The Last House on Needless Street(69)

She starts to cry, in broken ragged sobs. ‘Don’t you understand that if he kills me, you die too? I don’t want to die.’ She sniffs. And despite myself I feel a little sorry for her. She is a hurt child. She didn’t mean what she said.

I’ll try, I say slowly. But I can’t promise anything. Now leave me alone. I have to focus.

As usual, everyone is relying on the gd cat. Honestly, teds are gd useless.



I crouch in the dark. I am hoping it will help. The crate was a sort of door between Lauren and me, once. Perhaps it can be opened again. I listen to the sound of the house – the drip of the tap, boards creaking, a fly caught in between plywood and glass. I smell the linoleum in the kitchen, and the air freshener Ted uses when he remembers. I sheathe and unsheathe my claws. They curve out in beautiful wicked points. I don’t want to wear the horrible ted-suit and have hands. Horrible. Got to.

Right, I mutter. Time.

I look up at the landing and try to think about something I love. I try to think about the lord, and then I try to think about the cream that coated my tongue all lovely and white and thick in the dream. But I can’t concentrate. My tail lashes and my whiskers twitch. My thoughts are everywhere.

Come on, I whisper, closing my eyes.

All I can think of is Lauren. Not how she looks, because I have never seen her. I think of how clever she is, making this plan to save us, and how annoying, especially when she calls me stupid cat.

Nothing happens. No good. I tried my best! I should really go back to my nap. Bad things are happening, and it seems best to sleep until they stop.

But each time I close my eyes and try to sink back into my comfortable doze, doubt needles me wide awake again.

I have tried everything, I say out loud. I can’t do anything else! I am answered only by silence. But I can feel His opinion. I row with unhappiness because I know the lord disapproves of dishonesty.

I push with my head and the freezer door lifts up an inch. A slice of light greets me, blinding.

As soon as I’m out, I can hear Lauren screaming. Her voice fills the walls, runs through the carpet under my feet. Her fear comes in through the portholes in the plywood, and I can hear it running out of the faucet in the kitchen. I have to help her.

The thought of climbing inside the Lauren-sack is truly horrible. My tail stiffens in distaste. So gross! That smooth piggy pink skin in place of my nice coat. Those creepy things instead of paws! I hiss, horrified at the violent intimacy of it. But she’s counting on me. Think, cat.

I go to the Bible. I nudge it off the table. As it falls to the floor with a great crash, I feel the house shake. It’s like an echo, but louder.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.



Gd it. Sometimes it’s annoying, being right. An idea has been forming in my mind for a while. I may be just an indoor cat, but I have seen the many faces of the lord, and I know there are strange things in the world. Lauren thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t. We are not like a staircase. We’re like the horrible doll on the mantelpiece. Lauren and I fit inside one another. When you tap on one it reverberates through all of them.

Think, think!

When I opened the refrigerator door I was angry. Maybe angrier than I have ever been. I didn’t feel the cord connecting me to Ted. I was myself, alone.

So I make myself angry. It’s not hard. I think about Ted and what he’s done to Lauren. It’s really difficult to think about. She was right about one thing; what a stupid cat I am, really. I believed his lies, didn’t want to know the truth. I just wanted to sleep and be stroked. I was a coward. But I don’t want to be a coward any more. I’m going to save her.

My tail bristles, becomes a spike of rage. The fire begins at the tip, spreads down the length of my switching tail, into me. It’s not like the heat when Lauren hurt me. I made this feeling. It’s my fire.

The walls begin to shudder. The crashing sound begins far away, and then it is all around me. The hall shivers like a bad TV picture. The floor is a sea, tossing.

I pad to the front door, slipping and yowing. Just because I am deciding to be brave doesn’t mean I’m not scared. I am so scared. What I see through my peephole isn’t really the outdoors. I understand that now. Now, I see with a shiver that the three locks are not fast. The door is unlocked, of course. I don’t have to go up, I have to go out. And everyone knows how you get in and out of a house. I give a little row. I didn’t really want to be right. I stand on my hind legs and pull on the handle with my paws. The door swings wide. The white flame greets me. I am blinded; it’s like being inside a star. The cord is a line of fire, burning about my neck. What will happen? Will I burn up? I kind of hope so. I don’t know what’s out there.

I step out of the house. The cord burns hot as a furnace, surrounds me in a forge of white heat. The world tosses and flips. Blinding stars suck me out into nothing. Nausea rises and I choke. All the air is crushed from my lungs.

The blinding white retreats; the stars shrink to small holes in the hot dark, through which I catch flashes of movement, colour, pale light. Moonlight, I think. So that’s what it looks like.

The world tosses like a boat on rough seas. Ted’s familiar scent fills my nose. We are being carried on his back, in a bag I think, or a sack – there are small holes stabbed in it, for air I suppose. I am too big. My skin is exposed and hairless like some kind of worm. My paws have become long fleshy spiders. My nose is not an adorable soft bump but a horrible pointy thing. Worst of all, where my tail should be there is a blank nothing.