Doc’s advice: Even if you feel lovely and the future (of your love life) seems bleak… don’t give up and do something you’ll regret.
.
.
.
[http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/008/190/ren08.jpg]
…Just. Don’t.
Then, in other “cat” news… Tales of a Lax Demon Girl.
It’s sooo cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!!!!!
[https://67.media.tumblr.com/333fd1d3f178dd9a8b85c57c17fa2ffa/tumblr_n4nrusWPoE1s8y6xro1_500.gif]
I totally blame that novel for the late-ish release. Yep. Totally.
With this said, please enjoy this little trip on the less virtual side of the mirror.
Oh, and the band “Set It Off” is about my favourite band right now. This is the song that made me discover them. Needless to say I was instantaneously hooked. (Link to YouTube below the picture.)
[http://direct-ns.rhap.com/imageserver/v2/albums/Alb.60811405/images/500x500.jpg]
https://youtu.be/zxuBjfubIA0
----------------------------------------
Chapter 5: Fourteen Hours of Reality
~ Part 1: A Cat is NOT Fine! ~
Now, friends, let us go back a little in time, back before this fateful meal that caused a general meltdown of my digestive apparatus. I had just logged out and still lived in the blissful ignorance of the culinary torment to come…
This is the story of how I met your mother.
▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲
Slightly disoriented after logging out, I open my eyes, blink a couple times and extend an arm. My hand hits a hard transparent surface, which I push. The curved window pivots and I raise my upper body up to sitting position. My gaze wanders across my surroundings.
Stars and galaxies visible through round windows in the dark vastness of space. A globe on a pedestal. A white ceiling with glowing wasps nest hanging randomly. Shelves filled with a heteroclite mess, which seems to have been gathered from all over the known world – and beyond – by some nitwit without the faintest dratting clue on the use of any of the items composing the aforementioned mess – a species also known as “a tourist”.
To be honest however, I bought most of this stuff in novelty shops over the years. It might be weird for me to say – with me being the “famed” Wandering Knight and all – but don’t like traveling. In fact, I positively hate traveling. I’m a very sedentary person in real life. So much that I very seldom leave my flat.
I’m not a shut-in though. Absolutely not. I don’t have any weird phobia of the outdoor, nor do I believe in any conspiracy by national television to turn young people into hikikomori. Though I do happen to converse with my electronic appliances at times.
I just like staying in. Except when I don’t. Then I go take a walk.
I’m a simple person.
A lazy simple person.
In a corner of the room, a green-skinned face with compound eyes stares back at me with what I like to think of as confusion. The alien is holding an alarm clock displaying [04:26 AM] in bright Chernobyl-green letters. Yes, “Chernobyl-green” is a colour.
Most of the space is taken by a round mattress buried under a mountain of fluffy pillows.
Again, nothing pink in sight.
…
……
………
I have like a sense of dejà-vu…
Well, it’s my bedroom.
I step out of what looks like an unholy crossbred between a futuristic sarcophagus and a suppository, then close the Plexiglas lid before stepping away from the capsule.
I take three wobbly steps towards the circular bed. In passing, I mumble a greeting at the unmoving extra-terrestrial. He doesn’t reply. I don’t blame him. I don’t speak Plastic very well. He mustn’t have understood my accent.
Reaching the bed, I collapse forwards in the heap of fluffiness, and almost immediately my abused consciousness leaves me, giving me the middle finger as it slams the door.
It’s bad break-up, but I know she’ll be back.
* * *
No transvestite god visits me in my sleep this time, which I’m grateful for. Otherwise I’d seriously start questioning my sanity.
I am awoken by an inhuman growl, forewarning that something is about to get eaten. Thankfully I’m not on the menu, since the one growling is my stomach. Face still in the pillows, I growl back. My bowels too reiterate their glorious call for the hunt. We have a short but meaningful conversation. My mastery of Stomach is more proficient than my Plastic.
By joint agreement, we decide a quest to the fairway land of [The Kitchen] is in order.
My cheek try to veto the motion, claiming the pillows are too fluffy to move away from. However the selfish demand is overruled.
With all the grace of a Magikarp out of water, I move to the edge of the mattress in a succession of small sideways body jumps, then drop down on the thick carpet like a boneless octopus, four limbs short.
“Ouch.”
Moron.
Raising to my feet, with the helpful support of my bed, I shiver in delight at the sensation of the rug pile worming itself between my naked toes.
I stifle a yawn, rub my waking eyes then glance at Greeny, who without as much as twitching, diligently informs me the time is now [08:21 AM]. He doesn’t move much, Greeny.
I like to think he’s a real alien suffering from full-body paralysis and that he’s still awake in there, his tortured mind screaming in agony while we use him as mere furniture.
Hahaha. You’re weird...
Reaching down for my nightstand, I pick up the remote control of the sound system, whose speakers are tastefully hidden in various spots in my apartment. I rarely switch it off. Although I set it to play soft music and nature sounds whenever I’m sleeping.
I push a button, and the sound of musical whales is abruptly replaced by loud rock music.
<–ailing meee! ♫ Internal clock in smithereens! ♪ Can’t fix this, I’m hopeless!! ♪>
“Oh. Yeah, that wakes up.” I shake my head to the drums and guitar.
The sound system is currently tuned to my favourite channel: RMS, the Random Music Station. For a small monthly fee, twenty-four hours of music without commercial breaks, with styles all across the board, from Mozart to Avenged Sevenfold via Noisia, Celine Dion, Eminem, Queen, Kajiura Yuki, Disney soundtracks, and that guy in the metro whom you should really have been nicer too when he told you he would become a star and now he is and you feel like a dope.
Gods, I love music.
Whatever the kind.
Whatever the time.
I’d breathe the stuff if I could.
I just adore to let the melodious ballet of lyrics and rhythms take over my mind, flood my imagination, and push aside all useless thoughts. I don’t know if it’s because the tune monopolizes a good chunk of my brain power, but I’ve always found it easier to think straight while listening to music.
It’s relaxing too, as if I were releasing a muscle that I otherwise keep constantly flexed… except it happens inside my mind. I don’t think the brain is technically a muscle. Sometimes the sound takes me over so completely that I forget what I am doing and just stand there, shivering and happy.
I nonchalantly throw the remote on the bed and, letting my mind ride the music distractedly, I sing in unison with the speakers as I make my way out of the bedroom.
“♪ My eyes are stapled open wide ♫ as I lay down on my side! I am bouncing off these wa~a~a~alls!! ♩♩”
With a verse like that, I can’t really help imagining myself in a straightjacket. How come I don’t have one of these? I’ll have to order one. I can probably find one on eBay. I wonder if they make them in red with rainbow flower motives.
I cross the short hallway, and stop in the doorway to the living/dining room. With a forceful twist of my upper body, I coax a satisfying series of cracks out of my wrung backbone.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
As I do this, my gaze sweeps across the dark room, where the obscurity is contested only by the faint morning glow filtering through the night blue curtains and by the dim phosphorescence of the many stickers of stars studding the ceiling and walls, which is also night blue. I sort of tried to reproduce the real constellations, but I’m no astronomer. My redistribution is surely most… original.
The thick grass-like green carpet and the wooden, outdoor-styled table and its matching chairs complete the illusion of a clearing at night which I was going for.
A “competent” interior designer would probably tell me that it’s a bad idea to use so much dark colours in a room without good natural lighting. But as far as I’m concerned, they can sod off. I’m the one living here, not them.
A beat-up grey couch – so old and worn-out it now looks like an oddly shaped boulder – is facing a fake signboard, which really is a white-painted section of the wall framed by planks covered in artificial moss. Camouflaged against the ceiling, a wide-angle projector, pointed at the white rectangle, is wirelessly linked to my black laptop, which is currently resting on the coffee table – a stupid name for something I only ever drink either coke or tea on.
*crack* *crack* *crack*
Still twisting myself and testing the limits of human elasticity, I groawn – it’s something between a groan and a yawn – in pure bliss at the small shocks spreading through my backbone. I then eagerly reproduce the unhealthy stretching in all the parts of my numb body. This gives my nerves the delightfully painful equivalent of a “cold water bucket in the face” wake-up call, much needed after such a long period of inactivity.
I conclude the session with one last groan of pleasure-pain, which ends in a low throaty purr.
“Prrrr… Meow?”
A light bulb suddenly goes off in my head.
I step inside the room. My stomach growl in protest. I appease it with a pat and the mental promise we’ll go to the kitchen right after this.
Instead of just walking like a boring person, I spin and waltz in direction of the closed curtains. On my way, I throw a couple playful kicks in the cushions I have lying around, shaped like rocks, logs, giant mushrooms and cute colourful smiling slimes.
“♫ I should strap myself in bed ♩” I sing with the radio as I perform two axel turns. “♪ I guess I’ll sleep ♩ when I am dead. ♫♩ As the sun begin to riiiise…”
I abruptly pull one piece of night blue fabric aside, allowing the full might of rising winter sun to flood the dark room.
“♫ I can barely shut my eyyy–Graaaahh!! Sunlight! Evil! Graaah! Kssssss!!” I hiss and raise shaky hands to shield myself from the maleficent brightness of non-artificial lighting. I also claw at the air a little for good measure.
Doesn’t that happen to you too? You go out of the comfy relative darkness of your home, sweet home, and into the brightness of a beautiful, beautiful day… and suddenly you discover you are part vampire?
I hate when that happens to me.
…
What? I’m the Solar Knight and I love sunbathing in Untold Tales?
That is that, and this is this. Please don’t confuse game and reality. That’s something crazy people do.
Seeing as I did not, in fact, burst into flames – surprising, I know – I abandon my pantomime and lower my gaze to the floor of the balcony outside. A smile spread on my face at the sight of the hairy figure waiting impatiently on the other side of the window.
“On time as usual I see. Are you a clock? Or perhaps just a punctual walking stomach? How do you get here each time anyway? Did anyone ever mention to you this is the fifth floor? I’ve heard of spider-pig, but spider-cat?”
Of course the huge, fat, disfigured, one-eyed black cat doesn’t seem to feel like gracing me with an answer. He’s rude that way. Although… perhaps the triple glazing windowed door – windoor(?) – is somehow getting in the way of efficient communication. I still think he’s rude.
“This crazed ♫ delirious mess ♫ laughing at everything I see~ ♩ My sanity is spent. ♪ Just tell me where my time went. I’m losing it! ♩” Another, most pertinent, verse escapes my lips as I continue to stare at the animal and shake my hands in rhythm.
The oversized beast outside swings the mangled half that remains of his tail in an annoyed motion. He glares at me, apparently wondering why his dumbass of an owner keeps dancing like an idiot instead of opening the damn door and letting him in.
That ungrateful bastard. After all I’ve done for him.
What about MY happiness?!?
Disconnecting my thoughts from the music for an instant, I return the attentions with a glare of my own.
…
……
………
A small glare.
…A mean-ish gaze.
……A sidelong glance.
………Please don’t hurt me?
It’s actually a bit scary for me, because this humongous monster of a cat does look fierce and intimidating. What’s with all the furless blemishes marring his large black body? And I know I’ve called him fat, but it’s really all muscles. An especially impressive scar cuts his feline face in a jagged diagonal that goes through his left eye. The organ is white and murky, pretty much useless, and a striking contrast with his right one, brown-red and filled with sharp intelligence.
…I guess. I’m no expert on feline IQ.
That frightening furball could be dumber than a soleless shoe and I’d be none the wiser.
I found this feline fella in the street one day, bleeding out in a gutter. I took him to a nearby animal clinic, where the veterinarian… advised me to have the big guy put down. Oh, not because the animal was hopeless, no. Just because he looked like a really violent cat and would probably be a danger to me and others.
Needless to say, I didn’t appreciate the comment. Who did that guy think he was? I don’t need nobody to tell me what’s a danger to myself! Others? What’s that? Is it something tasty? And I hadn’t hauled the heavy miniature black panther all the way to the “nearby” clinic to finish him off. I’d have mashed its head with a brick myself otherwise.
Dangerous? Hah!
So, instead of following that “wonderful” suggestion, I brought the tom back home and patched him up myself… but not before taking an instant to “politely” voice to the “kind” doctor my “humble” opinion of the influence his female parenthood had on his choice of career.
That SOB…ering individual.
As soon as the injuries of the cat – whom I baptized “McLeon” …because black panthers are Scottish? – finished healed, he started to manifest sever cabin fever, so I let him out. I was half-expecting never to see the beast again. However, to my surprise, he came back… reappearing at dawn on the balcony of my fifth-floor flat by some kind of miracle.
This happened four months ago. He’s been squatting my place ever since. To this day, I still ain’t sure whether McLeon truly is a kickass alley cat, or a dwarf panther escaped from a nearby zoo. I checked the web for notices of an escaped animal, but the search turned out nothing.
I’m still unconvinced. No pet of the feline persuasion is supposed to stand above three feet tall!
…
……
………
Okay, maybe I’m overshooting. But not by much! He’s really, reeeeeally big, for a cat. And scary. His fur is surprisingly soft though.
Nevertheless, I need to ascertain my domination in this relationship!
Furrowing my brows, I move my lower jaw forwards and put on my scariest expression… one to make dogs bark, children cry, and grannies switch sides of the pavement!
Then I violently slide the window open and shout angrily.
“AAAAAaaarrh! McLeon! Wat’ ya doin’ on ma land a’gin, ye damn cad?!”
…
What stupid accent is that supposed to be?
Err… Far West… Texan… Scottish… countryside-ish… angry drunk old rancher? Maybe?
I blame too much bad Western movies.
And not enough common sense.
Not that McLeon looks in any way impressed by my tentatively fearsome display.
I think you just pulled a Nutrek.
A voice reaches my ear coming from the outside.
“NIIIIIIIIICK!! It’s eight FUCKING A.M.!! Tone it down! Respect my honest fuckin’ hangover!! …AND WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY BED!! AND YOU TOO–”
*slam*
I slam the windoor close as soon as the cat has slipped inside.
That was my neighbour by the way. Mary is her name. A well-spoken and charming woman, if you catch her either sober or drunk. It’s the in-between she handles badly. Truly, she’s nice. She has to be… I mean…
She’s an high school school teacher.
…err…
This country’s youth is doomed.
Ignoring potential future sexual delinquents… I return my attention to the haughty feline – that’s a pleonasm – who was walking past me and rubbing its fur against my leg while meowing mockingly.
“Meohohohow… Ya don’ scare me won beet, Siegel!”
I have no idea what kind of accent I’m trying to pretend the cat is imitating either.
Pretend words or not though. That blasted creature has never shown an ounce of respect for me. For nobody in fact. The only human being who can make him listen is Yasmin. And even then, I believe McLeon obeys more out of maddening fear than heartfelt respect.
Well… I can relate to that. My lovely childhood friend can be quite… intense, at times.
“Well ya shou’d feaar me, fatty,” I drawl in response. “Won dey, Imma get mah-self a new set of strings fer ma violin, an’ it’s yer bowels that I gonna use fer it! And ya’ll be turned into a god-damn’d carpet while I’m at it.”
“Disdainful cat-snort… Yemeowah?! Ya and whose army?”
Did you just say “disdainful cat snort”?
Shush.
“Imma get’ch ya won dey, McLeon!” I brandish an angry fist at the furry swinging stumped tail retreating through the room.
“Cat-sigh. Yeah… yeah… whatever. Where’s my food?”
I sigh too. “It’s in the kitchen.”
With Brian.
Needless to say, that conversation was all me. Cats don’t talk…
…
……
………
OR DO THEY???
*dun* *duun* *DUUUUUN*
Nick. Delusions.
They don’t talk in front of humans at least.
Nick…
Maybe they’re just shy? Or is it a conspiracy? I have no idea. Nor does the subject interest me. Cats can take over the world for all I care. It might be fun actually… as long as they aren’t totalitarian racists hell-bent on genociding and/or enslaving mankind. I like being alive and free after all. Especially alive. Free can be negotiated.
Is “genociding” a verb?
Oh, Nick.
Feline plans of global conquest aside, right now I am happy with making up dialogues. This might make me seem weird to onlookers, but I am living alone after all. I have nobody to impress.
Nick, you’re… Oh, you know what, fuck it. But you really should eat something before you faint.
Yeah, yeah… Well, I suppose I’d probably have to show some restraint in front of complete strangers. Probably. I make no promises. I guess I would, perhaps, if said strangers has some sort of power over my life… New landlord. Debt collector. School emissaries… Those guys… as in… “important” people.
Although important people – at least important to me – are pretty much an endangered species in this corner of the world.
Why would we say “corner” of the world, by the way?
*sigh* I really haven’t the faintest idea.
Isn’t it a known fact that the world is a sphere? Ah. Well, not a sphere exactly, but… kinda… more like a slightly flattened ellipsoid, which– Ah. But that’s beside the point.
Thank God.
…Where was I? Ah. Right. Cats don’t talk.
NOOOO!! Food! Kitchen! Now!
With a roll of my eyes, I start walking across the living room after the black son of Bastet. In the background, RMS, which has been playing a pumped-up computer-generated dubstep-ish beat, abruptly switches to heavy metal, which prompts my body into a session of air-drums interspersed with ridiculous poses at times I judge most suuuuui-table.
Meanwhile, my ungoverned binary monologue continues out loud.
“So who cares if I make cats talk?! Hey!? The Feline Freedom Federation, in other words the FFF… ffffffffff... is the only one I would allow to object. Oh! F.F.F… also being an acronym for Fifth-Floor Flat! AH-HAAA! Coincidence? I think NOT!! FREEEDOM!!! And power to cats! …Why would you want cats in power?”
…Don’t ask me. I don’t know, you’re the one making no sense.
“But you’re me!”
Stop that.
“What?”
Talking in general.
“Alright, but you first.”
“No, you.”
No, you.
“No, you.”
No, you.
“No, you.”
No, you.
“No, you.”
No, yo–
SHUT UUUUUUP!! Both of me!!
…
……
………
Who was that?
I have no idea...
…I’m a banana.
…
…..
………
Let’s get to the kitchen.
Yes.
With a puzzled expression, I waltz into the “lab”.
Inside, the depth-perception-impaired furball is already waiting, sitting in the middle of the room, away from any eventual collision-inducing furniture. Not that I’ve ever seen him bump into anything, now that I thought about it… Even though he’s one-eyed. Is it a sixth sense? Echolocation perhaps? McLeon, are you secretly half-bat? Are you not Spider Cat but Batcat? …mmmh… Bruce McLeon. YES!
I beam down at the animal. “McLeon, I found you a first name! Aren’t you happy?”
Heavy consternated silence and musical background meets my enthusiastic declaration.
“Of course you are!” I merrily clap my hands together, smiling like a proud mother at her son’s graduation ceremony and totally ignoring the lack of eagerness of my audience.
Having his meal postponed by my antics, the newly re-baptized, hungry, downsized panther is visibly trying to appear stoic and detached. However his treacherously twitching ears and slowly wagging stump tail are saying otherwise. Eventually, I take pity of the poor thing. I grab a can of chicken-flavoured pâté – with real pieces of fake chicken in it! – from a shelf.
I briefly glance down at my furry companion then set to open the container.
“McLeon… wagging you tail like that… Forget Batcat, are you a dog, Bruce? You know, it's not who you are underneath that defines you, but what you do. Bruce does sound right for a dog though. Or was it Brutus?” I interrupt my opening of the can to cast another a pensive look at the scarred creature. “You wouldn’t stab me? Would you?”
“…I meowake no prrrromises… especially if you keep swinging myeow food underrr my nose like this!!”
“Aaaw~” I smile evilly and continue to wave a can of pâté, then add in a teasing voice: “You really want your sweets, don’t you?”
“O-O-Of course not! Who do you think I-I am?! Bu-But… since you insist so much, I-I-I c-ca-can’t refuse! …BAKA! Nyaa~”
“Aaaaw~ You’re so cute– ah.”
“…”
“…”
*silence*
.
.
.
Nick…
I know. I know. I need a girlfriend.
* * * * *