Now
The knife is so sharp I don’t feel it cut me as I reach it into the soapy water. I don’t notice the blood.
Do it deeper.
“What was that?”
That’s odd. I thought I’d heard something.
Kiki sits on the drying mat to my right, nestled between the inverted wok and wine glasses. She’s meowing, of course. She’s a chatty cat. She knows she’s not supposed to be on the counters. I try to shush her away, with an empathetic head shake to the right.
“Get down, Kiki. Down!” My words are a hoarse whisper, as I don’t want to wake my roommates asleep in their bedroom.
I sense something red sloshing in my peripheral vision.
Do it again. Do it harder this time.
What the hell? Where did that come from?
“Get down, Kiki. Get down, girl,” I say, swiveling my head back to the dishes.
The water, it’s red. Uh oh.
Finally, I feel the pain of the cut. I pull my finger from the hot, soapy water. Blood streams down my hand and arm. Bile rises in the back of my throat.
“Ugh.”
I have the good sense to lie down on the floor. I almost make it before I pass out. Almost. Horseshoes and hand grenades and all that happy horseshit. Fuck my life.
###
When I come to, the first thing I notice is my cheek pressing against the cold floor. My head is half on, half off the rug in front of the sink. I blink. Kiki defies gravity as she is lapping something off the wall.
That’s the floor, genius.
Kiki stops lapping, looks at me with judgment in her eyes, then goes back to licking the floor.
I sit up, pushing off with my right hand. My right thumb tells me in no uncertain terms that was a stupid thing to do. I apologize and promise never to do it again.
Judging by the pool of blood centered on my thumb, I must only have been out for a minute. I hear lapping sounds.
I’m hurt. I’m bleeding.
Kiki is lapping up blood. My brain rushes to catch up with all these fresh perceptions.
That’s my blood.
I shake my head to find some clarity. The motion angers my thumb. It throbs a warning.
Hey! Cool it with the abrupt, jerky movements already!
I wince and watch Kiki. She’s just out of reach. I swipe anyway. I don’t catch her, but I paint a patch of her white fur with a Nike-swoop spray of blood.
She doesn’t like that. She bares her fangs and hisses at me.
I probably should use my left arm for such gestures. At least until I get this thing patched up, get the bleeding stopped.
“Yup,” I say to the empty kitchen.
“Are we talking to ourselves?”
My heart rate shoots up. Randy is looking down at me.
“If you’re tired, you should go take a nap.”
It takes him a beat to see the blood.
“Oh, no. Did you cut yourself? Again?”
He’s never going to let me forget my potato-slicing mishap from months ago. That was a bad cut. This one, I suspect, is worse.
He helps me to my feet. Automatically, I make for the back door. With this much blood and in this nice house, I prefer to do my bloodletting outdoors.
I slide one of the patio chairs onto the lawn and wait. A few seconds later, Randy emerges with bandages, peroxide, and antibiotic cream.
Good times!
He shuts the door behind him and steps onto the patio.
“Give it to me straight, doc. Am I feeble already? Isn’t sixty-two kind of early for this sort of behavior?”
He rolls his eyes before patching me up. In the back of my head, I’m rewinding my dishwashing mishap. I am missing something. But what?
The Day Before
I set my book and coffee cup on the patio table. This is the best spot for reading in the mornings.
I hear her meow and then I feel her brush past my bare leg. Kiki is outside. I didn’t hear the door open. She might’ve slipped out the front door. She’s good about not wandering too far away. There are lots of dangers for kitties like her. Traffic just over the berm to the north, barking, biting dogs to the east and west. More traffic to the south. And from the sky. Hawks.
My morning ritual is sacred to me. I double-check and make sure everything is in its place before beginning. I will read for an hour at least.
I’m working my way through a George Saunders collection of short stories. He’s a brilliant writer. That’s a word we toss around so casually that it is in danger of losing its potency. But it’s true about George. I adjust my mug two inches to the left. Once I start reading, I won’t want to have to search for it.
I slip off my crocs, put my feet on a bench, take a deep breath in, and shut my eyes. I’m ready to read.
A few moments later, I feel Kiki leap onto the left half of the loveseat. She nestles against me. Soon, she is purring and snoring.
Her sleepiness invades me. It invites me and lures me away from George.
Join me in the land of sleep, hooman. Let go. Let go and let Kiki in.
Nonsense like this. I didn’t sleep well last night. I need to get to bed earlier than what I’ve been managing. This is just from a lack of sleep.
Am I dreaming? Am I awake? I can’t tell.
Beside me, Kiki studies me. I see her meow but, in my head, I hear words.
Why don’t you pour that coffee on your white, white shirt? That would be funny.
Something bizarre is happening. It takes me a few seconds to figure out what.
And it would burn me. So, I will pass, but thanks for the invitation, Devil Kitty from hell.
I reach towards the cup. My hand bumps it. An arc of coffee paints the back of my right hand. It burns and seeps down to find the white bandage and seeps into the white fabric.
Wait. What? White bandage?
I look down. There is no bandage on my hand.
But I saw a bandage! I saw it!
Now
I steady myself at the top of the stairs before beginning my descent. At my age, I feel wobbly the first trip down the stairs. Knees, hips, joints in general. Heart pains that never plagued me before. Is there no end to the familiar woes of aging that won’t land upon me? I know I talk too much about aging, but it sucks. That’s all. It sucks. That and I hate it. Aging sucks.
I bend at the knees a bit. Then I flex my knees a bit to warm up my hamstrings and stretch my quads. Just to descend 19 steps.
I’m being silly. Posing for no one. No one else is around.
I take a step down and rest there a second. A flash of brown, black, and white slashes past my right calf.
Kiki.
Why can’t I shake this feeling that she’s been fucking with me these past few days?
Oh! I know this one.
Yes?
Because she has been fucking with you these past two days. Yesterday and today.
She’s made more than a few appearances in my dreams. Just this morning I dreamt that she could talk. We discussed the human condition. We agreed that humans were the worst. We mourned the job man had done in caring for the planet, electing leaders, and fighting climate change.
“What do you want, asshole?” I whisper to her. She flies down the stairs.
I feel extra wobbly this morning. So, I stretch a bit more, before proceeding down.
The same flash of fur flies past me again. This time she is on my left.
What the fuck?
I review my mental map for the interior of this house.
There is only one staircase, right?
Right! Only one.
And Calicos?
There are two Calicos in this house.
That’s true, but there’s no way to mistake Kiki for Coco. The former has much more dark fur. Coco is whiter than Kiki.
I’m losing my mind. I’m standing on the stairs and waving bye-bye to my sanity.
Well, it was bound to happen eventually.
Kiki flies down the stairs from behind me. Again. This time she darts between my legs.
This isn’t funny anymore. I want this to be over.
I’m not as stable on my feet as I once was. My joints hurt. Despite her recent foolishness, I adore this cat. But I’m legitimately afraid of falling down these stairs.
The statistics for senior citizens that fall are not good. If you break your hip, your mobility goes bye-bye. That and your life expectantly drops dramatically.
That’s a bunch of silliness. I can choose better thoughts than these.
Maybe my friends installed a secret passage. Maybe a staircase in the walls? One for the cat’s use.
Yeah, that’s not crazy. Like not even a little bit.
I hurry down three steps before she passes me again. I need to be off the staircase.
You should try jumping down the step two at a…NO! Three at a time! Remember? The way you used to go downstairs. When you were a teenager.
I think Kiki is trying to kill me. I laugh despite the horror of the thought.
But I’m not a teenager. Not for half a century. When I look back that doesn’t seem possible, but that is the way of the world. We all walk around like we just graduated from high school a decade ago. When it’s five times that.
I’m pretty sure she liked me at one point. But now?
My jaw drops as I throw one leg down the stairs, skipping an entire step.
Stop this! I’m not in the shape or of the age to do this stuff.
I don’t stop. I repeat the feat. And then again.
Now do three. You can do it; the white flash says to my brain as she passes me on the right.
I go for three. I don’t make it.
CRACK!
I feel my left tibia shatter. When I look down during my fall, I see two ends of it sticking through my skin.
Well, that’s unfortunate.
I laugh. In mid-air, I laugh. Despite the pain I already feel, despite the fact that I’m still falling, and my injuries are far from being done, I laugh. I cannot imagine how many surgeries it will take to reassemble me later. If I survive to later that is. I laugh as my cumbersome body falls to the stairs.
When I contact the stairs, my laughing stops. It’s not funny now.
In my heightened awareness I sense six further cracks. Each one is distinct. And I can name each one. Twisting to my right in midair, my right patella shatters first. Then my right hip. Then one or more of the low ribs on my right. Somehow, I turn in mid-fall, and things on my left start breaking.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
My wrist, ulnar, and humerus all give up their fight. Well, damn.
I want to protest that this should be enough, but my body still has momentum. I’m not at the bottom of these stairs yet.
When did they get this long? I’ve been falling for an hour.
My jaw cracks. Pain blossoms there like a mushroom cloud. My vision explodes with a thousand pinpricks of light.
Two seconds later, my body comes to rest. The pain centers all around my body are just getting started. My pain is a set of symphonies. Each one demands my attention.
I close my eyes and try to find a single point of my body that isn’t in agony. I will live there. That’s my plan. That’s all I have now. That’s the best I can do.
She nuzzles my face and meows. Once. Then she’s nuzzling the bone tips extending out of my lower leg.
I open my eyes. Kiki isn’t near me. Not the original cat. Not Kiki 1.0. Hundreds of Kiki clones roam the foyer, bumping into me. They nudge me, my injuries. nudging me, pushing me over the brink. In each face, I see yellow eyes. Each one is filled with an ancient hatred for humans.
They surround me. When they begin biting, my nightmare reaches a crescendo. I shake with gratitude when my sanity gives up its fight. Now the bites aren’t painful. They are just love bites. Kiki loves me. Of course, she does. How could she not?
Stories by Shawn 