(based on how i often think about digging up my dead cat, and the weird stuff that's happened since he died)
Lush green trees sway in the breeze, the wind lightly blows, and you can hear the occasional chirp of crickets and some birdsong every now and then. It's 6:03 in the afternoon and the light blue sky of late summer/early fall is covered in white fluffy clouds. Random patches of sand cover the land on the side of your house, ant hills being built into the soil. A single skinny trunk of a grayish-brown tree is outside your window, alongside some stray plants and two pieces of barb wire, and a green lawn chair covered in fallen tree leaves that are tinted yellow.
You stare out the window at this scene, watching the clouds move and dapple the land with changing patterns of light. You've been alone at home for a few minutes, told that it'll be two hours of being alone. A rare occasion. There has been one thing you've been needing to do, but you've known you could never do it with other people around. You close the window curtain, turning and slipping your feet into your gray shoes with light blue pattern. You pull the barn-style door to your room open and step out, walking wearily through the hallway and to the front door, feeling some horrible disaster is coming. Like you're doing something wrong.
You continue on anyway, passing the living room and stepping onto a small brown rug with floral patterns on it. In front of you is the door, colored red with small windows in it. You slowly put your hand on the golden handle and begin turning it, then pull away. This is a bad idea. No, you tell yourself, better to get it over with before you can think twice.
Outside the front door, you walk away from the stone brick porch and the stepping stones leading to it, to the side of your house under the shade of the leafy branches of a drooping oak tree. You pick up a shovel and half-drag, half-carry it to the flower garden. You approach the small cactus-like plants that are in a circle of stone bricks. You take away the bricks one by one and carefully attempt at uprooting the plants, catching your hand on a spike and feeling the sharpness of the needle sink into your skin. "Oh, sh-" You stop yourself and look at your hand which now has a small cut on it, a bit of blood trickling out. You ignore the small pain and finish moving the plants, then stand up.
Shovel now in hand, you begin slowly digging down into the dirt. Past a few stray roots, past an earth worm, past more and more dirt.
And then the shovel uncovered a black surface. It was slightly silvery and had many wrinkles.
A trash bag.
You lean into the hole, sitting down and using your shovel to uncover the rest of the bag and slowly lift the trash bag up. Fur peaks out of the sides, belonging to something wrapped in the bag. You tear away the bag from the thing in it and lay the furry thing on the black bag. It's a cat. A Siamese, to be exact. With light, soft tan fur and dark brown points on multiple parts of his body. Or at least, that's what you expected.
You were horrified by what you saw.
Expression empty, as if there had never been any life in this cat. His blue eyes were missing, leaving gaping holes where they should've been. Fur slowly rotting away from the skeleton, revealing bone. Many patches of fur were missing and some parts covered in dirt. Maggots were on the ground from where you had picked up the corpse. It smelled of death and blood, and the only thing that appeared familiar was the small black collar around his neck. You touched the small golden bell hanging from the collar sadly, making it ring. This was a mistake.
What brought you to this? Digging up your cat that died in June? Two and a half months ago? The thought of your cat had been everywhere around you. You heard his meows when all was silent. You saw him watching you through windows with his head tilted, staring unblinkingly. At times where there was only one star in the sky your first instinct was thinking about your cat, named Simon. You even had weird dreams about him being alive again, and you slightly believed it was an alternate universe.
It all stopped after you dug up and re-buried your cat, keeping the collar to remember him by. Everything returned to normal, but you had a bad feeling.
