The Queen of Cats

Chapter 3: Why Are You Wounding Me?

This chapter is dedicated to the very talented @Doctreez. She's writing  a wonderfully weird fantasy story called 'Andhara - Whispers of Power' and an equally wonderfully sweet ChickLit story called "My Sharona' your ass!'. Both of them deserve a ton of reads. I'm talking 'top of the popular list' kind of reads. Please check them out when you can.   

"Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me."

― China Mieville, The Scar

That familiar feeling bubbled in my throat. I hoped for the best. I opened my mouth. I retched. Ugly, hazy strands of saliva dripped from my mouth as my stomach struggled to give up every last trace of what I'd eaten. I wondered, in a strange moment of lucidity, why I was not vomiting out the remains of that apple.

There was nothing to puke, but I couldn't stop. My eyes were glued shut. I struggled to breathe through every passing wave.

I collapsed.

"Oh Bravo." A voice said. A woman's voice. Soft and mellifluous and vile. "Well done. I'm so very proud of you."

I opened my eyes. I was back in the city with the horrible street-lights. I struggled back on to my feet and looked around for the source of the voice. It wasn't hard to find it.

A woman (wo-man. But eye am neither wo nor man) stood before me in a lace night dress of some kind. She had no head. In her left hand, she held the severed head of a cat, dripping with blood, it's open eyes oozing with puss. Flies hummed and buzzed around it. In her right hand, she held an open umbrella.

"Are you the Yakuza?" I asked her.

When she spoke, her voice came from the cat's mouth. It's rotting eyes centred on mine. "I am death, darling. I'm the reaper."

Neither of us said anything for a while, Death and I. It started to rain.

"Am I supposed to do something?" I asked her.

"You are supposed to die."

"Now?"

"What is 'now'? There is no 'now. Or, if you want to put it another way, there is only 'now'." Death said.

"So what do you want me to do?" I asked her.

"Whatever you need to do." She told me. "Then, die."

"Where am I?"

"You are on the dirt but not in it."

"Oh." I told it.

"Walk with me. It is raining, darling. And I have an umbrella."

I eyed the rotting cat-head suspiciously.

"Don't worry about my head. It can do nothing to you."

I stood under the umbrella and we walked together.

"Where do you want to go?" Death asked me.

"I want to find the mouthpiece."

"Good. The sooner we dispense with that bit of work, the sooner you die. Come. Let us find this mouthpiece."

They say the city is beautiful at night. This time, I had time to look at it properly. Buildings from a mess of different eras and architectural styles put together. Red, blue, violet and green all congealing together in the atmosphere.

The smell of death. Sweet, mellifluous and vile.

We walked for a long time together, Death and I. She said nothing, though at times she opened her mouth like as if she wanted to say something and then hastily closed it.