March 11th, 2007

1

The following morning Savannah didn’t go to the beach with her family. Instead, they went canvassing the neighborhood and putting up flyers at every street pole. She explained to her father about Miss T running away, but when she told him about the man with no face he had been skeptical.

“What do you mean he had no face?” he had asked.

“Like no face at all. Like it had been ripped out and sewn up again or something, only there wasn’t a scar, it was like smooth all over.”

He looked at her and pushed his moustache over his lip with concern. His square glasses and the slight paunch of his belly gave him the look of a middle manager at an insurance company, which in a way was sort of true, only instead of insurance he sold laser guided missiles and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. As she recounted what she saw outside, she could tell he didn’t fully believe her. Still though, doing what all good parents would do in that situation, he hugged his daughter and then called the police. When he made the report he didn’t mention that the man had no face, only that there was a stranger loitering around their house and had possibly stolen their cat from the yard. The police sent a cruiser in the morning and took a report, but ultimately nothing was really done. By the time the police were gone, Savannah was exhausted, having only got about three hours of sleep, she felt the heavy bags under her eyes weighing her down. Even though she was on the brink of passing out, she decided to print out some flyers and cruise the neighborhood putting up signs and looking for Miss T. Her mother decided to stay at the house in case Miss T came back, so Savannah and her father could drive around looking.

Savannah stapled her homemade sign to an electrical pole with her father’s heavy duty staple gun, and as she did, she noticed three other missing cat signs stapled to the same pole. The other signs looked fresh as if they were posted just before she got there. She got back in the car and her father drove her a couple blocks up, where she went to staple another sign to a pole, only this time she ran into her competition. Two mothers with their young sons on each side were arguing about where to place their sign on the pole.

“I was here first!” said the woman on the right.

“That doesn’t mean you can take up all the best spots!” said the woman on the left. Both of their children stood quietly as they watched their mothers argue over sign placement.

Savannah read the situation and then decided to insert herself in it.

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but did your cats run away too?” she asked.

“Find another light pole, missy. This one is taken.” Said the woman on the right.

“Yeah.” Said the woman on the left. Then they returned to their argument ignoring Savannah like she was an underage boy trying to get into a nightclub.

“What happened?” her father asked, as she returned to the car without stapling her sign to the pole. “I think whatever happened to Miss T happened to a bunch of other people too. Whatever that man with no face did, I think he did it to everyone in the neighborhood.”

Her father made a grumbling sound, a noise that almost sounded like it came from his stomach, but Savannah knew came from his mouth. Indigestion of the mind.

“You don’t believe me do you?”

“I do believe you. I believe that some maniac is out there breaking into people’s houses and letting all the cats out.”

“Buuuut.” Savannah said drawing out the word as if to draw it out of her dad.

“Buuut.” He said mimicking her tone. “I don’t believe he had no face. It was dark, you were scared, god knows I would have been. People see crazy things when their scared, your brain can conjure up loads of stuff. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed! And I know what I saw.” She said folding her arms and looking out the window. Though she did start to wonder. Did he really have no face or was it just dark and scary, and she really did hallucinate? It all happened so fast, it was hard to say, but then again, the image was burned into her brain, she could see it so clearly. The eyes missing entirely, the way the nose opened up into the center of a black hole. It was so vivid, could a hallucination be that detailed?

Her father pulled over the car and she went to another street corner to put up a sign.

“Looks like more people beat us again.” he said pointing to a middle-aged woman who was putting up a sign with a large orange and white cat on it.

Savannah recognized the woman. It was her high school English Teacher Mrs. Kellewitz, not her favorite teacher, but she had been nice to her and let her slide on a couple missed assignments at the end of her senior year.

She got out of the car and walked over to her. “Hey Mrs. K” she said.

“Savannah? What are you doing out here? Did you find Oscar?” said Mrs. Kellewitz. She was wearing dark navy sweat pants and a stained oversized grey shirt. Her greyed hair was cut short and curled like the tufts of a poodle, her long grey robe and fuzzy slippers completed the look, which was a beautiful rendition of: I just ran out of my house without changing out of my pajamas. For some reason, thinking of this made Savannah self-conscious of her own appearance, and she suddenly thought about how her hair was messy was and how she hadn’t done her makeup.

“Whose Oscar?” Savannah said.

“My cat. He got out last night. Well, him and two others, along with all the other cats in this god forsaken town. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him have you? I found Mizzy and Lola at the shelter but Oscar wasn’t there. He looks like this.” She said pointing to the sign which showed a plump orange cat. “have you seen him?”

“No, sorry.” Savannah said holding up her own sign as if to ask the same question.

Mrs. Kellewitz shrugged and shook her head. “Sorry dear, I haven’t seen her, though you might want to check the animal shelter. Any cats they find with a chip in them are being held there.”

“Thanks!” she turned to leave.

“Hold on.” Said Mrs. Kellewitz. She tore off a piece of paper and wrote something one it with a sharpie she had tucked behind her ear.

“If you spot Oscar give me a call.” She said handing her the piece of torn paper. “If you give me your number, I can call you if I see… Miss T.” She said, squinting her eyes as she sounded out the name from the sign. “Funny name. what’s it mean?”

“It’s short for Miss Trouble.”

“You know, as your former English teacher I feel compelled to point out the irony in that.”

Savanah forced an awkward smile. “Uh, right. sure thing Ms. K.” she quickly wrote down her phone number and gave it to Mrs. K, then she hopped back in her dads truck and told him to take her to the local shelter. About ten minutes later they pulled up to the building, but due to the overflow of cars, they had to park at the CVS up the street and walk over. When they got inside they had to wait in line before they were allowed into the room where they were keeping all the newly rounded up cats. They had put them each in a cat carrier and placed them around a room in rows. Slowly, they let people into the room where they could search for their pet. From the amount of people in line, and the amount of cats laid out in rows, it seemed as though nearly every cat in Niceville had gotten out, and Savannah wondered how the man with no face fit in to all this. Was he a ghost, or some sort of mad scientist or something? How did one guy sneak into all these homes and kidnap all these cats? And what was he doing with them? Why let out all these cats just to let them go again? Her brain conjured up images of what he could be doing with the cats, only for it to short circuit from exhaustion every time she got too far.

“I’ll go search this side, if you search over there.” Her father said pointing the opposite direction from her. “This way we can cover more ground.”

Savannah nodded and turned to walk up the first row of delinquent cats. As she walked past each carrier, she bent down to peer inside, hoping to see the mocha-colored spots on Miss T’s neck, but only seeing some other color pattern. The thing that bothered her the most was that Miss T was wearing a collar with their home phone number on it, surely they would have called them if they found her. Or maybe with all the chaos, they had been too busy to simply call every owner of every cat they captured. Then another thought occurred to her, an image of the man with no face removing the collar of Miss T and laughing to himself maniacally. Maybe he was an agent of chaos, maybe he was simply doing this as some sort of sick prank. As she peered into another cat carrier, this one containing a pure black cat with yellow eyes and a pointed face, she heard someone call her name. At first she thought it was her father, but when she wheeled around, she saw a boy about her age with a mop of long brown hair and a black Slipknot shirt and a black and white checker belt around his waist. Just as she had recognized her former English teacher, she also recognized the boy. His name was Quinton Harper, and he was an old friend from elementary school and early middle school. Quinton lived on the same street as Savannah’s family, they used to play together, and ride bikes together while their moms sipped whine. Sometimes Quinton’s family would come over for barbecues and other times they would go to the Harper household to swim in their pool. Quinton’s father was in the army, and Savannah’s father sold missiles to the army, which resulted in some very boring conversation for Savannah, but some very fun conversation (or so it seemed) to the adults. Savannah tried to recall the reason they stopped going over to each other’s houses, but either her brain was too fuzzy to remember, or there wasn’t an exact reason, they simply just grew apart. Once they got to high school Quinton and Savannah gravitated towards very different crowds. Savannah mostly hung out with her teammates from Volleyball and Quinton was always skipping school with the kids who shopped at Hot Topic. Not that there was anything wrong with shopping at Hot Topic, it’s just that was a particular crowd, a group of kids who all dressed alike and made snarky comments at people who ever expressed any interest in anything other than Death Metal and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Okay, maybe she did have a bit of a problem with the Hot Topic kids, but that was only because a few of them called her and her teammates lesbians when they drove by their car wash fundraiser at the 7/11. She wasn’t sure Quinton was in that car, but she always suspected he might have been.

“Hey Savannah, long time no see.” Quinton said, brushing his long hair to the side with a flip of his head.

Savannah noticed that he was holding a small digital recorder and a yellow legal pad.

“What are you doing here?” she said nodding her head at the pad and recorder.

“Oh, this? I’m just interviewing people about what happened last night. Trying to gather some information.”

“I didn’t know you were a reporter.”

“No, nothing like that. There’s just been a lot of weird stuff going on here lately, and the police don’t seem to want to do anything about it. So I’ve been doing a sort of off the books investigation.”

“What kind of weird stuff?”

Quinton looked away, almost as if he was embarrassed. “You mean besides everyone in town’s cats running away in one night?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

“Tell me, have you ever heard of the Green Man?”

“The Green man? Is that some sort of Alien or something?”

“Some people think he’s some kind of ghost, or a demon or something. Everyone has their own theories, but the only thing people can agree on is that he haunts the roads at night. People have spotted him all over town walking alone along the side of the road. most people seem to agree that he has no face and he has greenish skin.”

“The thing about him having green skin is total bullshit, but the thing about the face is totally true.”

“So you have seen him!” Quinton said, clicking his recorder and flipping to a new page on his pad. Savannah told him about what she saw last night, and as she did she felt a strange sort of relief lifted off her shoulders. So, she wasn’t crazy, she really did see a man with no face. She had no idea how they thought he had green skin, but everything else about the Green Man totally lined up with what she saw. Quinton even showed her a sketch he drew of what he looked like, and it was more or less similar to what she saw.

“So do you think the Green Man is the one who let out everyone’s cats?” Savannah asked.

“I don’t know. But it can’t be a coincidence that you saw him last night.” He put his pad down, then blushed a bit. “Hey, would you be able to come over to my house later? I have a bunch more stuff on the Green Man that I want to show you.”

For some reason, she felt weird about going over to Quinton’s house. Even though she had been a thousand times before, it still felt awkward.

“Uh…sure.” She said. “Just let me go home and take a nap first.”

“Okay. Yeah. Cool. You still remember where I live right?”

Savannah laughed a bit. “No, which house is it? Not the one literally three houses down from my own, right?”

“Okay so, if you stand in your driveway and throw a rock, then whatever window you break first, that’s the one.”

At that moment, Savannah’s father walked up and inserted himself into the conversation.

“Quinton, its good to see you, how have you been, son?”

Quinton’s smile faded. “I’m fine. And how have you been? All the war profiteering still treating you well?”

Javier Dominguez titled his head to the side as if to say “I did not escape the castro regime just to be lectured by some punk kid.” But instead what he said was: “Excuse me? I must not have heard you correctly, son”

“Whatever,” Quinton said, shaking his head and turning back to Savannah. “Just come over if you want. I don’t care.” Then he stormed off with a cloud of angst brewing over his head.

Javier grumbled something then said. “Shame what happened to him. He used to be such a nice kid. Did you find Miss T? She wasn’t in any of the places I checked.”

“No.” Savannah said, still watching Quinton leave.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I’m sorry honey. Maybe we should go home. Maybe she found her way back by now.”

“Yeah, okay.” She said, suddenly feeling very weak. Her body was shutting down from lack of sleep and if she didn’t get home quick she would probably pass out right here in the animal shelter. She ended up falling asleep on the car ride home, and having nightmares about the man with no face, which kept her from getting any real rest. She crawled back inside the house and immediately crashed the moment her body touched the bed. Luckily, this time she was too tired to dream, and when she woke up six hours later, she felt sweaty, and groggy, and a little sore, but at least she felt somewhat rested.

She sat at the end of her bed contemplating whether to go over to Quinton’s house or to resume her search for Miss T on her own. The more she thought about it though, the more she felt drawn to Quinton’s house. He had been the only one that believed her about the faceless man, and maybe that meant something, maybe that would help her find Miss T.

She got out of bed, did her skincare routine, put on a little foundation, then selected a pair of ripped Abercombie Jeans and a Hollister Tee shirt. She thought about how preppy she would look to Quinton, then she scrapped the whole outfit and decided to wear a floral print black dress and a jean jacket. She went to the front door, and put on a pair of black and white converse.

“I’m going over to the Haper’s” She said, to her mom who was in the kitchen cooking something. “Quinton’s gonna help me look for Miss T.”

“Will you be home for dinner?” her mom called.

“Probly not. Could you just leave me some leftovers in the fridge please?”

Her mom said something else, but she was already out the door. She went out through the garage and typed in the code to close the door behind her. As she walked down the driveway and over to Quinton’s house, she scooped up a rock from the ground. When Quinton opened the door, she tossed the rock and him and said. “This the right place?”

He laughed, then tried to place the rock in his pocket before realizing that it was a weird thing to do, and chose instead to place it on the small table just inside the door. She followed Quinton to the back of the house and into his bedroom. As she walked through the living room, she looked around for any sign of his parents.

“Your parents’ home?” she asked.

“No. My mom’ll be home soon though. If I ask, I’m pretty sure I can get her to order us some pizza or something.”

“That sounds cool. What about your dad?”

Quinton stiffened a bit then looked at the picture of his father hanging above the mantle next to a triangular folded American Flag.

“He’s in Kuwait right now. Got himself shipped off to fight in the war that your dad’s company and our monkey brained president started together. I don’t want to talk about that though, that’s not why you came over. Miss T’s missing and I think I have an idea on how to find her.”

Quinton waved at her to follow him to his room, where she found a cornucopia of psychedelic wall art, neon Christmas lights, and bean bag chairs. The bed was pushed into the corner of the room, and there was a desk in the opposite corner with a large white computer monitor weighing so heavily on the plywood that it wilted in the middle.

Savannah didn’t know where to sit, so she chose to stand with her back against the wall next to the desk.

“Sorry to hear about your dad.” She said.

Quinton waver off her comment. “It’s fine. There’s nothing we can do about that. There is, however, something we can do about Miss T. Here. Check this out.” He turned on his computer and pulled up MapQuest. He zoomed out so that the city of Niceville was perfectly centered on the screen.

“This is Niceville, right? I’ve been interviewing people all over town, asking them if they’ve seen the Green man. Based on the stories I’ve found here are the places where people have told me they’ve seen him.”

He hit a button and a bunch of red pushpins appeared on the map. Savannah took a step closer to the computer, lowering her head a bit so she could focus on the finer details of the map. There were a few clusters on the map, mostly on the north side of town near the community college, and another cluster in Niceville Heights on the other side of the Eglin Golf Course. Neither of which were particularly close to where her house was.

“What about my sighting? I saw him right there.” She said pointing her finger a few millimeters above the screen. Quiton right clicked the mouse and dropped a new pushpin on the map, this one a few miles south of the other major clusters.

“I’ll admit it’s strange to see him this far south, but we know something weird went down last night with all the cats in the neighborhood. And if the Green Man is the one doing this, then it makes sense that he was going outside of his normal territory.”

“Who do you think he is? You don’t think he’s really a demon do you?”

Quinton shrugged. “No, I don’t. So far the most plausible theory I heard is that he’s a man named William Haynes Shaw, who was a mental patient at the Florida State Hospital up in Chattahoochee. They used to do all kinds of fucked up shit there, electroshock therapy, lobotomies, experimental medications, you name it. The story goes, the doctor was giving Shaw a dose of electro shock one day and his hand must have slipped, or the machine went haywire, and Shaw got zapped big time. Like he was struck by a mini bolt of lightning. Only it didn’t kill him, it just turned his skin green and burned off half his face.”

“If that’s true then how did he get all the way over to Niceville? I’ve lived here half my life, and I never heard of a Chattahoochee Mental Hospital before, so I know that it’s not close to here.”

“It’s about an hour and a half away, and it’s not the Chattahoochee Mental Hospital, it’s the Florida State Hospital which is in Chattahoochee. At least it used to be. The place closed down back in 1997. They opened up a new hospital and transferred most of the patients to other facilities and even let some of them go home.”

“What? That can’t be right. They wouldn’t just let people go home.”

“Well, not everyone there was convicted of a crime. Some people were committed by their families, or by a doctor. Some of them were super old too, so old that they were deemed not dangerous to anyone but themselves. So when the Hospital closed, some of the patients were allowed to go home to their families.”

“And you think the Green Man was one of those people, you think he’s this Shaw person.”

Quinton leaned back in his desk chair, and shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t know. It’s just the most plausible story I’ve heard so far. I think it’s at least more believable than him really being the mayor in disguise trying to scare away spring breakers.”

“Shut up. That cant be real. No one actually believes that.”

“Ms. Kellewitz said that to me this morning when she came by the shelter. I’m pretty sure she was kidding though.”

“Maybe this is weird but I kinda hope she’s right. Like wouldn’t it be nice if this was all just some fucked up episode of Scooby doo or something?”

Quinton ruffled up his hair and in his best impression of Shaggy he said. “Uh yeah, like totally man. Hey you got any more of those Scooby Snacks. I’m really hurting for a fix right now.”

“Ruh Roh Raggy.” Savannah said trying to do a Scooby impression, but it was so bad that both of them started laughing uncontrollably at how awful she sounded.

“Was the supposed to be Scooby? You sound like Scrappy Doo’s knock off French cousin Scrappy Adieu.”

Savannah made a face that looked like she just sucked on a lemon. “Ooh, that was bad. That’s the kind of jokes your dad used to make all the time.”

Quinton’s smile fell from his face. “Yeah.” He said. Then she spun in his chair and opened up the drawer on the side of the desk.

“Speaking of Scooby Doo, you wanna go smoke? My mom’s cool with it as long as we do it out back.” At first she thought he was talking about cigarettes, until he pulled out a bowl and a bag of weed from the desk drawer.

Savannah had smoked once or twice with some people from college, and those experiences had been anxiety fueled nights that ended with her curled up under her blankets unable to do much else than watch reruns of SpongeBob she downloaded on her iPod. Right now, she didn’t need the extra anxiety, and if she was going to find Miss T she would need to be sharp.

“No thanks. I could use some water though. Is it okay if I get some?”

“Sure, no problem. There’s bottles in the garage fridge.”

Savannah stepped out of the room and went to the garage to get a bottle of water. The moment she pulled on the handle, she heard a metallic click and then the sound of the garage door opening. Headlights blinded her like she was a deer crossing the road, as Mrs. Harper pulled her Chrysler Minivan into the garage.

“Savannah oh my god it’s so good to see you. What are you doing here?” Mrs. Harper said getting out of the van with a haul groceries kept in plastic brown Publix bags.

“Quinton was just helping me look for Miss T. I don’t know if you heard but she got out last night.”

“Oh sweetie I’m sorry. I saw a bunch of signs all around the neighborhood, and I hoped you hadn’t been affected. I’m so sorry to hear that. You should stay for dinner, I’ll cook you a good meal then you and Quinton can go out looking. You can borrow the car if you want.”

Savannah brightened up a bit. Seeing Mrs. Harper had brought back a lot of good memories of cannonballs and pool noodle fights with Quinton. On the side Mr. Harper and her father were grilling off chicken and burgers and talking about politics, while the moms sipped on wine. It was a sunny summer afternoon and there was nothing wrong with the world other than the way her lip shivered when she got out of the pool to eat a burger.

“Sure. I can stay for dinner.” Savannah said. You would think she told her that she was giving her a thousand dollars, because she instantly perked up and started happily carrying in the groceries and explaining the extravagant meal she was going to cook for them. Savannah made some chit chat in the kitchen while she helped her carry in the rest of the groceries. She told her about college, and her classes and even mentioned that she had a boyfriend for a little while but it didn’t work out.

“Believe me sweetie, college boys don’t know anything yet. Just give them time, they’ll figure out how special you are.” She said winking at her. “When I first met Grant he was so drunk he kept calling me Jay-Z for some reason. It wasn’t until he got kicked out of school and joined the army that he started acting right.”

“I didn’t know you met Mr. Harper in college.”

“Oh yes. He was a dumb frat boy when we first met each other. Part of the reason he joined the military was so I would date him. I told him ‘show me that you can be responsible and act like a man, then I’ll think of going out with you’. Two weeks later he showed up at my dorm with his papers, a date to ship out for basic training, and a bouquet of Daisies.” Mrs. Harper trailed off mid-sentence, and looked somewhere over Savannah’s shoulder. It was like she lost her train of thought, like her brain skipped like a scratched CD and she stared off into space for what was slightly too long to not be awkward for Savannah.

“Anyways sweetie, I’ve bored you enough. You go hang out with Quinton until dinners ready. I’ll come get you when its time to eat.”

Not knowing how else to react, Savannah turned and went back towards Quinton’s room, and as she crossed through the living room something caught her eye. She realized that when Mrs. Harper had stopped mid-sentence and stared off behind her, she was looking at the picture of Grant Harper in his military fatigues over the mantle. Only this time she noticed something else, there was a small silver jar sitting next to the picture, with a triangle folded American Flag resting next to it. She had completely missed it the first time she came through here, but now, as she walked to Quinton’s room it was unmistakable. She had seen jars like that before, and her heart sank as she recognized it. It was an Urn.

2

The house was dark, and the stench of rotting flesh hung in the air. A few flies buzzed around as Miss T’s fellow companions made a game of trying to catch them. Miss T was sitting on top of the kitchen table giving herself a bath. She surveyed the room. In the hallways, still lying in the spot where she died, the corpse of Kelly Larken was starting to rot. Her body was scratched and covered in cuts, and the face was most damaged of all. That part had received the most attention, that part that was chewed down to the bare bone.

After her bath, she curled up on the kitchen table and tried to take a nap. It had been at least a day since Miss T last had a meal and she was getting hungry again. Then, almost as if her prayers had been answered, there was a knock at the door.

The largest Cat, the one that walked on two legs and had no tail, stood up and limped over to the door. She peered through the peep hole and then shambled into the kitchen. Miss T watched with great interest as her new master made rattling noises from afar, and she hopped down off her perch to investigate. Miss T felt a surge of anxiety run through her, and she could tell the others were feeling it too. They all stopped playing around, and napping, and followed the big one into the kitchen. She was angry, and she was scared, but the moment the big one grabbed the knife out of the drawer her mood changed to excitement. The long thin steak knife gleamed in the dim light of the kitchen, catching the light from the TV as if it were a beam of moonlight. It was not the butcher knife, or one of the bread knives either, it was a small simple steak knife, not very large, but sharp, and even a little rusty too, with a brown splotch on the side of the blade.

There was another knock at the door, and then the sound of a key being slid into the lock. The master limped back to the living room and then plopped herself onto the lazyboy recliner in front of the TV, which was blaring C-Span, and stashed the knife under her robe.

The door opened, and a man wearing a ruffled dress shirt and khaki pants walked into the room muttering under his breath. Immediately, the man almost tripped over a group of black cats, who walked between his legs as if they are traffic cones on an obstacle course. He veered past the kitchen into the living room, where Rita waited for him with the knife hidden under the sheer velvet lining of her robe

“What the fuck is going on? Where’s Kelly? And what the fuck is that smell?”

The man blew his nose on his shirt, almost like he was trying to jettison the nastiness out of his nose, and then weaved through the piles of cats on his way to Rita.

“Right. He told me you were a mute. I guess I shouldn’t expect an answer, but if you understand me can you at least nod or something?” The man asked. In the light of the TV his thinning hairline and rumpled dress shirt showed a man running on less than 3 hours of sleep and having driven all the way here from Tallahassee by order of his boss.

“Your brother sent me. He said I should find Kelly. And if I can’t find Kelly them I’m supposed to stay here until someone else can be hired to replace her. I guess people like Kelly come and go pretty often, huh?” He said stopping to wait for an answer. Rita didn’t give him one, instead she continued to stare blankly at the TV as if it were filling her head with word of god himself.

“Right. The mute thing. Sorry about that. Well, you just sit tight, I’m gonna have a look around and then call my boss. I mean your brother.” The man took a step toward the hallway, but he didn’t get further than that. In the dim light of the TV the man found Kelly. Her face chewed off and the rest of her body half torn to pieces. It took him a full ten seconds to realize what he was looking at, at which point he turned to run away, and proceeded to trip over another cat.

The man landed on the animal, instantly snapping its neck, at which point Miss T felt a surge of anger rise up from her bones. The entire horde of cats began attacking the man with their shared rage, biting and scratching and running at him as they had Kelly Larken. Only Kelly had been half drugged and barely able to fight back, where the bad man had the ability to do some damage. He flailed and kicked and waded his way to the door, peeling Oscar the cat off his face and tossing him away. It was at that point that Rita rose from her chair and brandished the knife. The bad man was so busy with the others that he hardly noticed Mother or the knife.

She growled a low horrible noise, then buried her knife in the man’s back. The man jolted backward almost knocking Rita across the room, before he crashed into the wall, taking down a small table by the door on his way to the ground. Like a perfect colony of ants, the cats rushed over the man’s body burying him in a sea of bloodstained fur and dilated eyes.

Miss T had joined her brothers and sisters in the rush, all of them so hungry, so angry, but all of that was fine now. Now it was time to feed. And when they needed to feed again mother would provide, as she had always provided. As she provided now.

Something was wrong. As she tried to feed there was a shrieking noise and a vibration coming from the man’s pocket. All the cats on that side scattered, hissing at each other as they backed away. Rita bent down and pulled a small silver cell phone out of his pocket.

She flipped it open. The room was silent apart from an ad for Rogaine Foam coming from the TV.

“Jerry? Jerry are ya there? Can you hear me? Is Kelly there? Have you seen my sister?”

The voice was not familiar to Miss T, but it was familiar to mother. Another rush of anger, another rush of hatred, and disgust coursed through her body. The hackles on her back stood up. All the others did the same, some of them hissing or squealing.

“God damn it, is that a cat I hear? Jerry if you don’t fucking answer me right this instant I’m gonna fire your ass so hard you’ll be running campaigns in North Korea.”

But Jerry didn’t answer. Rita held up the phone next to her face, as the voice on the other side continued to hurl obscenities. Right up until the moment Rita spoke. Then the voice went quiet, as mother said her words. She spoke as if in two different voices, one loud and one soft. She sang one line then shouted the next.

“Father. Hallowed be thy name. Forgive us our sins. 10!”

To Miss T however the voice is not shaky, or frantic, to Miss T her voice was angelic, a low soft hum of the word of god herself.

“Lead us not into temptation. 8!”

Then the voice on the phone spoke, or at least tried to, but it is seemingly too shocked to form words let alone coherent ideas.

“Give us each day our daily bread. 8.”

The voice in the phone finally mustered up the courage to speak, and it said exactly three words: “Rita, I’m Sorry.”

Before she hung up the phone Rita responded with three words of her own.

“Your Kingdom Come.” And then for good measure, and as if it was the only possible thing that could be said to complete such an idea, she said “7!”. Then she reached into the man’s other pocket and pulled out a jingly ring of keys. She opened the door as Miss T, Oscar, and the most trusted followers of the great god mother herself, followed her out the door, piled into the car and drove off into the night.