The Beldam (A Supernatural Fan fiction)

THE CAT

Sam crawled in and started his journey to the other side of the tunnel. Just the same as the previous two nights, Sam came to the other side of the tunnel to the new and improved version of the apartment. Again, something smelled delicious. He walked down the hall to the kitchen, expecting to find the other mother cooking as usual. She wasn't there at all, but a feast had been laid out on the kitchen table and a note was left with Sam's name on it. He picked up the card and opened it to read:

Dearest Sam,

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible have invited you downstairs after lunch. I hope you like the new outfit I made you.

Love, Mother

Sam opened the box that the card had been left on. It was a whole new outfit of clothes. Something that wasn't hand-me-down or bought from a goodwill store or thrift shop. At first he wasn't going to take it, but after some thought he suspected that the other mother might be watching from somewhere that he couldn't see and didn't want to find out her reaction to his rejection would be. So he decided to play along.

He went and changed his clothes to what the other mother wanted him to wear. After that he ate some of the spread she had left out for him. The food was still delicious. When he stepped outside to go to Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's front door he noticed it was dark out even though it was supposed to be the middle of the afternoon. He continued down the front steps when he heard a cat mew. Sam looked in the direction the sound came from and saw the same black cat that had scared him the first day they had arrived at the Pink Palace.

"You must be the other cat," he said. The cat walked halfway across the railing that bordered the front walk and the staircase going down to the basement apartment. He stopped and licked his paw, as cats tend to do.

"No. I'm not the other anything. I'm me," the cat spoke. Sam jumped back in surprise. The cat talking to him was one of the last things he expected. He quickly pulled himself back together, not wanting to show the other mother any fear. When he looked more closely at the cat, he could see that it didn't have button eyes like all the other fake living things on this side of the door.

"I can see you don't have button eyes, but if you're the same cat then how can you talk?" Sam insisted. He followed it down the rest of the railing. The cat jumped down to the ground and trotted across the walkway.

"I just can," it boasted.

"Cat's don't talk at home," Sam pointed out.

"No?"

"Nope."

"Well, you're clearly the expert on these things," the cat said. He jumped up onto the half fallen tree and balanced up in the dead branches.

"How'd you get here?" Sam asked.

"I've been coming here for a while," the cat answered. Sam watched the cat disappear behind one of the thinner branches. He blinked in confusion. The cat was just suddenly gone. Then he popped out of the hole inside the tree next to Sam. "It's a game we play."

Sam flinched at the unexpected appearance. It was like a magic trick. He let it go and listened intently to what the cat had to say in case it was important.

"She hates cats and tries to keep me out," the cat explained. "But she can't, of course." He crawled back into the hole halfway and he head popped out the other side of the hole, on the other side of the walk, in the other half of the tree. "I come and go as I please."

"The other mother hates cats?" Sam asked from across the way.

"Not like any mother I've ever known," the cat said.

"What do you mean? She's amazing," Sam played along. The cat climbed out of the hole and back up the trunk of the tree and towards the roof.

"You probably think this world is a dream come true, but you're wrong. The other Dean told me so," the cat explained.

"That's nonsense! He can't talk," Sam corrected him.

"Perhaps not to you," the cat clarified. "We cats, however have far superior senses than humans and can see and smell and . . . shhh! I hear something. Right over . . ." the cat darted off across the roof, probably after a rodent or something. Sam rolled his eyes and continued down the stairs to Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's apartment.