Dating : My roomate’s relationship with her cat was starting to get a little strange…

It wasn’t unusual for my roommate to come back with stray animals she found on the streets. Sure, it was a nuisance at first, and the fact that our carpets were stained and that the couch now smelled like drool and dog hair didn’t sit that well with me at all, even going as far as to mark with duct tape “my” areas which were to remain animal-free, or else, I would threaten to bounce. But the habit, would, eventually, start to grow on me after the first year. Maybe because the way her eyes would light up with an animal between her arms was one of my last windows to genuine human joy, or maybe because some of the ones she brought in and the situations they put her under did made me laugh a couple times…

After some time, it became a habit of ours.

Once a week at five thirty in the afternoon I would peek out of my room when the door opened, meaning she had returned from school, and spy on the new fuzzball we would have to find a home for.

“It´s not going out of my room, Dina!”, she would insist to shut me up about how a dog as big as that would not work in our small, closet-like apartment, and I couldn’t help but sigh and nod, knowing full well the thing would end up sleeping in my bed and I would be fine about it, because, by then, the pup would’ve grown on me.

And today, at five thirty, the routine was as such. Juggling her purse, backpack, juice and a slightly squished shoebox, the tingle of her keys brought me, sore-eyed from my laptop, into the living room, leaned on the wall with a mocking grin.

“Need any help?”, I asked, not knowing why I even bothered as the answer was always the same.

“Nope, I’ve got it”.

She let her bag hit the ground and sprung upwards, closing the door and twirling to face me, her posture hunched to signify she was bursting to surprise me with news, clenched between her hands was the cardboard container.

“… Are you waiting for me to ask?”, I laughed, making her nod with a small squeak of excitement. “What is it that you’ve got there”.

Her bony hand, which held a small silver ring, took the lid off, revealing such anticipated discovery to be a tiny, white tabby kitten. An amused sigh left my nostrils and she laughed, eagerness making her already small, long eyes almost invisible because of her full toothed smile.

“Isn’t it the cutest little thing you’ve even seen?”, she squealed, cheeky. The small animal let out a tiny, meek meow that melted her on the spot. I laughed, crossing my arms.

“Hey, at least it´s not a huge dog this time”, I shrugged, turning back to my room.

“Dinner’s in the fridge, I ordered Kosher”.

I was glad, honestly. The weeks she brought cats in were, by far, the easiest ones.

I’m not much of a feline fanatic, and felines do not seem to be my fanatics either. Its almost like every person who “doesn’t like cats that much” has the same story of a family cat scratching them after their small, child hands, tried to pet it, and since hold a mutual vendetta against the entirety of the species. I´m also not that fond of the thought of hair everywhere, as I´ve often seen on certain clothes of mine after hanging around the couch.

But a kitten as small as that couldn’t cause that big of a ruckus…

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the first couple of days other than the fact that I had to call her every day and go “Astrid, we´re out of cat food again” because the bags seemed to empty magically overnight, to the point it got me thinking we were having trouble with mice.

Our schedules made it so that I would babysit Eddie, the cat, during the day, and Astrid would at night, and after taking care of him for a while I reached the conclusion that Eddie was… well, a normal cat, as much as my cat expertise allowed me to judge. The days went by calmer than normal, so I wasn’t complaining, but something was missing…

The time Astrid and I spent together often orbited around one thing: finding the new animal a “loving, forever home”. Sitting on the couch together over tea skimming through social groups and messaging friends and acquaintances for someone in need of a friend.

The kitten was still in the apartment, and it had been four days of not looking for anybody to take care of it whatsoever. With it being the size of an orange, I would often forget about its existence until squeaks coming from Astrid´s room made me go “oh… its still here”. I stopped asking after a while, receiving the same meaningless answer of “I´ve got a few people interested, but they´re not the right fit” before she barricaded herself and the animal inside.

I knew the day would come where Astrid wouldn’t be able to let go of one of her finds, for I was fully aware anything with slightly biggish eyes and a wagging tail was able to win her heart. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t expect for her to shelter in the way she was doing it.

I had never been the kind of person to keep her from doing things, preferring leaving over having her stop doing something she liked. Did I prefer to leave calm, serene and odour-less? Sure, but never did I actually tell her to stop because of me, so I wasn’t sure why she felt the necessity to hide the kitten as extremely as she was.

No questions I asked, nevertheless.

A week was gone in a whiff and, at five thirty, I was expecting to hear the door open and the jingle of the keychains hanging from Astrid´s bag. However, the room was silent. Minutes dragged like hours of expectation, but no sound ever came other than my breathing, of which I was suddenly aware of in the dim light of my laptop. I stood up, stretched in silence and took a peek outside the door and at the kitchen, which was empty, desolate.

I frowned. The type of worry you feel stupid for having installing in the pit of my stomach. There were countless simple possibilities that could explain why my roommate was arriving late, and I knew it was nonsensical for me to be preoccupied… yet, I was, and my gut wallowed in worried ache as I waited.

And waited, expecting even the chirp of the elevator.

That was when something grabbed my attention: a sound, and it was coming from Astrid´s room.

The kitten was meowing.

Growing up in a troublesome environment, privacy was one of the things I had grown to value the most, and it was strange for me to even glance at Astrid´s locked door, as it wasn’t often closed and I took it as a sign that she wanted to be alone. Although, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something in that night´s quietness was a tad unnatural, and, for the sake of my sanity, I pushed the door softly, finding that it was unlocked.

Something immediately hit me: the stench of the litterbox, but it lost any relevancy when I caught sight of Astrid, still wearing the pyjamas she had dined in three days ago, sitting upright on her bed, the kitten asleep on her lap.

My first instinct was to shut the door once more and pretend I hadn’t had the intention of prying in whatsoever, but something stopped me. Seeing that Astrid was home didn’t shake the nervous constipation, for some reason, so I timidly called out for her.

“Hush”, I received back as a whisper; her voice was slightly croakier than usual.

“Eddie is asleep”.

That was the first time I thought Astrid´s relationship with that cat was odd.

I tried not to think about it too much. Astrid and I didn’t really hang around outside the apartment, and my everyday life seemed to suck me away of the barren, strange planet that the flat had become, only to spit me right back every time the elevator´s silence engulfed me into the building.

The scent of cat urine always took me by surprise no matter how many times I had squinted my eyes and wrinkled my nose because of it. It made me want to go back outside and sleep on the hallway, and I would´ve told Astrid about it if she hadn’t completely vanished from sight, buried deep into her room with the small, white kitten.

“Astrid? Are you in there?”, I would ask, seeing how the bananas on the counter, which she bought weekly for her breakfast, were starting to rot.

“Yes”, she would answer, enthusiastically, as always, apparently unaware of her strange behaviour. And I, not knowing better, would leave it at that, disregarding the itch in my brain every time I left for school.

Something about me wanted to believe that she went out and about in my absence, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that she didn’t, and the odour, which only seemed to worsen with days, nay, hours, was reaching a hellish status…

Monday of the following week. I came back to find her door wide open.

Unfamiliarity stopped me in my tracks, detaining my body under the door´s frame as if I had just collided with an invisible shield. It was the scent of chemicals, pine trees and lavender, followed by an almost artificial sense of quietude from every corner of the apartment, including Astrid´s room. The kitchen´s light creeped inside to show that it was empty and been tidied up in hotel-like fashion.

My eyebrows raised, perplexed, and surprise quickly turned into a confused smile. It was not that I minded change, as it was much preferred over the ammoniac kick to the head from before… but it added to the incongruity of Astrid´s recent conduct.

So, I placed the kettle on the stove and sat on the couch, waiting for my roommate to return and confront her once and for all.

I waited. The water boiled and I waited. After a while, it was cold again, so I turned the stove back on and I waited. The water boiled and I waited until it was cold, once again, but no sign did Astrid give. Checking the time on my phone told me I had been hanging fire for almost four hours, something I could have deduced based on the long-gone sunlight and the climbing moon, but I refused to let myself think about such matter. I meant to send Astrid a message, but the fact that she hadn’t been online in more than a week gave me little hope.

I sighed and let my head fall back, but just then, the doorknob twisted, and the dangling of keys made my body jump up impulsively.

I saw her as she pushed with her backpack, an image that made my soul sigh with relief. She was fine, dressed in light colours and summer clothing as she had always done, and her skin was healthy, a bit pale, but healthy. The only thing that had really changed was her hair, before shoulder-length golden locks and now was a short pixie cut of curls, giving the impression of a golden crown.

But just before I could comment on anything, she came in backwards, puffing hardly, and she was dragging the body of a man.

A high-pitched yelp escaped from my mouth.

“Astrid! Who the fuck is that?!”, I cursed, looking at her with bewildered, bulging eyes and a racing heart.

“I found him on the sidewalk outside uni”, she cheeped, smiling happily even though she was clearly struggling, her ample forehead dampened with sweat and reddened. Heaven knows for how long she had been carrying that man around.

“Is… Is he?”, I hesitated, terrified, but when the man whimpered a groan my body felt relieved. He did reek of alcohol, though, and was most probably out of himself.

“Can we keep him?”, she sung. There was an almost bizarre expression plastered on her face, and the shine of her eyes, which seemed to have bleached from cocoa brown to honey-like, was vivid, as bright as it had always been. Human.

… Yet, she had brought a drunk man to the apartment.

I didn’t know if I was supposed to laugh. I sure tried, never realizing how atypical my roommate’s sense of humour was, but my lips refused to curl upwards from my alarmed expression. Astrid blinked, her eyebrows furrowing as if to say I was the one acting weirdly.

“What the hell are you talking about?”, I finally managed.

“Get that man out of the apartment!”.

Astrid´s face froze on her last emote, as if glitching. Hanging from the air like a portrait of a plastic, crooked smile, her eyes static in a way that made my spine quiver. But that image soon vanished, and her features flung downwards to a serious, dead-like stare that made me take a doubtful step back. She, in silence, backtracked, taking the man´s feet instead of his hands and dragging him out into the hallway.

I was petrified. Something inside my head told me to run after her and demand an explanation, and another was screaming about calling the police… but my terror-stricken limbs were glued to their place, making me a wax statue.

By the time I managed to convince myself this wasn’t, in fact, a dream, or a nightmare, my mind regained consciousness, a chill running down my back. My mouth felt dry and my legs, sore, my existence seemingly compromised by an event of such… confusing nature. I turned around and walked to my room, burying beneath the covers and falling into an exhausted, restless slumber.

Astrid didn’t return the next morning, or the one after that, and after a nail-biting course of seventy-two hours I opted for going to the police. A missing person report was filed for her that afternoon, and, with the help of my classmates, pamphlets were handed and posters were placed, all bearing the image of the round-faced, charming blond, who bore a smile and a straight nose with a slight, hardly noticeable bend.

My mood had spiralled down into an uneasy hysteria. I no longer could pay attention to class and minutes seemed to fly by but crunching me down painfully at the same time. Spending most of my time alone in my room gave me (unfortunately) a lot of time to think, and I couldn’t help but wonder if…

If it was all because of that god forsaken cat.

“Ever since she found that animal she started acting weird”, I told Aneska, a friend we shared, over a tense breakfast she had procured me, my hands shaking nervily and making it impossible for me to hold a spoonful of cereal correctly.

“… Come on, Dina” she, wisely, crooned delicately, as if not to cause me any more distress but knowing I was talking out of sheer fear.

“I know this is very confusing, believe me, we are all as worried and surprised as you are, but let´s keep our senses cool, okay? For Astrid”.

But even after she left the thought wouldn’t let my brain alone, stepping on it viciously and holding tight as if it were a fat fly, greedy inside a jar of jam. That cat, the cat had something to do with it, I just knew it, I just knew it! That little bastard always had the weirdest of the stares, milky and blueish as if void of Earth-like life but rather extra-terrestrial value. Its meows were screeches, the dragging of nails across a chalkboard and its body was small, unbelievably, horrifyingly small…

Or maybe I was picturing it like that in my troubled tempest of an imagination.

The goddamn cat couldn’t have taken part of this, I was being ridiculous. Yet, again, it was hard for me to even remember that night in the kitchen, and I couldn’t picture Astrid taking part of something like this either, not in a million years.

None of it made sense, not even my own mind. And with every single minute I spent overthinking I managed to convince me of a brand new, crazier theory, all orbiting the blazing sun that was the image of the kitten, burned into my eyeballs, engraved into my memory and tattooed on my mushy, hurting brain.

The calendar poured like a waterfall and every day became a mirror image of the previous one only with my personal hygiene getting worse, but it all came into a halt when the landline started to ring. I bolted up, staring at the air like a frightened squirrel before dashing to pick up the phone. Neither of us ever used the landline, and the number had never been handed out until recently, typed with ink on Astrid´s missing person´s posters.

“Hello?”, my voice was almost ghost-like, shaky, as if my vocal cords had picked up rust.

“Hey, I´ve just seen the girl on your posters walking by the port. I´m pretty sure it was her, although she was dressed different than in the photos, like, with a long white robe or something, but her hair I definitely recognized. She has just gone past me no more than a minute ago, but I don’t have any idea where she could possibly be heading to… hello?”, the phone talked to the air, fading to background sounds as I struggled to tie my shoes as fast as possible with the toothpicks that were my numb fingers.

The air was cold, and dawn was just breaking in. My old sedan coughed as I pressed on the accelerator, zooming past red lights and mocking the speed limit, not stopping to even think about what I would do if I got pulled over but knowing, subconsciously, that I would´ve just keep going. The ocean was just tinting pinkish from the rising sun by the time of my arrival. I parked my car violently and jumped out, breaking into a run.

I hadn’t given it much thought, so, when I found myself standing underneath a cerulean wasteland and surrounded by a few early runners and commuting cars, I huffed, my lungs barely keeping up with my heart.

My dishevelled appearance startled onlookers as I jumped at people with a manic “have you seen this girl?!”, and some started changing their paths to avoid crossing with me. I felt like pulling my hair out; I was so close, so, so close, yet… so far. Too late.

I gazed at the body of water feeling suddenly self-aware.

What was I doing? I was going batshit crazy!

I stumbled to a bench and slumped down, letting my head fall forward and closing my eyes, sighing as though my breathing could take away the whirlpools that were my thoughts…

“Excuse me?”, I heard, and looking up I noticed that a man had approached me, his mane of fawn hair beaming in reflection of the morning and his smallish, brown eyes, gentle.

“I saw the girl in your poster a couple minutes ago”, he pointed at the crumpled copy I had snatched from the apartment and held on to, my knuckles pale. The information took its time to settle, and my eyes widened as my heartbeat jolted up.

“Really? Are you sure it was her? Where did she went?”.

“I drive my taxi around these parts every day and I had never seen her, or somebody like her, ever”, he explained calmly, looking at me, surprisingly, without a shade of pity, but with a stare of tranquillity that seemed to help my brain work better.

“She strutted by that way with a long robe on, like the those Japanese folks use, and turned around the street next to the hotel. Cheery lass, I thought, but it was a tad strange… definitely not the choice of apparel I normally see runners wear”.

“Can you take me there?”, I jumped up, noticing how big he was now that I was standing beside him and how that would’ve scared me if it weren’t for of the mental block of anything other than Astrid that clogged my ideas.

“Sure, I’ve got nobody in now”.

I cautiously inspected every inch of the port, the sound of the engine and the asphalt under tires made me descend into deep thought, considering every building and alley as if time had slowed down in order for me to look at it with a magnifying glass. Any sign, any trace of Astrid would’ve made me burst the door open and throw myself at it like a foaming bloodhound over a rabbit.

The driver made no sound but to indicate where he had seen Astrid walking, and as the vehicle turned around to a structure that stuck out from the rest, a big, square white hotel with the word “Seashell” engraved on a silver plaque between a seafood restaurant and a convenience store, his finger directed my gaze to a street that went upwards.

“She went that way when I lost sight of her”, his words were cue for me to scramble out the car, mumbling a distraught “how much?” not knowing whether I even had enough to pay with.

“Let´s leave it at that, this is the way I’m heading, anyways, and I’m happy to help”.

“Hope you find your friend!” was the last thing I heard of him, for after thanking him with gratefulness I believed impossible to feel I ran, my legs picking up adrenaline from my body´s last reserves and energy being pumped from sheer, intense, worried panic.

“Astrid?!”, I shouted multiple times, approaching any business and house that appeared on my view and drawing attention from frowns behind windows.

I couldn’t give up, not when I had her at the distance of a holler.

I must have been running for a good hour, and my knees were starting to feel it. Exhaustion and throat pain brought my pace to a halt, and I took a couple of drained steps until I rested myself against a brick wall.

A lump grew in my throat and I felt like reducing to a puddle of tears. Every inch of my body and soul hurt, and, again, failure creeped in, and it could have made me lay down and sleep in the middle of the street if it weren’t for an alley, or, rather, the way it spoke to me. It was across the street, standing, like a black bear, an entire galaxy between two stores. I blinked, thinking it had been just my imagination as I stared at it intensely, still feeling how it wanted me to get closer.

There was nothing that really differentiated that alley from the rest except for the fact that it seemed to go deeper into the guts of the architecture, and I wasn’t able to see the end of it. It was strange for me to be so fixated on it, looking like the perfect place for someone to get murdered in… and, yet, I followed, walking to it slowly until I was just before its jaws, swallowing me into damp shadows that smelled of carp and seaweed.

Focused on my surroundings I moved like a feline, sleuthing between bins and misplaced garbage, occasionally looking back at the street to see how far this alley really went.

It went really far.

My sense of time hadn’t been the best this past week, and that seemed to be heightened by the tubular passage which was able to squeeze seconds faster than the rest of the world. Maybe it had been an hour, even two, or perhaps ten minutes, but the ground under my feet kept going and going, until it finally didn’t, and I met a staircase that led to a door.

I was too far inside to see the light from the exit, and as I turned around the entire universe seemed to be made out of damp, burgundy stone, wrappers and a big, metal door, tall over me, dirty and heavy.

My tingled around an idea: there’s no going back now. I stepped up, feeling every movement as though in dire need of an oiling, and gripped the door´s handle, pushing it decidedly.

The room was hot, and the lighting, heavy. The first thing I smelled was the scent of decay and stale bread, then came the metallic punch of blood and the light tinge of sediment and mud, sulphur mud. Although, of all my senses, sight was definitely taking the biggest hit.

An instinct wanted me to launch towards Astrid, for I saw her standing there, straight as a ruler. But something stopped me, the three presences at her sides, their strange clothes and the way all four were holding a feline, Eddie between her arms.

I noticed her first, her hair as short as I had seen it back at the apartment, but a white cloak was now covering her from the neck down. Her feet wore white boots engraved with gold and a long, graceful bow of the same metal held to her back. The face, it was Astrid´s, but that wasn’t Astrid anymore, at least not according to the powerful heat coming from her glowing skin, burning with such pride she her selflessness would have never owned. An aura of gold almost blinding, reflecting in a way that suggested she was a gemstone, her features grazed with something I can just describe as “divinity”.

And those who surrounded her were no less intriguing. Standing to her right and taller than the other three was a bare-chested man, whose copper hair matched the hot, dense crimson liquid that painted him over as though poured from above, dripping from even his face of asymmetrical features: a crooked nose, puffed ears, darkened eyes and a strong, chiselled chin, those of a bloodthirsty savage. His muscles were toned, and his biceps pulsed with swollen veins as he too was carrying an even bigger weapon, only this one a sword soaked in blood and ready for combat. A look to the other hand told me he too held a cat, a Persian cat, angry, big and red.

Almost swallowed by the man´s fierce appearance was the next figure, hunched over and small. It was another man, a young one, even though the crinkled, wrinkled skin on his face suggested the opposite, giving him the illusion of melting to the ground. The clothes he wore were square and baggy, hanging over his bony shoulders like a drying pillowcase, and from the holes for the arms I could see his body, or rather the hanging ribcage covered by coarse leather he carried. He was extremely malnourished, grey in nature, and I wondered how his legs could carry not only his weight, but that of a rusty, golden pair of balances tied to his back like that of a mule´s and the Lykoi cat held by his sickly hands.

The last wore a cloak similar to Astrid´s, but black, and it covered his face with shadows. Inky fabric sewn together in pieces like a second-hand robe made out of old clothes, and the only thing sticking out were the figure´s bare toes and its hands, both swollen, like water balloons, and of the colour of pale, blueish mould. It seemed to darken the side of the room it was standing on, foul, wretched, doomed, and the walls and ceiling close to him tinged slightly of sable blackness. Unaffected though, was the grey, spotted Sphinx cat, who rested, perched on its hands.

It says something about the sheer strangeness of the individuals the fact that I noticed them first rather than the pile of reeky, boiling corpses that stacked at their feet, seven in total. I covered my mouth, muffling a scream, but it was too late, and my human impulse of horror had already given me away.

The four cats turned to me first, then, the four faces, and I felt a droplet of sweat fall from my eyebrow, to my cheek and to the ground, noisily, suddenly feeling every single tinge, breeze and vibration from the Earth as though it was a pre-mortem surge of clarity.

I realised one of the bodies was the old drunk Astrid had taken to the apartment before, but his entire body was now covered in big, blistering boils, threatening to pop at any given moment. The others, however, I did not recognize: one, blue of asphyxiation and red with forgotten struggle, another, with scaly skin and protruding bones, its lips chapped, and eyes pruned, the next was scorched, black its skin and it crumbled ashes, besides was one whose eyes were white, blinded even before eternal darkness, hidden under was a body covered in gashes and open, bleeding wounds that appeared to have been done by sharp objects and projectiles of variety, and the last was on pieces, dismembered and spread across the rest.

I took a step back, trembling, and when the heat wanted to burn off my retinas I started running back towards the exit, a scorching sun warming my back as every single one of my steps echoed and pushed me forward with sonic impulse.

I cried, I screamed, maybe even sobbed, but the trail seemed to not have an ending, and when it finally did, my feet bleeding, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of it for much, and I collapsed to the ground.

When I first woke up I thought it had been nothing but a nightmare, but I felt a needle inserted in my arm and the chemical scent of pine trees and lavender in my nostrils. I was in a hospital.

It had been real, as real as me, and I was still real.

Astrid never returned to the apartment after that, and, as time went on, people started to forget about her. There were many memorials, and I was invited to all of them, but neither her nor I were ever present in any of them, and people started forgetting about me too.

I returned to my mother´s care after all, as she had once said I´d do, and forgot about any sense of ambition other than to be between her arms. I refused to ever tell her, or anyone, anything that happened that day, and a sense of impending doom and trauma now powers over anything I do.

I shall never forget, my body won’t let me, and the curse which such sight inflicted on me robbed me of my sleep with a vivid, repetitive nightmare that will haunt me until I’m brave enough to make use of the gun that my father left in the attic: being tied and, starting with my skull, being sawed in half.