‘I’m not as stupid as you think I am,’ he says quietly. ‘You depersonalise your daughter.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Thinking of her as a person is overwhelming, so you deal with her feelings by attributing them to the cat.’
‘If you can’t help me, just say that.’ I am shouting, I realise. I take a deep breath. The bug man is looking at me steadily, head on one side.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘That was very rude. I’m in a bad mood. That stupid TV show has upset me.’
‘This is a safe place in which you can express your anger,’ he says. ‘Let’s continue.’ He looks small and safe like always. I must have imagined the other thing. It’s just the bug man.
The bug man carries on talking about trauma and memory, and all his usual stuff but I’m not listening. I keep trying to tell him I don’t have any trauma but he won’t listen. I’ve learned to tune him out at times like this.
I wish I had not shown him my temper. I got distracted and I didn’t get the answers I needed. Lauren has worn me too thin. It’s hard, living with someone who’s trying to kill you.
The flyers are ragged on the telephone poles, tanned with weather. The Chihuahua lady’s face is growing ghostly. I pass her house without looking. I’m afraid that it might look back at me. I hold tight to my little brown paper bag from the bug man.
Olivia
The windows show full dark, no stars or moon. Ted is still out. How long has it been? Two days? Three? I think it’s kind of irresponsible.
In the kitchen, living things stir sluggish in my bowl. Well, I can’t eat that. I lick some water from the dripping faucet. Something scuttles in the walls. I am so hungry.
There is something I can do, of course, to get food … I sigh. I don’t like to let him in unless I have to. I’m a peaceful cat. I like patches of sunlight and sometimes stroking and the good feeling of sharpening my claws on the bannisters. I’m Ted’s kitten and I try to make him happy because the lord told me to, and that’s what you do in a relationship, isn’t it? I don’t enjoy killing. But I’m so hungry.
I close my eyes, and feel him right away. He’s always waiting, curled up in an inky pile in the back of my mind.
Is it my time, now?he asks.
Yes, I say, reluctant.It’s your time.
I’m Ted’s kitten, but I have my other nature. I can let that side take control, for a while. Maybe we all have a wild and secret self somewhere. Mine is called Night-time.
He gets up in one fluid movement. He’s black, like me, but without the white stripe down his chest. It’s hard to tell, becausehe’s part of me, but I think he’s larger, too. The size of a bobcat, maybe. It makes sense. He’s a memory of what we once were. He’s a killer.
Now I tell him,Hunt.
A pink tongue strokes Night-time’s sharp white teeth. He comes out of the dark with his graceful stride.
I come to, retching. I’m in the bathroom, for some reason. The door is open and I can see the skylight over the hall. It’s still pitch black outside, not yet pink in the east.
There’s a pile of bloody bones before me on the tiles. They’re picked clean. I’m full of night meat. I wonder what kind of animal it was. Maybe that mouse who’s always singing in the kitchen walls. Or it could be a squirrel. There’s a nest in the attic. Sometimes I hear them chittering, and running across the beams. I think they’re squirrels, but they could be ghosts. I don’t go into the attic. There are no windows there and I only like rooms with windows. Nighttime doesn’t care about things like that.
Thinking about the ghosts upsets me and makes me feel weird. The mess before me doesn’t look like mouse remains any more. It looks like the bones of a small human hand.
Something crawls across the ceiling above. It sounds way too heavy to be a squirrel. I race downstairs as fast as I can and I put myself into my nice warm crate.
Ted doesn’t know about Night-time – I mean, he can’t tell the difference between us. I obviously can’t explain it to him, there’s a language barrier. And what would I say? Night-time is part of me; we are two natures that share a body. I guess it’s a cat thing.
The night stretches ahead, and I am still hungry.
Is it my time, again?
It is your time.
Night-time comes forth once more, and his stride is full of joy.
Ted
