"The Cat's Eye"

A story of a mysterious stray cat and the terror that comes with it.

“The Cat’s Eye”

By Cody Williams

 

1.

            Terry Grant stepped out of the red Chevrolets Blazer and walked up the walkway leading to the small white wooden house where he lived on the outskirts of the city with him family. With his brief case in hand, he briskly walked up the steps of the front porch and stepped inside their home. As he walked in, the silver bells that his wife, Lexis, hung around the doorknob so she could tell when someone entered the house, jingled and he shut the door behind him.

            “Hey honey!” Lexis said as she kissed her husband on the cheek. Lexis was a very attractive woman. She had a fantastic body and her gorgeous blonde hair reached just passed her shoulders. Terry kissed her back and walked into the kitchen where the couple’s only child, a seven year old girl named Naomi, sat at the kitchen table with crayons in her hand drawing on a plain sheet of white paper.

            “Hey sweetheart! What are you drawing?” He asked her as he knelt down beside her.

            “Daddy!” She shouted as she reached up and placed her arms around his neck giving him a hug. Terry smiled. He patted her on the back of the head and she let him go and went back to her drawing. “It’s a new family portrait daddy! We can hang it up in the hallway where the old one is!” She sated with a gleeful smile on her face. Terry smiled again and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He took a second look at the picture. There was something there that he thought to be very strange. He pointed at it.

            “What’s that honey?” He asked his daughter as he pointed to a black colored oval on the paper.

            “That’s Winston daddy!” She answered him. Terry looked at Lexis strangely and than back at Naomi.

            “Who’s Winston?” Terry asked her.

            “Winston is our new cat! Mommy found him on the doorstep this morning after you left and took him in!” She sated proudly. Terry looked over to Lexis again.

            “You took in a cat?” He asked her. She could very clearly by the sound of his voice that he was upset.

            “Now honey, before you say anything, you should have seen the poor thing! The thing must have been starving. And looked like it had been in some kind of accident.” Lexis explained to him. He placed his hand over his eyes for a moment and sighed.

            “We’ll talk about it later. But until then, you are going to take care of it!” He told her quietly trying not to let his daughter hear the disagreement. She looked at Naomi and nodded. Terry turned around when cat let out a screech and leaped up on the kitchen table. Terry jumped back. He didn’t like the cat. Something about it made him very uneasy. Maybe it was the smell of his once rotting flesh. Maybe it was the look of his bony body as the black fur lay over the bones. But what I think he didn’t like was the eye.

            Lexis was right. It did look like the cat had been in some kind of accident. Some kind of horrible accident. The cat’s right eye was white. It looked like white pearl. Surrounding the eye was a diagonal wound. The skin had been ripped away from the cat’s face leaving a red surface that looked a lot like cherry Laffy Taffy covered in blood. The site was hard to look at. Terry just looked at the cat in disgust and then smeared at Lexis and left the kitchen.

 

2.

            That night, Terry walked into the bedroom he and his wife Lexis shared and walked over to the bedside. Lexis was awake but laid there with her back to Terry. Terry got into bed and put his arm around her and went in for a kiss. She shoved him away and kept her back to him.

            “What’s the matter honey?” He asked her.

            “You upset me Terry. Today in the dinner table. You said that we will talk about Winston later…” She started. Terry sighed again and interrupted.

            “Do have to call it that? Just call it the cat! Once you name something you get attached to it and that makes it ten times harder to give it up!” Terry said as he turned his back to her. It was as if fire let out of her eyes. She sat up in the bed and rests her back against the headboard and folded her arms.

            “Give it up? Listen Terry! We are keeping that cat! There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it! Do you hear that! And if you even think about getting rid of it, you will be sleeping on the couch for a very long time. Big foot would be seen in this bedroom more than you! Case closed!” She declared. She lay back down in bed and turned off the light sitting on the nightstand and drifted off to sleep. Terry closed his eyes. But he couldn’t get to sleep. He felt the strange feeling as if he was being watched. His eyes opened back up and what he saw was chilling. Staring back at him in the darkness of the hallway was a yellow cat’s eye…and what was left of the other eye.

            “Kill them! Kill them all!” he could hear it whispering from the darkness.

 

3.

            Terry looked up at the clock that read 3 AM. It’s now been a week since he had last slept. His eyes were blood shot and he had multiple bags under his eyes. He glanced down at the cat eating a raw pork chop that Terry had left in his food bowl for him.

            “Kill them! Kill them all! What the hell are you waiting for? What are you? A p***y?” He could still hear the cat whispering to him. The cat’s never left him. Not that much anyway. Every time it went back down to nibble on the pork chop, it’s piercing eyes looked back up staring through Terry.

            “Kill them! Kill them all! You know you want to!” The cat still whispered to him. Terry rubbed his face and sighed with exhaustion.

            “Why can’t you just let me sleep? Why?” He asked looking down at Winston. The cat looked him in the eye.

            “Because, you know what you want to do! I know what you really want to do! And you can’t sleep until you do it! You must kill them!” He heard the cat whisper as it looked down the hallway towards his and Lexis’s room. Terry shook his head and sat in silence.

            ‘Something has to be done!’ He thought to himself.

            “You’re right! You must kill them!” The whispered to him as he heard his thoughts. Terry slowly began to back his way to the counter. He slowly opened the second drawer and began reaching for the knife in it.

            “No, no, no! You don’t want to do that!” The cat said to him as it jumped up on the table. Terry took his hand out of the drawer and shut it. “Now that’s a good boy!” the cat said as he began to lick his paws. Terry stood motionless for a moment and then quickly reached out and grabbed the cat by the tale. He jerked it off of the table and the cat screeched. It clawed at him cutting very deep grooves in his arm. Blood began to rush out as he fought through it. He took the lid off of a Betty Crocker blinder and stuffed the cat in.

            Terry put the lid back on the blender and pressed the silver start button at the base. The blade inside the blinder rotated and began to cut its way through the cat’s body. Blood and guts splashed up against the glass of the blender vase and cat let out its final screeches of pain. The blinder stayed on until the remainders of the cat looked like a strawberry smoothie. Terry took the lid off of the blinder and looked inside. A sickening odor filled the room and Terry did his best to hold back the vomit that filled his mouth and he swallowed it back down. He sighed. But it wasn’t a sigh of disgust. It was a sigh of relief.

            “Maybe now I can finally sleep!” He said as he turned around and says Lexis standing in the doorway. She was speechless. Tears filled up in her eyes and she looked at him with disgust.

            “Terry! What did you do?” She asked him as she placed her hand over the cleavage that was showing from her nightgown.

            “Honey! This isn’t…” He began. But then he began to hear something. He turned facing the blinder again.

            “Kill them! Kill them!” He could still hear the cat whisper.

            ‘There’s no other way!’ He thought to himself. He opened up the second drawer again and grabbed the large kitchen knife from it. He quickly turned around to face his wife and shoved the knife into the gut of his wife.

            “I’m sorry! I just couldn’t take it anymore! The cat wouldn’t let me sleep!” He declared. Lexis fell to her knees and then onto the floor. She was dead. Terry pulled the knife out of her gut, grabbed her, and began to sob.

            “Mommy! Daddy!” He heard his daughter call from her bedroom.

            “Jesus no!” He whispered to himself, as he did not want his daughter to see the terrifying things he had done. He stood and looked around.

            “Kill her! You have no choice in the matter!” He could still hear the damn cat whisper knowing that it was long gone. He picked the knife back up and walked back down the hallway and stepped into the doorway of his daughter’s bedroom.

            “What’s all the noise about daddy?” Naomi asked her father. He just looked at her gazed. She stared him in the eyes and knew something wasn’t right. It was like there was nothing there anymore. He looked rather double zero in his eyes. It was almost as if there was no more humanity left in him. He slowly began to walk towards the bed. He didn’t say a word. “What’s that all over your clothes daddy?” She asked him. He still said nothing. He knelt down by her bed and gave her a hug.

            “I’m so sorry honey!” He whispered as he forced the knife through her throat decapitating her. Her severed head tumbled to the floor and her headless body fell to the bed and began to spasm before finally laying still. He stood to his feet and walked out of the room and down the hallway to their bedroom. With tears in his eyes his clothes stained with blood, he sat down on the bed. He sighed. And then he laughed hysterically.

            “At least I’ll be able to sleep now!” He said as he tried to make the best out of a bad situation. He lay down on the bed and then reached up and turned the light switch that turned off the light. He rests his head on his cold white pillow for the first time in a week and felt at piece…for a moment. Then that feeling came back. It was the one that he felt before. It was as if he was being watched. He opened his eyes and looked into the dark hallway through the cracked bedroom door. He began to shiver. He saw it again. The same yellow cat’s eye and what was left of the other eye glared at him from the darkness.

Copyright 2014 by Cody Williams

Courtesy of TRUE TERROR PUBLICATIONS

A division of TTP Entertainment

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Author's Note

It's a pretty dark story. I hope everyone likes it! I had a blast writing it. Thanks for reading it! Reviews and comments are welcome as always!

-CW

Reviews

[NoelHC]

The story has a lot of potential. I remember reading short stories in this style in thriller magazines when I was a kid. However, I really think you want to run a spell check on the words, there are many typos that could be cleaned up so easily. After that is done, you may want to review the grammar for errors. I find they detracted from my enjoyment.

Again, the concept is great, the story is dark and gruesome, well done.

[Cody Williams]

Thanks again Noel!

-CW

[Gre7g Luterman]

Pretty dark stuff. Not too shabby.

The ending seems a bit rushed and there's quite a few type-o's (such as blinder instead of blender). Also, there's a spot early on where you say "But what I think he didn't like..." but who is the I? This story isn't told in the form of a narration, so that's inconsistent.

[Cody Williams]

Thanks for reading Greg!

-CW

[Sami Khalil]

I might start calling you the king of mystery and story-telling. Amazing...:)...................

[Cody Williams]

Thanks for reading Sami!

-CW

[Sami Khalil]

My pleasure...Any time...:).................

[lissalovesyou]

I think you could expand on this more, and shine it up a bit.
It's very dark and gruesome, but I like the idea of the cat controlling the man's mind.
Nice!
lissalovesyou:)

[Cody Williams]

Thanks for reading!

-CW

[Dayran]

In the story of the Scottish ' Highlander ' ... the cry of glory was ' There can be only one ' ... curious how that turns up in some very surprising places. Pretty dark ... you're not kidding!

[Cody Williams]

Thanks for reading Dayran!

-CW

[A. Amos]

Good wrting and great story my friend...

[Cody Williams]

Thanks for reading!

-CW

[Stephanie M]

That was quite an intense read! Nicely written.

[Cody Williams]

Thanks again!

-CW