THE CAT'S MAW

CHAPTER XIV (Part 3)

The television buzzed with static. It flickered and flashed. An eyeless clown waved from the set, beckoning.

Billy stood. The television disappeared, along with the living room. He was in the front hallway, and the door swung open.

The light was bright. He shielded his eyes, and stepped onto a doormat made of grass. Another step. The grass spread in all directions, and the house disappeared behind him.

The garden had moved to the front lawn. His parents were hoeing the soil, and pulling at weeds shaped like tentacles.

"They don't stop," his mother said, the skin on her upper arms sagging and jiggling with blubber. "It never stops." She wore a white straw hat, with a drooping brim the size of an umbrella. She held out her hand, and a drop of rain splashed in her palm.

"Disappointing," she said, pushing her hand into the dry earth. She pulled at the stem of a carrot. A wad of money dangled from it. The bills fluttered and crumbled, scattering in the wind. "This isn't what I wanted."

His father stood on a wooden crate at the garden's edge, surveying a tall row of corn. "It's what we signed up for," he said, chewing on a strand of grass and hooking his thumbs in the straps of his overalls. "Reap what you sow."

"It's not fair," she said, tipping the spout of a tin watering can over the ground. Silver coins poured out, making a shiny pile on the ground. She knelt to pick up the coins, but they sank into the earth. She dug after them, exhuming a wooden crutch from the dirt. "See? What can I make with this?"

"You should see mine," his father side, peeling open an ear of corn. A plump grey rat wriggled inside. He held it up by the scruff, its pink tail unfurling to the height of the corn.

"Stanley," his mother said, falling in the dirt, "what do we do?"

Leaves and roots wrapped around her legs and were growing fast, winding up her torso. She hacked at them with silver shears, but they kept coming.

"Ask him," said his father, pointing at Billy. "They say he's got all the answers."

The stalks of corn shivered, and a hundred grey bodies burst from the swollen green sheaths. Rats.

They crawled up his father's legs. He dropped the one he was holding, and put another in the front pocket of his overalls, using it like the pouch of a kangaroo.

"Help!"Billy cried, and the cry rolled across the empty plains of the dream. The vines had wrapped around his mother's throat, choking her. Her eyes swelled with terror as she stabbed her shears at the plants. A serpentine root plucked them from her hand, and swung them around her bluing face.

"Useless," she croaked.

"Maybe," his father said, as the rats gnawed at his arms and throat, "but you can cook for his friends."

Suddenly, the garden was full of cats. They sprang from the dirt and gnawed at the roots and vines. They shimmied up the stalks of corn that had fattened into trees, and shook the rats in their teeth.