Iridescent

A Story by SanSan

A story about a cat named Grey

The city always sounded the same. The busy traffic, footsteps going into every direction, whispers and words that came out of people’s mouths and cats. The usual overcast mood of the city of Mayne, where cats lives ordinarily among humans.
As usual, Grey is walking down the street, coming home from the preschool, like he always had. But there is something different today. A big smile carved on his face, making his canine teeth more visible than usual. As he can never forget, today is his birthday. Just like all kids do, he is very excited and cannot wait to arrive at home.
As he arrives, he knocks on the door with a happy rhythm, but, nobody answers. Grey is quite confused. He was told that his mom and dad will be coming home early. In his mind, he is actually a bit worried that his parents couldn’t keep their promise. He tries to wait for a few minutes and then knock again. But still, nobody’s there to open the door. Tired of waiting, he opens the door himself using his spare key. He looks around from the door to see if there’s any sign of life inside the house. As he feared, the house seems empty. After putting off his shoes, he takes his first step into the house. Suddenly, a loud bang appears from both sides of the door. Strings fly in the air. Grey startled and instantly glances to both sides of the door. What comes into his sight are his mom and dad’s faces with their mischievous smiles. Turns out the loud bang was the sound of a party popper. The sad face of the little kitten drastically turns into the brightest smile in the city.
Cake with candles, colorful decorations, everything you would expect from a birthday party. Even though he only celebrate it with his parents, the warmth of their hearts is more than enough for Grey. Of course, Grey didn’t forget about his present. He opens it with twinkling eyes and he is really excited to find that his present is a book that he always wanted. As expected, he starts to read it right away. Unfortunately, his excitement can’t keep up with his exhaustion, coming home from the preschool, as he fell asleep while reading the book. His dad carries him to his room upstairs to put him on his bed.
A knocking can be heard from the front door. Grey’s mom opens the door and see a human figure standing in front of their house, a co-worker of Grey’s dad. She calls him about the visit of his co-worker from downstairs. Hearing that, Grey’s dad went downstairs leaving Grey in his room alone.
Grey’s mom went to the kitchen to brew some tea, while her husband and his co-worker having a conversation at the dining table. She can overhear the conversation, but she doesn’t really understand. So, she doesn’t mind it and focuses on making a good tea. Suddenly, a loud sound of a table being hit comes from the dining table accompanied by a scream. Grey’s mom was so shocked that she drops all the cups and the teapot. She quickly turns around to the dining table only to see a human face with an expression that she has never seen before. Anger, sadness, depression. It is almost as if it was an anomaly that the man’s face can show so much of negative expressions.
After quite a long sleep, Grey’s finally awake. He has awaken with a feeling of thirst under his throat. So, he calls his mom to bring out some juice for him. But nobody answers. Feeling a bit grumpy, he jumps out of his bed to get downstairs. He glances to the kitchen from the stairs. He can see some tomato juice being spilled on the floor. The thing is, he doesn’t remember that there’s any tomato juice in the fridge. So, he walks into the kitchen, only to find his parents sleeping on the floor. Unless, they are not sleeping. A kitchen knife is sticking at the back of his dad, with dark red holes scattered around it, while his mom’s throat opened like a sliced loaf of bread. Not quite a view to be seen on a birthday. Grey screams as loud as he can but there is no sound to be heard. There is nothing to be seen for him but the blurry darkness that starts to consume, as he passes out.
Not a single night in 16 years passed by without a dream about that day, the day his parents died. Since that day, a smile has never been seen on this unfortunate cat’s face, but a constant acid rain reflecting from his eyes. But, today might be different.
Grey is standing in front of a room in an apartment building. He knocks exactly three times. Just when a man from the inside about to open the door fully, Grey bashes the door open with quite a force. The man loses his balance and thrown away to the floor. After he got in, Grey closes the door and locks it right away. As Grey then turns around to the man, the man’s face suddenly turns pale. His eyes look like they were about to pop out. Sweat starts to flow, as he recognizes the son of two cats that he killed 16 years ago.
Grey walks towards him slowly while the man keeps backing up until he’s back touches the edge of the room. He starts begging for mercy, saying that he needed the money that Grey’s dad owe him for his wife’s medication.
“I didn’t ask why, you killed my parents”.
Grey grabs his collar and pull him up. And then, he puts one of his paw on the man’s neck and then pull out the claws which penetrates through the man’s skin. He puts his other paw on the man’s face and rips off the eye open. The man screams but no sound can be heard, since Grey quickly puts his paws on the man’s mouth, suffocating him. He keeps screaming and screaming, with one of his eyeballs dancing around, hanging from his eye socket. After that, Grey grabs the knife that he brought with him and stabs the man again and again. Even until the man stops screaming, Grey just keep stabbing him.
After exhaustion comes in, Grey finally stops. A drop of tear falls down from his eye followed by a bitter smile, the first one after 16 years. Grey leaves the body just like that without trying to hide any evidence of his murder. He goes out of the building with red all over his body, only to see the sky cries to witness the event that happened before it. With tears that is now flowing down his face, and a forced bitter smile, Grey is now haunted by the feeling of relieve that he has hoped to exist, but never did.