The Last House on Needless Street(44)

She tells me and I type, That’s a pretty name. It’s so great to talk to another single parent. It can be lonely at times.

I know! she replies. Some days I could just cry.

If your sister can’t sit, you could bring your daughter along, I tell the woman. I’d love to meet her. I could bring Lauren, too. (I can’t bring Lauren, of course. But I can always say she is feeling sick.)

Wow, that is so understanding, she says. I can tell you’re a good person.

I’ll wear a blue shirt, I type. Maybe you could wear blue too, so I can recognise you.

Sure, that sounds fun.

Maybe not blue jeans, because everyone will be wearing those.

OK …

Do you have a blue dress?



I haven’t showered in a while so I do that, harmonising along with the beautiful melody the woman sings. I take a couple more pills, too. I don’t want to mess this one up.

I have a quick beer before I go. I drink it in one, standing in front of the open refrigerator. There are trails of black droppings on the kitchen counters. The mouse problem is getting worse. I don’t mind mice if the cats can deal with them, but not here. Sometimes, with problems you do nothing and they go away. Other times it is the opposite. I should get the diary out and note it. But there’s no time!

The street is dark and quiet as I leave the house, triple-locking the door behind me. The Chihuahua lady’s house is still empty. It pulls at me as I pass, that strange tug, like the house wants me to go in, like a god sending out tendrils of power.





Olivia





Ted is gone again. It has been a day and a night. I long for my nice dark crate but he has piled the weights on top of it. So thoughtless. I have licked my bowl so much my tongue tastes like metal. Oh, and of course, of course, that whining sound is here, filling my brain. It rises and falls but never goes away, these days. I can almost imagine I hear words in it, sometimes. Just now it’s bearable. The hunger is worse. It gnaws at my stomach.

The TV is on, some creepy thing about a murderer stalking a girl in a parking lot. It’s dark, raining. The actress playing the girl is pretty good. She looks scared. I don’t like stuff like that so I leave the room. But I can still hear it: the running, the screams. I hope she gets away. Honestly, who watches this trash? There are sick people in the world, let me tell you. I thank the LORD that my Ted is nothing like that.

So hungry.

I stalk around the house. The cord floats behind me. It is sagging and grey today, which seems appropriate. You can’t eat it. I’ve tried. I have eaten everything there is to eat in this place. I even knocked the lid off the trash can, but there were only dirty tissues in there. Since the Bad Dinner, Ted takes out the trash twice a day. Anyway, I ate the tissues.

I patrol the house, scenting for blood. I even go to the basement workshop, which I don’t like too much because it has no windows. The engine sits like a shining sea creature on the workbench, under the spotlight. Boxes line the walls. I climb over them and into them. They are mostly empty, or filled with old parts. Even in my anxious state, the cardboard makes me purr a little. I have to make a big effort not to settle down for a comfortable doze.

I creep under the couch and peer behind radiators. I go under Ted’s bed where beer cans roll about among the dust bunnies. I pull open his drawers and dig through his socks and boxers and undershirts. I scrabble about in the back of the closet. I don’t find anything. No blood, and not even the scent of Lauren.

I stop before the attic door, my tail straight and scared. There is no sound. I force myself to come closer. I put my delicate velvet nose to the crack under the door and I breathe. Dust, dust and nothing. I listen, but all is quiet. I picture the still air, the thick beams sighing, abandoned objects spilling out of boxes. I shiver. There’s something horrible about the thought of an empty room, in the dark. OOoooeeeeeee, goes the singing in my brain. If the lord has a purpose for this almost constant noise, I wish he would reveal it pretty darn quick.

I realise I haven’t looked under the refrigerator. Sure enough after a couple of tries I hook out a stale cracker with a claw. Ugh. Soft.

I am chewing when I glimpse something else in the dusty dark. I gently slide my paw, delicately extend my claws to their full length and reach in among the bottle caps and soft grey fluff. I sink a claw into the thing. It is a yielding surface, the claw goes right through. A little body, is my first thought. A mouse? Ooh … But it’s not flesh, something thinner and more porous. I pull the thing into the light. It’s a child’s white flip-flop. It must be one of Lauren’s. Lauren can’t walk but she likes to wear shoes sometimes anyway.

Well, no big deal, I say to myself, it’s just a flip-flop. The iron-rich scent that fills my nostrils tells another story. Reluctantly I nose it over, and there it is on the other side. The sole is stiff, caked with dried, dark-brown matter. So I think, Maybe it’s jelly or ketchup or something, maybe it’s not blood. But my mouth is filling up with the scent. I want to eat it. The whining rises in pitch and volume.

I drop the flip-flop between my front paws and stare at it, as if there’s an answer written there. It’s probably nothing to do with me. Lauren must have hurt herself. She doesn’t have any feeling in her feet, she’s rough with them. But I can’t help thinking about tiny bones, and the taste Nighttime leaves at the back of my throat. About how often he has taken over, recently – how often I have let him. My tail blows up into a bottlebrush of unease. Normally this is exactly the kind of situation in which I would look to the lord for guidance. But I don’t. Somehow I don’t want His attention on me, right now.