The Queen of Cats

Nightfall

Snow crisps first. Flakes melt in the hot air and turn into fat, black balls of rain-sludge. Nothing follows it down.

The in-between is caught like a deer in the headlights.

It is waiting for the end.

The end is coming.

Death feels for the air, like she always has since she's been here. She feels. She curls her hands and her grotesque little cat head shudders in a strange, miasmic concoction of despair and glee.

She is elated.

She is mournful.

The sky is orange with an almost erotic fire. The smell of a dog in heat. The insalubrious flavour of illicit fucking.

She relishes it. It is the last feeling she will ever have and she knows it.

The world is crumbling the other way around and the hooks are waiting for her and she will meet them first.

She will meet them first.

She is on a crumbling edifice and her arms are outstretched and her cat's head screams with giddy glee.

Death is about to die.

She tries to smile as she falls, but then she loses her head.

And she doesn't mind.

She's still here somewhere.

And then the hooks. And then the mouthpiece of the mad god. And the worship. And the booming drum of her childhood. And the drugs. The crack in the syringe up close to her elbow pinpricked and white in the moonlight and the boy no the boys at her neck and the senses mingling. There is much booze and tainted blood here.

She is falling back in time.

She is dead.

+++

A corpse floats under the sea. She does not remember what she thought last, with her tribal hair and her dark eyes and her little ribbon. But she is there. In that little death. In that brief moment she has to spend before she dissipates into the ether.

Before the monsters catch her.

Sleep has been with her for long and she has seen much more than she needed to have seen for she was a sleeper. She killed her own granddaughter here. And for what? So that the next one could take her place and finish what she started.

With her feeble mind and her corpse of a body she seeks out her counterpart. He is waiting.

"Lord of the flies." she says.

"HAUNTINGLY HAUNT OH HAUNT BEAUTIFUL QUEEN OF CATS..." he says.

She smiles. "That isn't me. Not for much longer."

"...I SAW THE WORLD AND I WITNESSED IT AND THERE I WAS FEELING FEELING FOR IT OUT IN THE OPEN LIKE A THING UNPROTECTED NOT NURTURED AND CARED FOR A FLYING SWIMMING THING IN THE TORPID AIR THERE WAS NO LIFE I SWAM I FUCKED AND I DIED I WAS I WAS A..."

"You were a fly."

"WAS I OH WAS..."

"Are you trying to make me jealous?" she asks.

"TRADE OFF OH SWEET QUEEN OF CATS YOU SLEPT I KILLED AND KILLED AND SLICED DICED AND CUT AND CUT AND CUT..."

"I'm not the Queen of Cats."

"YOU'RE ALL THE SAME YOU ARE..."

"No. The last one was a lover."

"IS"

"Is."

They die together.

+++

The cast are dying off with the regularity of time pieces. They fall. And as they fall they cringe and weep and smile and share whatever petty emotions they have left in them.

They are expendable.

And they know it.

Leonidas holds on for a bit longer, leaping from building to crumbling building. He is bored now. There is not much left for him. The battle is over. The revolution is done. And he is losing whatever grip he has on his anger. He is becoming calm. He is satisfied.

He holds.

+++

It is raining in great pelting drops now and the drops evaporate when they make contact. The earth is hot.

Laura's feet are singed. She walks on tiptoes, her wolf next to her and she seeks escape.

And that is a great thing for her.

She doesn't want to die anymore. She's lived too long.

She's nervous and small in the chaos around her and her wolf has lost interest. His systems are shutting down.

He is an automaton and he needs to be wound.

And she can't find the key. Whatever that was.

+++

Nostradamus finds the bench. The hills crumble around him and he is already dead so he feels no fear but he likes this bench. It stays solid. It does not crumble. It does not fall.

A scratch sounds next to him. Claw on wood. He turns and the revolutionary is next to him.

"Alone again?"

"Yes." Nostradamus says. "Yes I am. And you seem pretty dead to me."

"That's why this is happening, isn't it? Because we're dead?"

"No. That isn't enough to destroy this place. It's only enough to break it up?"

"What does it take to destroy this place?" Voltaire asks.

"The girl kills herself."

"And if she doesn't?"

"We build it again and wait for the next cycle."

"Us?"

"Us, the girl, the mouthpiece. We can't die."

"And if the girl does kill herself?"

The cats looked at the landscape around them. there was nothing left. No ocean, no buildings, no sun. Nothing. Just the blackness of the in-between. And the bench they are sitting on.

"If the girl does kill herself, we die for real." Nostradamus says.

"That'd be nice."

"That'd be very nice."

They wait for a few moments.

They explode.

+++

Night falls on the in-between.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please do leave a comment to let me know if you did. Watching The Queen of Cats climb up the Hot List has been amazing. Hello new readers!