The Queen of Cats

Chapter 8: Indebted to My Darling Reaper

This chapter is dedicated to @shakespearian1 who's writing a fantastic story called Disney rebels. It's a strange hodge-podge of Disney lore and some more modern stuff. A most enjoyable read. 

Also, the cover you see above you was the first cover for this book, designed by donutinaa. 

"Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."

―Richard Matheson, I Am Legend 

Voltaire strutted in. I followed him.

I had been there before (of course you have, eye).

It was the room midway to the underworld. The one with the arguing cats in it.

Only there weren't restaurant tables and chairs any longer. There was just one long, grey, low table stretched across the room. And cats were seated around it. Cats everywhere.

They spoke in soft murmurs to each other, some of them sipping milk from little saucers.

Their fright was palpable in the air surrounding us. Their eyes reflected the red light. They looked like small, dark spectres in the void. Air hissed through some vents I could not see.

Voltaire strutted onto an empty chair between a white cat and a spotted brown one. He sat.

They all seemed to notice me together. I was tall and bloodied and wet with snow and cold and filthy and tired. I was me.

And they were cats.

I smiled.

"Revolutionary, who is it that you bring to this congress of cats?"

The voice was thin and parched yet somehow magnificent. A lion's voice. Not a cat's.

The cat to whom it belonged was grey and bent and was glaring at me through his slits for eyes.

I waited.

After what seemed to be an infinity of bated breath, Voltaire cleared his throat.

"This is the one. The one who started it. The one who killed the prophet."

There was another silence. This one was shorter, but the vacuum it left seemed to suck my body dry of blood. I felt it drain from my face. I could imagine exactly how pale I was. How sharp the green in my eyes would appear. How my shoulders were hunched.

Then, the room exploded into a furious cacophony of protests and yells.

"Under who's authority?" one of the cast yelled at me. "Who made you do what you did, ghost?"

"Yes! Answer, ghost. What agent forced you to kill the prophet? The mouthpiece? Who made you do it."

Voltaire raked his paws across the grey surface of the table. I help my ears. The din died out slowly and all heads craned to look at him. He licked his whiskers.

"Firstly, idiots, she is no ghost. This, my friends, is what flesh and blood looks like. Secondly, she has no idea what made her do it."

"So, we all agree that it wasn't her, then?" another cat said. A stunted little black one.

"Something is controlling her. You can't kill the prophet. Believe me I've tried." The old cat spoke, his voice filled with malice.

"Somebody let the poor girl sit."