Link
An intelligent woman has a cat. It is grey and thin, it does not have any manes. Its whiskers are short and fat like a pair of headphones with no sound. One day she is sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and the cat is asleep on the table, close to the window. These are the last sentences of the first page of the story.
Then, in the second page, written by a script-writer in a script-writer's script, coming from an unknown script-writer's script, we go on to describe the woman's hair. She has soft hair. She has one of those faces that have different wrinkles in different lights. In winter the wrinkles are heavier and deeper but still beautiful.Tears blurred my vision as I walked away from my mother's prone form in the hospital bed. My dad was following me at a safe distance.
I didn't want to look back.
I couldn't blame him, though, for refusing to look at me – his daughter; her only child. It was just one more issue I had caused him to have, along with my two older brothers who had long since moved out.
Part of me wanted to cry for him, too – to cry for my husband, my young daughter, my mom, and me. But I didn't have time for tears once I entered the hospital lobby.The light from the flame passes through the vertical slit and falls on a white wall. I can hear the unfamiliar buzz of the neon tube. I know it's early in the morning, but I have no memory of what time it is. I am always a late sleeper. In this kind of situation, people generally count sheep, or sing songs, or recite movies lines that have become almost signatures, like Jack Nicholson's 'Heeere's Johnny' - 'How you gonna get outta here, Beth? You don't have the dooonek to do that, Beth, Beth...' Whenever I remember him and his 'performance' I wonder if life is that bad for all of us. Whether if the guys and gals in the alley now are okay. Whether if night has come to take them back to their families and their beds and of their own volitions. Whether if the gas was actually meant to pacify them, rather than to kill them.
I drink the coffee and look at the bright orange coals of the fire in their iron pot. I see the dust stirred in the dance of my hand. I can hear the moan of the demon slumbering on the other side of the wall. I can hear a car's irritating horn. And the buzz of the neon.
I try to fall asleep again.
It is a peculiar state I often find myself in. It is as if I am watching myself from a distance, on a screen, like I am suddenly a character in a story. I am watching myself do things that I couldn't even imagine doing to someone else, let alone myself.
I don't know where my mind goes sometimes. I am not even sure if I mind. I mean, it is pretty awful to die and end up being someone's dinner. But then, does it really matter?
Well, not to me at least. I am not prepared to die. And I am not prepared to die the way this demon does it. I don't think Dr. Mander will particularly be all that upset, though.