The Queen of Cats

Chapter One: The City Choked Me And I Choked Her Back

EDITED 

This chapter is dedicated to rmcneary whose criticism and advice was integral to the way this rewrite is shaping up to be. I got a lot of very helpful advice for the first draft of TQoC but his advice on fleshing out the descriptions and the characters has always been on my mind. Please do check out his excellent epic-fantasy The Path of Fire. 

"Narnia! It's all in the wardrobe just like I told you!"

―C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

(tick toc tick toc time to move)

I opened my eyes. I felt the familiar weight on the bed next to me. And that familiar stench. That rot.

That smell that could only mean one thing.

Mother.

I sat up and fumbled for my glasses and waited for the room to slowly congeal into view. Moonlight spilled through the curtains. Books sat silent in their shelves, waiting for me to open them.

Fat chance, after what was going to happen tonight.

"Just this once. Listen to me just this once."

I turned to look at my mother, whose face was turned away from me. She only smelled of rot. As far as her looks were concerned, she was just as chic and elegant as ever. She was a bit too pale though, and dressed rather too excessively in black. A red choker clung to her neck. Her eyes were dead. Her lips were dead.

She was very very dead.

"Don't want me to make the same mistakes you made and all?" I stood up and my feet sought the rubbery comfort of my slippers. I stood and stretched.

The last time I would ever feel these muscles. Or so I hoped.

I didn't want an afterlife. I didn't want hell and I didn't want heaven either.

"You don't have to do this. You can run away. Run away. I'll be with you the whole time."

I said nothing.

I tied my hair up and took off my pyjamas. My mouth tasted stale but I wasn't in the mood for mouthwash.

I opened the cupboard and picked out a blue dress, cut almost perfectly for me.

"That's mine." Mum said.

Almost perfectly.

I put it on and closed the cupboard door.

I pulled the little teddy-bear off the shelf and found the zipper behind its ear. I pulled. The knife clattered on the carpet.

"What are you trying to prove with this? Do you think there's a day that goes by where I don't regret what I did?"

"Yeah, that's because you came back. You came back when you should've fucking stayed where you belonged."

"You will too. But it'll be worse."

I shook my head. "You're a hallucination."

"I hope you enjoy being a hallucination too. Never listened when I was alive, not going to when I'm dead."

"Well, do you want me to come find you when I'm a hallucination too?"

But she was gone. She did that a lot, nowadays. When I refused just to sit and listen and obey like I used to. The novelty of her being a ghost had worn off long ago. She was just my mother now.