One afternoon I got up to stretch and take a break from writing. I walked to the living room to look out the window to see what the cat was up to. The mailman had it cornered next to a monstrous elm next to the street and he was spraying mace at her. I stormed outside and demanded that he stop. He stopped and turned back and looked at me.
“That thing hissed at me. I don’t put up with that from animals. She’s lucky that she didn’t get the stick.’ He tapped on a club that he had hanging on his belt in a homemade holster. While he was still focused on me the cat leapt straight up into the higher branches of the tree. I wouldn’t have believed she could’ve done it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. The mailman looked around and then up into the tree.
“What is it with people in this town? She’s only a tiny cat!”
“She might be tiny but she’s a vicious little thing.” He shielded his eyes against the sun as he looked into the tree. “How’d she get way up there? You’re lucky, you speedy little rodent!” He grabbed his bag from the ground. “I hate this job. I swear that I’m just going to dump everybody’s mail right in the trash and walk right off this job and never come back one day.” He stomped off angrily.
“Hey, Mr. Barnes, hey!” yelled Mrs. Hankowitz from her door. She came outside and headed toward my yard. “That man who blew his brains out, I found out who he was.” She tried to catch her breath when she finally was close enough to grab my arm and stabilize herself. “Okay, not exactly who he was but what he was. He was a scientist that worked for the military. Jenny Lopner’s kid is always on the Interweb reading about conspiracies and stuff and he found the man’s picture on a sight. The sight said that he worked in the government’s biological division. Weaponized animals. Chimeras made by combining all kinds of different animals and even people sometimes. He created super animals that they could use for war.”
“It’s true. They’ve combined humans and chimpanzees. They call them humanzees. They’ve combined all kinds of stuff. They’ve even weaponized insects. They made a disease in a lab and gave it to deer ticks and then the deer ticks got out of the lab. That’s where Lyme disease came from.” She squeezed my arm. “That’s what that man had been doing. Maybe it had something to do with why he killed himself.”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Hankowitz. The Internet is filled with dark corners. You probably shouldn’t believe the things Jenny Lopner’s kid finds there.”
“You don’t think it’s true?”
“No. Some prankster probably just high jacked his picture. I once saw a picture of Martha Stewart crushing a young gardener against her gate with her Land Cruiser. Think what a nice woman Martha Stewart is. People on the Internet can make pictures that make it look like anything is happening.”
“Okay. I guess that could be. Maybe you’re right.”
We watched the mailman crossing over to the other side of the block. He took a few letters from his bag and pitched them over his shoulder, while muttering. They landed in the gutter and he kept walking.
Weeks went by, months, but the cat still looked like a kitten, stronger than any cat I’d ever seen but still very small. What she lacked in stature she more than made up for in ferocity. Birds chattered from the trees outside my house, as if they were warning the other creatures in the area of his whereabouts. Occasionally, a brave squirrel darted from one tree to another, but it was always done with an urgency that I’d never seen in the squirrels.
She was an extraordinary creature, a freak of nature. One evening, as I rubbed her powerful back and listened to her purr, the sound she emitted not so dissimilar to the low rumble of a big block engine, she turned away from me and coughed up a hairball the size of a pair of mittens. Something in the hairball caught a glint of light coming from the streetlight. I kicked the hairball back and forth and examined it. There was a ring inside of it. I dug the ring out with a stick and read the inscription. To Mary, it said. I thought that maybe Mrs. Hankowitz first name was Mary. She must’ve dropped it when she was in my yard the night before and the cat must’ve found and eaten it. I brushed it off and pocketed it.
Later that day, after I had gone to bed, I had a nightmare. I saw dozens of little mice marching in something like a conga line, carrying tiny suitcases. Suddenly a devilish black creature appeared in front of them. There was fire burning in its eyes. It held up a paw that was mutated into something horrific, razor sharp blades in place of its nails, like the killer from A Nightmare on Elm Street has. It opened its mouth to speak and its mouth was equipped with steel fangs. It talked to the mice with a deep, resonating, evil voice. “Welcome to hell,” it said, and laughed. And then I woke up, dripping with sweat.
I called Anna. I had to trick someone at Cloverfield into giving me her number. The last time I had seen her things had gone so poorly that I figured anything that happened between us at that point would’ve been an improvement. I sat on the couch in my living room and stroked the cat’s head while I waited for her to answer. Finally she picked up.
“How did you get my number?”
“Hi, Anna. It’s so good to hear your voice. I haven’t heard from you and I was afraid that you didn’t like me anymore.”
“That’s not possible, Jake. Do you know why?”
“Why, Anna?”
“Because I never liked you. You’re so weird and pathetic. I just wanted to meet Raymond. Seriously, you still haven’t figured that out?”
“If it’s because my cat scratched you I’m very very sorry about that.”
“I know that you can barely see without the Coke bottles you wear but are you deaf too? Do you never hear what I’m saying? I don’t like you. I want you to stay as far away from me as physically possible. If I see you again I’m filing for a restraining order. Do you understand that, weirdo?”
“Yes.”
“Good! Don’t ever call me again!” She hung up.
I sat on the couch for hours and just hugged the cat and asked her why Anna hadn’t liked me. The cat licked my arm and did her best to console me. I decided to go for a walk. The cat tried to come with but I told her that I needed to be alone for a while. When I got back there was a man peering into my window.
“Is he home?” I asked from the yard and the man jumped up and straightened his shirt.
“Where the hell is my dog? Where is Bingo?”
“Is that a game?” I asked morosely.” Is it anything like Where’s Waldo?”
“Stop being a smartass and tell me what you did with my dog. Mrs. Hankowitz told us that you were beating up on him one day and now suddenly he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry but I’m really not in the mood for this. Can you please come back tomorrow and yell at me? It seems like I never get a break from somebody yelling at me lately.”
“You’ll answer my questions right now!”
I finally broke. “Bingo is a rapist! I simply kept him from raping my cat!” I sighed. “I’m sorry that you had to hear that. I didn’t do anything nefarious to your dog.”
“Nef- what? What does that mean?”
“I didn’t hurt Bingo. If I see any sign of him I’ll let you know. Sorry about the yelling.”
“You’re real weird. You know that?”
“So, I’ve heard.” I stood and waited for him to leave. “Perhaps you could go peep in someone else’s window for a little while. Please.”
He stormed off. “If we don’t find Bingo soon you’ll be hearing from the police.”
The cat was killing everything in the neighborhood. That was the nightly complaint that played back on my answering machine. I got another threatening message from Bingo’s owner. One afternoon while I sat out on my porch some passing kids claimed that they saw the cat jumping up and snatching birds from the air and even flies and eating them. I had no idea what to do about my neighbors, or the cat killing everything without prejudice. She was just doing what I had told her to do. I
would’ve been such a hypocrite to tell her otherwise at that point.
I was writing when the phone rang. I picked it off the desk and pressed save on my document.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Barnes, come to the door. This is Detective Plansky.”
“Why didn’t you just knock on the door?”
“Your neighbors told me that you rarely answer your door.”
“I’ll be right there.” I closed my laptop and went to the door. I opened it to a fifty plus burly cop with graying curly hair and a cynical expression. He held a clipboard in one hand and held a pen to his mouth with the other. He clipped the pen on the clipboard and reached into his shirt and pulled out a chain with his badge on it.
“Detective Plansky.”
“I have no idea where Bingo is.”
“How about Mrs. Hankowitz? I’d rather know where she is. It’d be bad enough if you were just one of those sickos that steals other people’s dogs but now we have a missing person.”
“Mrs. Hankowitz is gone? Is she okay?”
“I was hoping that you could tell me,” he said, taking a long hard look into my eyes.
“Why would I have any idea where Mrs. Hankowitz is?”
“I have a witness. One of your neighbors saw the two of you having an altercation over something strange that you were doing to a dog. And I don’t even really need to mention that the dog…let’s see,” he looked down at his clipboard, “Bingo, from said incident,” he looked back up, “happens to be missing also because you seem to already know that.”
“Mrs. Hankowitz just misunderstood. That dog, Bingo, is a pervert. He was trying to rape my cat. I was just trying to keep Bingo away from her.”
“Somehow, you seem to be mixed up in everything. Why is it always you? Details just keep coming back with your stink on them, Barnes. And I’ve got a nose for stink like yours.”
“I don’t know anything about Mrs. Hankowitz disappearing or Bingo. I promise.”
“You’ll be seeing more of me, Mr. Barnes.”He walked off the porch and down to the sidewalk before stopping and turning around. “Oh, and don’t go anywhere. Stick around town. I don’t want to have to chase you.” Then he walked off.