Damned Cat

What happens when Bob lets his anger get the best of him

Damned Cat

Everyone in the world was gone, and it was the damned cat’s fault. Well, technically, not everyone, because Bob was still alive and kicking. And he would have kicked that damned cat down Santa Monica Blvd., if he thought it might do any good. Hell, he would have kicked it just for the sheer joy of it, if he believed for a second that he would get any joy out of bending the cat like Beckham.

Instead, he just sat in his apartment listening to the void caused by the lack of living things. He was pissed off at himself, pissed off at the world, but mostly just pissed off at that damned cat. No radios, no TV, no cars, motorcycles, trucks or airplanes to fill his ears with the comfortable noise of not being alone. Even the birds weren’t chirping in the magnolia tree outside the dingy window of his bedroom. In his experience, when it was that quiet, your mind made noises up, just to keep everything in good, working order. Bob’s mind chose a high-pitched ringing that gained in intensity until he started tapping on the coffee table just to make a noise that actually existed outside his own head.

When he first got up that morning, he had turned on the television like usual. It was a ritual for him to watch the morning news, not to learn what was going on in the world, but to reassure himself that there were plenty of people out there whose life was shittier than his. He wasn’t the best looking guy in the world and he could stand to lose a few pounds. OK, more than a few. His dad had always said that he didn’t care what color his hair was or how greasy it was, as long as it was there. Bob had the double whammy: what little hair he had left looked as if it had been pasted there by a second grader. He knew he should just shave the nasty stuff off, but couldn’t bring himself to admit he was bald.

It took him a minute or two to realize that only static came from the TV. At first, Bob thought the cable had been out, and wondered if he had forgotten to pay the bill. He attempted the tried and true method of getting a television to work; giving it a few good smacks. When that didn’t work, he tried the old trick of using the cable as an antenna to pick up a local station, but he still couldn’t get a live signal.

When he shut off the TV, he noticed how quiet the living room was. He couldn’t hear anything from next door. Usually, Mrs. Klein would be blasting the morning news, Oprah, or whatever else happened to be on. She wasn’t a spring chicken and couldn’t hear that well any more. She was nice enough, for an old kook. Her hair was that shade of orange that old ladies seem to think is a better choice than the shades of grey and white that old guys never get too stressed about when their own hair fades and starts to fall out. At least the orange was a bit more festive than the blue or purple some old ladies choose. He thought she must put make-up on with a butter knife, favoring aqua eyeliner and fuchsia on her cheeks. Her matching fuchsia lipstick always seemed to find its way on to her two packs a day brown teeth. Her normal mode of dress was the Housecoat. Bob often wondered where old ladies got housecoats, because he had never seen one in a store. Still and all, Mrs. Klein was always nice to him, and would bring him a banana bread or apple pie from time to time. She was one of the few people who actually seemed to like him, although he thought it might be that she was just lonely. He never saw any friends or relatives visiting.  For whatever reason, she treated him pretty nicely, and he liked her well enough. It was her cat that he couldn’t stand.

He poked his head out his front door, straining to catch a conversation that might clue him in as to what was going on. He was never much of a neighbor, and didn’t feel comfortable making small talk with the idiots in his building. Anyone who lived where he did must be some kind of idiot or slacker. He had to do make enough insincere chit-chat at Best Buy, where he was an Assistant Manager. Hearing sob stories from a bunch of jackasses trying to return their flat screen or computer all day was plenty. “The remote doesn’t work” really meant “I can’t afford my electrical bill this month” and both he and the customer knew it. Sometimes, when it was a mom dragging along a couple disheveled kids, he’d feel bad and allow the return, even though there was absolutely nothing wrong with the item. Usually, though, he didn’t feel too bad for people who couldn’t plan their lives better.

Bob had the strange feeling that he had not opened his front door, even when the knob was in his hand and his foot was planted firmly in the hallway. There was no difference in the sound level between his apartment and the hallway that overlooked the courtyard. Even the normal ocean breeze that kept the place cool without an air conditioner was absent. Bob scanned the hallway. The wrought iron fence that stopped people from falling into the pool below was chipped and rusted, and the paint was coming off the walls and floor of the hallway. Just another indication of the s****y place he lived, perfect for the losers who couldn’t be bothered to go some place better. Mrs. Klein still hadn’t taken in the blanket she had draped over the fence. She would hang it on the dirty, germ encrusted fence after hand washing the stupid thing in the sink. She said that she liked to dry it in the fresh air. Her cat liked it better that way. Bob thought with sickening surety that Mrs. Klein wasn’t coming out to get her blanket any time soon. Or ever, for that matter.

He stepped out into the hallway, still only wearing the boxers and stained tee shirt he always wore to bed. Normally, he wouldn’t risk being seen in such an embarrassing get up, but today, he didn’t care. So long as he saw someone else, he didn’t care if they saw him naked as the day he was born. First, he went next door to Mrs. Klein’s. He raised his hand to knock on the door, but couldn’t bring himself to force his fist forward. Part of him thought he couldn’t take the embarrassment if she opened the door and saw him, wearing the clothes he was in and with the wild, scared look that was on his face. Most of him was afraid that no matter how hard or long he beat on that door, Mrs. Klein was never going to answer it.

He walked quickly down the hallway to the stairs that led to the street. He took the stairs two at a time and he was practically running when he reached the small lobby that contained the tenants’ mailboxes. He blasted the front door open with both hands, looking wildly to his left and right as he scuttled down the front step to the sidewalk. He kind of skidded to a halt, panting from the effort and his rising panic. There was not one moving vehicle, as far as the eye could see. Normally, there would be a good bit of traffic at any time of day on Santa Monica Blvd. It was one of the busier streets in West LA. At 9 O’clock on a Wednesday, there should be bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Bob thought about a movie he had seen back in the Eighties: The Day After. That was the nuclear war flick with Jason Robarts in it. Supposedly, when a nuke went off, there was an electromagnetic pulse that made all the cars stop working. That was what it seemed like happened in Los Angeles. It was the only explanation that made even a bit of sense. Bob stood on the sidewalk for a long time, watching the streetlight at the end of the block slowly changed from green to yellow to red. After a minute, it switched back to green again, and repeated the whole cycle. He watched the light go through its motions again and again, a cold lump growing in his stomach. He could feel the sun starting to burn his scalp through his thin hair, and he wondered just how long he had been waiting for someone to show up.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, he looked up into the sky. He desperately wished, but didn’t really expect to see one of those noisy, annoying police helicopters or big jets taking off from LAX, but unable to stop himself. Only a few wispy clouds drifted lazily over head. After a while, his eyes stinging and partially blinded from looking too long into the sun, he looked down at the cracked sidewalk. Slowly, he turned back toward the silent building, no longer in any real rush. He trudged up the stairs, through the lobby and up to the second floor. The door was still open, and he didn’t bother to close it as he went back in.

Thinking about the street lights, he realized that the electricity still worked. He predicted to himself that he had a day or so before the automated system suffered some breakdown that could have been corrected by the simplest of actions, had the technician been alive to perform the menial task. Dropping heavily onto the couch, he firmly believed that he was the last human living on the planet. And it was all the damned cat’s fault.

Last night, he had reached his breaking point. Every night for the last week, Mrs. Klein’s cat had been yowling. It was a fat, black ball of fur, with yellow, piggish eyes and a nasty habit of getting horny every time he had to work late for inventories. It would yowl all night long, loud enough to pierce the wall he shared with Mrs. Klein, the bedroom door, and the pillow he had firmly clamped over his head in a vain attempt to block the sound out. It was a combination of fingernails on a chalkboard, chewing on tin foil and scraping the tines of a fork across a plate. It hurt his ears, his eyes, his teeth. S**t, it cut right into his brain and stabbed him repeatedly. But worse than the yowls was the silence in between. The waiting for the next yowl to pierce his skull made him so tense that in the morning he would have fingernail marks in his palms and his jaw hurt from clenching it so tightly. When he finally dragged his tired carcass out of bed, he would be drenched in a sick smelling sweat that he could still smell even after a shower and a double dose of Right Guard. All in all, Bob’s life was a living hell whenever that cat started in with its incessant shrieking.

He had often thought that if she hadn’t been so nice to him, that cat would have had an “accident” a long time ago. He would have at least called animal control, if he hadn’t worried that if Mrs. Klein lost her beloved cat, she might just die from sadness. Or, maybe even worse, she would find out it was him who narced her out. He didn’t want the one person on the planet who was actually nice to him to hate his guts. Now, if that demon disguised as a cat happened to run away, he would stay in her good graces. Hell, he might even get her a new, little kitty to keep her company. But, wishing the cat gone wouldn’t make it go. At least, that was the way things were supposed to work.

When it started up again last night, something happened to Bob. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he had done something. When he heard the dreaded sounds coming through his wall, he began to think about the cat. He thought about it really hard. He focused all of his tenseness, his hatred, his anger, his frustration, and he let it out in a silent, primal scream that flashed in his head like a bolt of lightning.

“GO AWAY!”

The reverberations from his mental effort echoed in his head, and it was a number of minutes before he realized that the yowling had stopped. “Maybe she finally let that damned thing out to get some action,” Bob thought, when he finally noticed the piteous noises from next door had ceased. “There’s no way that racket couldn’t be driving her as crazy as me, no matter how much of a kook the old broad is. I should thank her tomorrow. S**t, maybe I’ll get an apple pie out of it.” For the first time in a week, Bob’s jaw had unclenched. The pulsing in his temple had resided. He fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep, with a small smile on his face.

Now, sitting in front of the television that had no signal, he thought he would have paid to hear that yowling. He pictured that electromagnetic pulse from the movie and thought about the bolt of lightning that went off in his head the night before. In his mind, he pictured his angry message travelling out from his mind like dropping a pebble in a pool. Where the anger wave hit, people went away. All of his stupid neighbors, the jackasses from the Best Buy, idiots who cut him off on the freeway on the way to work, slackers, losers, malcontents, lazy b******s who wanted a handout instead of doing a decent days work. All the people who reminded him that he was the real loser and had wasted opportunities to make a life for himself that might actually be worth living were gone. Where they went, Bob had no idea, but he was pretty damned sure that it was not anywhere close to here. In his mind, the wave travelled across the earth, not shutting off lights or killing electricity, but wiping the slate clean of people.

For a quick, desperate moment, he thought to himself that if he thought hard enough, he could get everything to go back to the way it was. S**t, he’d even welcome back the damned cat. But almost immediately, Bob put that glimmer of hope out. His mother used to always say “you can’t unring a bell, Bobby. What’s been done can’t be undone. You have to live with consequences of the choices you make.” It was one of the few smart things that woman had ever said, and he believed it.

Still sitting on the couch, he wondered how long it would take for him to get angry and desperate enough to think about himself and silently scream “GO AWAY!” That would be the easy part. It was the thought of the silence in between that made Bob’s jaw clench as a bead of sick smelling sweat trickled down his face.

“God-damned cat.”

Author's Note

A work in progress. Feedback appreciated.

Reviews

[Sharon Kim]

This story moves along at a good pace which I think is hard to do without having any dialogue. You have a lot of really vivid descriptions that kept my attention. You did a nice job of building the panic in Bob. I like the quote from Bob's mom.
The premise of the story is really interesting-just imagine all of the damage we would create if our thoughts came true.