Never Mind the Dead Cat

It was very important that little Andy never saw Ocultus dead. It was his pet cat for five years, (or in other words, all his life) and it would be a terrible strike to his young, innocent soul. Innocent, that is, if we are to believe that toddlers are little angels and not future serial killers or evil dictators. Hitler, after all, was a cute kid, too.

But of course little Andy’s normal, thought Samuel, his father. Putting the dead cat in a plastic bag, he was thinking about his son’s big blue eyes, and of the things that lie hidden beyond. What if he killed Ocultus?

Yes, what if Andy killed his pet cat? The way its neck was broken indicated foul play, and Ocultus seldom approached anyone else but Andy, which means he had a perfect opportunity to kill the cat.

Killing small animals is the first indicator of a serial killer, Samuel said to himself, remembering that CBS special on murderers. What’s up with that channel, anyway? Three CSI’s, Cold Case, Num3ers with its pseudo-cool spelling, and all the other crime shows. Could this be why my son is turning into a killer?

His wife Vera had no idea about his worries, and she would probably kill him herself if she ever found out. What kind of a father is he, anyway? Thinking his own child is turning out to be the next Michael Myers.

Samuel threw the bag into the trunk of his Cadillac and the lifeless body inside it landed on the carpeting with a soft bump. He got into the car and started the engine. Vera was waving at him from an open kitchen window, and he nodded his head. Mission accomplished.

It was Vera’s job to keep Andy inside the house long enough for Samuel to get rid of the body, and it was a pretty difficult job, because Andy loves to play outside in the garden. She left the kitchen and entered the living room, where Andy was sitting at the TV, not really watching Spongebob, but rather playing with toy cars, pretending it’s a drive-in cinema.

My God, he is so adorable, thought Vera, and after looking at her son for a while, she told him daddy was done repairing the septic tank, and he can go play outside now. Andy got on his little legs like a spring and vanished behind the back door. Soon, she could see him through the kitchen windows riding his tricycle around the garden.

Meanwhile, Samuel took the cat to the vet, where they said they would dispose of the body. Only they didn’t use the word body when he called, they said corpse. “Yes, Mr. Rosenstock, bring the corpse over, we’ll take care of it. Put it in a plastic bag and wear gloves when handling it.”

He pulled into the small parking lot adjacent to the veterinary clinic. It was a pretty big concrete building, looking more like a motel than an animal hospital. He took the bag from the trunk and entered the lobby. The receptionist, a dashingly attractive young student of medicine who worked there part time to pay for her apartment which many local pet owners visited on numerous occasions to make mad passionate love to her instead of their wives, raised an eyebrow upon seeing Samuel with a black bag.

“I called earlier today,” he started, but she remembered who he was before he got to finish his sentence. She told Samuel the doc will be with him shortly, please wait. And so he did, putting the cat body-bag on the floor next to a row of chairs, where he sat down and shifted through some magazines, all of them new issues, unlike the common stereotype that all magazines in every waiting room are totally out of date.

“Ah, Mr. Rosenstock, come on in,” said the doctor, and vanished back in his office before Samuel even noticed him. He entered the room, complete with a desk, an examination table, filing cabinets, medicine supplies, et cetera. There was also a yellow biohazard bag on the table, and the doc told Samuel to put his bag inside.

“Um, I was thinking,” Samuel said hesitantly, “Think you could do an autopsy? Tell me how it died?”

“That is a little unusual,” he replied, “But If you’re going to insist…”

Samuel nodded and so the doc took the yellow bag containing the black bag to another room, which Samuel assumed was the OR. He hesitated whether to follow the doc inside or not, but when he called him in, Samuel entered.

“How did you say Ocultus died?” he asked. Samuel said he didn’t know exactly, but that he had suspicions someone might’ve did it on purpose.

“Forgive me my sense of humor, but are you telling me you think this was a felidaecide?” He chuckled, but stopped when he noticed Samuel wasn’t amused at all. “Look, Mr. Rosenstock, there’s not much I can tell you. The fifth vertebra is dislocated, which cut the spinal cord and caused immediate death. Your cat did not suffer. What else do you want?”

“Could a child do this?” he asked bitterly.

“A child? Think some troublemakers did this?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“It certainly seems possible. Only I can’t imagine what kind of person would do this to an innocent cat.”

“An evil person, doc. An evil one.”

Samuel left the clinic as fast as he could; avoiding any questions the vet might’ve had about his suspicions. The last thing he needed was his wife getting a call from the veterinary clinic telling her Samuel thinks their child is crazy. The last thing he needed was for it to be true.

Vera called her husband to tell him they’re out of milk, and then she went outside to keep a closer eye on Andy. She found him staring at a dead bird under their apple tree. She ran to him and dragged him away from that dismal sight.

“Mommy, what do you think happened to that bird?”

“It must’ve fallen from the nest,” she said and she hastily made up some parental crap about bird heaven. Then she told him to go play with the hose, and while he watered sunflowers, she threw the small dead bird into a trash bag and threw the bag into the trash bin. She figured it’s ok to throw away such a small body, and there was no need to take it to the vet. She also figured her husband wouldn’t want to go back again anyway.

He’s been so distracted lately. I wonder what’s on his mind.

Samuel pulled over at the store, bought milk, drove away. All in record time. On his way back he paid little attention to the road, but rather watched the children playing outside on the curb and on front lawns. He wished his own son would play happily outside, but instead he was afraid Andy was hunting for game. A cat is a relatively big animal compared to his childish body, so Samuel figured this must’ve been going on for some time already. First he killed a mouse. Or a bird. Maybe a squirrel or a guinea pig. Then a cat. Then maybe a dog. And then?

When he returned home, Vera was on the phone with a neighbor (or so he surmised from that one half of the conversation), and so he went outside into the garden to check up on Andy. He was kicking a ball around a tree, laughing and enjoying himself in such an innocent and cute way that Samuel felt more than stupid for thinking that little angel could be a future mass murderer.

He played soccer with Andy for about an hour, until he was tired and saved by Vera’s summons to the table. They had meat loaf, a favorite of Andy’s, and this time he even managed to cut his food all by himself. Vera was visibly proud of her crafty son, and so Samuel pretended to be pleased with this little achievement as well. Deep down, however, he was wondering since when was Andy so handy with a knife? And did he really want him to be?

In bed, Samuel told Vera about his visit to the vet, and brought up the possibility that maybe someone killed Ocultus. Of course, he made it sound as if he was talking about some teenage punks or junkies, but he had the image of Andy holding the lifeless cat somewhere deep inside the back of his mind, and it was slowly pushing its way through erotic fantasies involving that medicine student, creeping inside Samuel’s head and driving him crazy.

“Oh my, do you think there are kids like that around here?” she asked Samuel, referring to his suggestion of cat-killing adolescents, but he wasn’t listening. “Where are you?” she asked him silently and turned on her side to turn off the lamp. She was surprised to see Andy standing at the bedside.

Standing there and holding a knife.

to be continued

No Sign of L

A very short but quite challenging story about the preservation of letters and words and everything else we hold dear when it comes to communication. What would happend if someone took away our alphabet? Or even just one tiny little piece of it?

I did everything in my power to find it, but it’s just gone. I peeked under the bed, under my desk, behind the sofa, just everywhere. Between the books in my room and among the spoons and knives and forks in the cupboard. I even went through the garbage and I searched the attic and the space under the house. The shack in the garden. The garage. I’m pretty sure I exhausted every option, but it’s nowhere to be found.

I can see why this is no reason for anyone not knowing what’s at stake to get excited. Me, I am very excited. Frightened, that’s even more fitting. Petrified. I mean, I’m the one who was supposed to take care of it. I was the keeper, one might say. How I was appointed this task, I don’t know. As far as I can remember, dad was the keeper when I was a kid, and then without any kind of warning, I got appointed this task after his demise.

I’m no expert, as you have no doubt surmised, but I think it works this way with every keeper. From generation to generation, the keeper traditions and know-how are passed on, so that each and every servant of our cause has a successor.

Right, I guess it’s time to say something about the cause. Or, even more fitting, the mission. There are as many keepers as there are tongues and words and fonts and written forms. Each keeper gets assigned one item. He or she must protect and preserve the item at any cost. Often with extreme prejudice.

Yes, sometimes, it gets nasty.

It is surprising how many mad scientists and sinister bad guys there are in the universe, bent on dominating everything. It is even more surprising that what they want is not money or power. They want something tinier. Something that seems to be of no use. Of no big significance. But that is nothing more than a misconception.

They want to own the very means of our communication.

Imagine the keeper of R did not manage to keep it safe. Imagine not having any R’s to write, to say, or to otherwise use. How is a person supposed to express thoughts without an R?

See how giving away our R’s to some mad man’d be the end of everything?

And this is why I need to find that damned item of my keeping. Before some guy in a dark coat sporting a sinister moustache and maybe even a hat to go with the smirk on his face finds the item and destroys humanity.

But how am I to find it? I searched every nook and cranny. Every shadow, dark spot, narrow street, and bad neighborhood. It’s not on any riverbank and at no church or square or causeway or in the underground, on the tracks or on any station. I’m running out of ideas as to where to go and search for my artifact of humanity. This invention of man that I had in my keeping.

What to do now, I don’t know.

What I do know is that there is no sign of it.

No sign of…

Musique concrète

“Marmalade, I like marmalade,” he mutters as he takes the half-empty jar (yes, he’s that kind of guy) off the shelf in the rustic cupboard. His hands are already full, as he already collected bread and three eggs from other shelves in other cupboards.

He lights the small blue flame of the stove, finds a clean pan and he gets to work. Soon enough, melted butter sizzles on the hot metallic surface that has seen hundreds of eggs before and will see even more of them in the future.

While breaking the eggs, he recalls other such occasions. “Breakfast in Los Angeles, macrobiotic stuff…” He recalls all the breakfasts he has ever eaten or prepared, and already he makes plans for the future ones. For Alan, breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day; it is the only meal of the day.

As a roadie for a famous band, he seldom has time to eat lunch, for at that time of day the band is either on the move or preparing for a show, and he never eats dinner, for at that time of day the band is either performing or throwing a party no Grand Vizier would be ashamed of. It is a hectic life, and in such hectic conditions it would be impossible to survive without something to hold on to, and Alan has his breakfast ritual.

“Macrobiotic stuff,” he mutters again and shakes his head, baffled by the life-style of the rich and successful. “Macrobiotic stuff…”

He remembers the small piece of bacon still left in the fridge, and he retrieves it with great enthusiasm, for he likes bacon even more than he likes marmalade. He puts the two slices in the center of the pan and watches them curl and sweat fat as the fry in the butter.

In the meantime, he opens the box of cereal and he pours the crispy golden delicatessens in a bowl full of milk he prepared earlier. This he eats as if he had never eaten before, gulping and swallowing spoonfuls, and soon he throws the silver spoon back into a completely empty bowl. The bacon is done and he picks it up with a fork and puts it on a dirty plate he didn’t have time to clean since the day before yesterday. Then he moves on to preparing the eggs, pouring them into the pan full of half-burnt fat. This may not be a healthy breakfast, but at least it isn’t that macrobiotic stuff.

He drinks some orange juice and then he spreads a thick layer of butter and marmalade on two big loafs of bread. “Marmalade, I like marmalade,” he mutters again. He eats it with one hand, stirring the eggs with the other. Then he prepares two toasts and eats them with the eggs. It tastes better than any room service crap, for it was prepared with love and patience, and also the pressing knowledge that Alan won’t be eating anything else until six o’clock tomorrow.

Rise and shine.

Morning glory.

It took longer than usual today, so he washes the dishes in haste, leaving the knife, fork, and bowl unwashed but still fit for tomorrow’s duty. As he leaves the kitchen, he leaves three things behind: the echo of the doors banging as he shut them hastily, the smells and fumes of cooking, and a dripping tap that goes on and on, forever dripping small drips of water into the sink.

Until someone removes the stylus from the album.