anywhere you can think. And after Kitty died, well…” She pulled out a can from the box. Its label was barely legible after so many years; it looked like it had a picture of a ham on it, and the only readable text said “Refrigerate.” She continued, “I held on to this can as well as his collar. I don’t know, maybe you can make an offering or something.” She held out the can to him.
“You think that’ll work?” he asked, taking the can.
“Yeah, I’m an expert when it comes to ghost cats,” she said and winked. Anthony smiled, then looked back down at the can. He clenched it tightly.
Back in the kitchen, Emily rustled in the cabinet and eventually tossed a small white bowl onto the counter. Its edge was chipped, but it otherwise looked nice. The last time it had been used, however, Anthony wasn’t sure.
“Use this,” she instructed, crossing her arms.
“Any reason why?” he asked.
She tilted her head. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. How’s that sound?”
His leg bounced gently up and down. “Sounds good, I guess.”
Emily patted him on the back as she walked back toward her room. “Attaboy.” She opened the door to her room, then turned back to look at him. There was still a smile on her face. “Nighty night, o’ great cat whisperer,” she said and shut the door.
Anthony looked down at the can, still in his hand. It left red, rusty stains on his fingertips, and he wiped them off on his pant legs then peeled back the lid. The second it opened, the scent of the food aggressively wafted through the air. He scooped the food out of the can and into the small white bowl, and although it clumped together and fell apart in chunks, it ended up looking normal in the end. Normal by his standards, anyway. He soon had a decent amount of food in the bowl, which he carried back to his room and placed on his nightstand. He paused for a second, waiting and listening. Emily’s room was completely silent, as was the outside world. Nothing. If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what he’d do. Or, at least, that’s what he told himself. His eyes fluttered down, and he climbed into bed, pulling the sheets up to his neck.
He looked up at the support beams on the ceiling. They were bare. He hadn’t really realized how tired he was, but as his eyes weighed down on him, he found that he could barely keep them open any longer. They slipped shut for a second, then quickly reopened. The support beams were empty. Empty. His eyes slipped shut again. He let out a breath. Breathe. Sleep took him away.
His dreams were dark and green. The color swirled around in his head, popping in and out of the darkness. Orbs, for a second. Then gone again. Orbs. Green orbs. He opened his eyes.
The room was almost entirely dark; the lamp on his nightstand had somehow turned off. And yet light came in from outside and bounced off the walls. In the support beams, crouched along the support beam, was the cat. It stared at Anthony, and its eyes nearly glowed. Glowing orbs. It hunched down against the beam. Anthony didn’t say anything. He watched it move in blistering, ear-shattering silence.
Then, something changed. The cat’s ears perked up and it sniffed the air—sniffed with what little it had left of its nose. It pulled its tongue back into the hole in its head, looked around, and then its tongue fell back out. One of its paws moved, then another, until it was walking steadily along the beam like an acrobat. Its back steadied. Suddenly, it leaped down from the rafters, headed straight toward Anthony’s chest. He squeezed his eyes shut. And yet, no coldness ran through him. He opened his eyes. The cat was standing on his chest, its ears twitching. Its weight suddenly manifested, and he felt the indents of its paws squeezing in between his ribs. The cat stared into his eyes, and for once, it felt okay to stare back. It didn’t hurt so much anymore. And, in some sense, it was even sort of cute. He hadn’t noticed the white spot of fur in between its eyes before now. Slowly, the cat moved off his chest and toward the nightstand, and it carefully sniffed the food. It took one breath in, then another, then paused. The room was dead silent, and as the silence became numb, a strange warmth overcame Anthony. He turned his head to look at the cat, who didn’t look back. It started eating the food, bits of it falling out of the hole in its head, onto the floor. It was overcome with a great fury, starting slow but then rapidly chowing down on it as if it hadn’t eaten in years. Maybe, Anthony thought, it hadn’t.
When the bowl was finally empty, the cat turned back around to stare at Anthony. It stared deep into his eyes. He even thought that he saw something—thought that the cat was trying to tell him something—but before he could think about it, the cat miraculously leaped up to the rafters. It landed on one of the support beams, wiggled its tail, then disappeared into the darkness. No more cat. No more orbs.
The room felt friendly for a moment. Anthony watched the beams, waiting for the cat to return, but it didn’t, and he laid back down in bed, completely and utterly exhausted. He didn’t want to move an inch. Completely still, he wondered if he would ever forget what the cat looked like.
He looked over at the bowl. It still had a bit of cat food on it, scattered in bits, chunks, and smears around its edges. He’d clean it up in the morning, he decided. As he laid down in bed again and began pulling the blanket up to his chest, he let out a breath.
It was over, so he thought. But at that moment, his ears barely caught a familiar sound. It sounded like… scratching. Anthony looked around the walls of the room for the source of the noise. Nothing. Suddenly, the realization struck him. Slowly, like a character in a horror movie, he looked up and spotted a dark figure in the rafters. It moved freely, hopping from rafter to rafter. When it entered the purviews of the moonlight, he caught a glance of its face. It had orange fur and a few white spots. The colors were almost bright. And when its tail swung toward Anthony, he saw that the tail was missing a large chunk. Then, more scratching. Anthony gazed in horror as another cat appeared in the rafters. This one was completely white with a large dark spot, maybe mud, on its side. Then another one, but without any fur. Then another, faded yellow fur. And another, missing a leg. One more, no eyes. Another, no tail. A kitten. Another, brown. Another, black. Yellow. White. Gray. The rafters were filled with cats. They meowed sporadically, and their eyes were all locked on the white bowl on the nightstand. Suddenly, a familiar voice popped into Anthony’s head.
“You haven’t been feeding strays, right? You know that always attracts more.”
The cats stared at the white bowl, then turned to look at Anthony. They meowed in unison.
“Aw, man,” he sighed.
