WHAT CATS SEE

WHAT CATS SEE
by Jonathan Fortin

Something is stalking my human.

I first notice it one night when my human forgets to feed me. She is laying in bed, rubbing up and down the Little Window That Eats Your Soul. She continues to ignore me, no matter how loudly I remind her that it’s my dinner time. This is an alarming breach of protocol; after all, my pet and I have a deal. She does my bidding, and in return I protect her from all the things she cannot see.

It’s only when I look closer that I realize I haven’t been keeping my end of the bargain.

The thing that hovers over her is almost invisible, even to me, but from the right angle I notice a slight distortion in the air. Worse, as I inch closer, I notice a pungent vinegar-and-sulfur musk emanating from the distortion. I let out a battle cry and launch myself across the room, slashing my claws through the air. The distortion drifts out of the way like a veil, gracefully avoiding my strike. My human puts the little window down with a groan. “Fine, fine.”

She gets up and opens a food can, but I’m angry that she’s taken so long. I punish her by snubbing the food, raising my nose dramatically. I feel vindicated by her irritated sigh. I will eat only after she has gone to bed. Perhaps that will teach her a lesson.

Troublingly, the distortion continues to hover in the corners of the apartment. Usually, a near-miss from me is enough to scare away beasts of this nature. This one is persistent. I chase it all night: zooming, bounding, slicing my way through the air. But the pernicious creature always manages to avoid me. Eventually, I become too tired to continue, and pass out beside my human’s feet.

When I awaken hours later, the creature shrouds over my human like a great blanket. It is clearer, now, as if its presence in this world has strengthened. My human twitches, perhaps caught in a nightmare, as the semi-transparent thing covers her with a wreath of limbs that remind me of rat tails.

I let out a concerned meow. When my human does not respond, I pounce. But again the creature shifts away, and I end up landing on my human, who wakes with a startled cry. The creature rises to the ceiling, beyond my reach.

My human mumbles angrily, grabs me by the waist, and lifts me off her stomach before throwing me to the floor. I leap back onto the bed and crawl onto her chest, the better to protect her, but this only makes her shout and throw me off again.

Agitated, I jump onto the edge of the bed, just beside my human’s feet, so that I’m close enough to help her, but out of her reach. Above, the creature watches in amusement. A sphincter-like mouth opens to reveal a toothless smile. It knows my human cannot feel its presence, even as it drains her. It knows she will not act within her own best interests.

As I watch my human fall back into uneasy sleep, her face twisting in agony, I can tell that the damage is already done. The creature lets out a quiet grunt of a laugh, delighted by my human’s pain, perhaps cultivating it like a farmer cultivates soil.

As the days pass, the creature continues to hover above my human like a shadow, a starfish-like hand resting on her shoulder. It is there as she cooks, as she sits at her desk, as she lies down rubbing the little window. She is becoming erratic—her movements twitchy, her anger quick to rise. She blinks more often, cries more often, and drinks more often. And all the while, the creature’s form only becomes clearer.

I want to comfort my human, but it is not in my nature to be clingy or frequent with my affections. I do love her, though. I love her cute, quiet sneeze, like that of a mouse. I love the gentle way she scratches behind my ears. And I love how her sleeping body makes for a perfect, warm pillow. As she lies down, I go to her, knead the blankets to make them extra soft for her, and then purr to comfort her mind. This is the most I can do. To be too severe with my affections would make her believe I am her pet, not the other way around.

The thing that stalks my human is clever and tenacious, always eluding me when I get close. It hides in places I cannot reach: drainpipes, lightbulbs, the closet with the ever-closed door. I should take the creature’s fear of me as a sign that I have power over it, but I find myself rattled by how aggressively it pursues my human; how unhinged it has made her; by the fact that its hold on her seems to be getting stronger by the hour. It is patient and persistent, and it will not go away.

The creature even follows my human when she leaves for work, latching onto her back as soon as the front door closes. I debate following them; I could take a path through the in-between places to reach my human’s workplace, but that would be extremely dangerous, and it is not our way. No true cat would value a mere human’s life above their own.

When my human returns home, the thing attached to her back is perfectly opaque. It is like a grey octopus, but covered in little hairs, its rat-tail tendrils coiled around my human’s arms and neck. Its head is a pulsating blob with bulging, fish-like eyes and a toothless open smile. It is also now thrice my size.

My human walks slowly, hunched over, as though she has felt the creature’s weight all day. Can she not smell it? Does she not wonder why she is so fatigued? But then, humans never sense creatures from the in-between like we cats can. Their brains are very fickle, constantly rejecting information that threatens their ego or sanity. So of course they don’t see the abominations we cats protect them from. They only see us grappling with invisible monsters, painfully ignorant of how hard we work to save their lives. My human even laughs whenever moth-mice try to fly up to my butt, forcing me to scamper away before they can burrow in. I know her laughter isn’t malicious, but it still feels awfully rude.

As my human sits down, I try leaping to her, to fight the creature off her back. However, the creature lashes its rat tail-tentacles at me like whips, halting me in my tracks. The loud sound of the appendages striking the carpet makes it clear how sharp they are. They leave no marks on the carpet, and might not give me any wounds my human could sense. But they could still fill me with a poison human doctors would never detect. They could rupture my insides. They could, perhaps, rend my very soul.

“What’s wrong, Willow?” asks my human, using the bizarre appellation she chooses to use for me. I circle her, wanting to leap onto her lap ando comfort her with my purrs, but the creature’s eyes follow me. My human reaches down to pick me up, but more psychic tendrils lash the air around her. I zip away, and my human lets out a bitter sigh. “Why do you always do that?”

She spends much of the night drinking. Then, as if overtaken by an impulse, she pulls a knife out from the drawer and takes it to the dinner table. By now, noodles of the creature’s grey flesh have burrowed into her skin: the sides of her neck, the small of her back, her wrists and arms. I sense that time is running out, but I’m helpless to do anything but watch as my human splays her hand on the table, and holds the knife just above its back.

The creature’s throbbing tendrils burrow deep into the knuckles of her knife-hand, its worm-like fingers coiling around my human’s own. It moves her knife-hand in a smooth arc, back and forth. My hair stands on end. This wretched thing is controlling my human, making her its puppet. I leap onto the table and mew to distract her. The creature stares at me. That pulsating sphincter-like mouth opens into another smile, now revealing teeth that look just like my human’s.

My human stabs the knife down beside her thumb, into the table. She lets out a soft, hysterical laugh, then pulls the knife up and moves it over her hand again. I mew again, trying to warn her. It is always so frustrating, trying to get through to my human. I’ve tried to explain so many things to her in the past, but of course she never understands. They have such simple ears; how could they ever understand the different phonetic resonances of each chirp and mewl and purr?

The shadow makes my human bring the knife down again, this time between her middle finger and ring finger. She laughs and raises the knife once more, before stabbing it down between her ring finger and pinky. All the while, the thing on her back grins at me.

I butt my head in, meowing louder, a warning cry. She finally removes her hand on the table, but only to push me away. “Go away, Willow. I don’t want to cut you!”

I push my head into her hand, purring, hoping it will soothe her. Maybe if I comfort her enough, the coils burrowing into her knuckles will tear away. Instead, they only writhe, pulsating, as if pumping more of its sinister energy into her.

“Go away!” my human shouts again. The thing behind her lets out a low-pitched gurgle of laughter.

I stand firm on the table until she sighs, stands up, and puts the knife away. The creature finally detaches from her and rises to the ceiling, leaving a faint stink of rot in its wake. It is no longer grinning.

I leap into the air, trying to claw it, but it floats out of my range as always, as smooth and weightless as air. I crash to the floor, and my human sighs.

“Calm down, Willow. I don’t need zoomies right now.”

It is difficult to not glare at her.

I keep trying to kill the creature all night, but fail over and over. By morning, I conclude that I must adjust my methods. I require information about my opponent, and for that, I must speak to something else from the in-between.

We cats are not truly of the in-between, but we can access it—even survive in it for a time, although one cannot stay in the in-between too long without it changing you. It is a foul plane, one that marks all beings who touch it with mutagenic ectoplasm. Stay there too long, and you become unable to leave.

I take every precaution. First, I lick myself all over, and in the process create my armor. My saliva will protect me from the ectoplasm for at least a few hours.

Next, I trot over to the scratching post, where my human has dribbled a healthy dose of catnip. As tempting as the drug is, I have learned to save stashes of it for emergency use. Entering the in-between requires me to reach a different state of consciousness, and catnip is the easiest way to get there. I give it a good sniff, and fall over as the room starts spinning. My body twitches, ecstasy washing over me. I feel so strongly myself—every sensuous inch of me itching with pleasure. I roll around in a resplendent spasm, delighted by the sensation of my hair flattening against the carpet.

But with the high comes heightened senses, and even after my body settles, I can make out the in-between’s veins swirling all around me. Vague, colorful shapes flutter past my eyes: the swirling red-and-teal wings of moth-mice. I bite the air, trying to reach them, only to remember with some embarrassment that I cannot touch them just yet. I am not yet within the in-between; merely glimpsing it from across the veil.

I roll back onto all fours and shake my legs, testing them. Then I follow the semi-transparent veins to a place where two walls meet. I nudge it with my forehead until it opens for me: a gateway into the in-between. It is the same trick I used to nudge my way into my human’s heart.

I creep through, feeling the other plane press tight against my hair and skin. My body phases like liquid as the world distorts, until I emerge into a warped reflection of my territory. What was once solid—the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the furniture—is now translucent and deformed. Fractal holes in the barriers lead to the world beyond: other rooms, other buildings, a nearby park, the sky itself. Channels burrow through the universe like veins in flesh, circulating all manner of energy. But just as blood is full of germs, these veins are full of chittering parasites. And they, too, are basked in a crimson hue.

The moth-mice flutter through a channel that leads out of my territory. I scamper after them, into the channel, which paints the entire world red. I salivate with thirst for blood, but don’t let my hunger distract me: I scurry on, deeper into the channel in pursuit of the moth-mice. Particles of dust and faded light drift through the air around me, irritating my nose, but I try not to sneeze, lest I catch the attention of bigger beasts…like the huge, spiny pink centipedes crawling along the channel’s walls, their legs like six-foot long needles. The webbed-up remains of other creatures hang from the ceiling, so they seem well-stocked. As long as I’m fast and keep a wide berth, they probably won’t bother me.

The channel takes me through a street’s reflection, which spirals like a corkscrew here in the in-between. I descend, following the veins of the universe, until I close in on the moth-mice. I’m tempted to be lethal, but I need it to talk. So I reach up and impale one with my claw, carefully skewering through a wing. Then I pin it to the ground, preventing it from flying away. Its kin flee, cowardly and selfish to the end.

The impaled moth-mouse gasps for air. “Spare me!” it squeaks, its tiny whiskers shuddering, its wing patterns swirling with anxiety.

“I could consider it,” I purr. “If you make it worth my while.”

“Ohhh, what a kind lady you are!” coos the moth-mouse. “Good cat. Gentle cat—”

I hiss, rotating my claw so that the pitiful creature shrieks again. “I don’t want flattery. I want information. Your kind sometimes flutters through my domain. But you know, I presume, that you’re not the only creatures to do so.”

The moth-mouse’s eyes quiver in fear, but this time, it is not of me. “Please,” it squeaks. “Do not compare my kind to that abomination. We are nothing like the Griefleech.”

“What is this…Griefleech?” I ask.

The moth-mouse only squeals again, too frightened to speak further. I remind it of its situation by making a small tear down its wing. It’s like slicing through tissue paper, but made all the more fun by the moth-mouse’s shriek of pain. “So sorry, ma’am!” it cries. “It is just…the Griefleech is the very worst. The most debased creature of all in this realm. It cultivates sorrow…feeds on it. Have you ever been to an asylum, ma’am?”

“The place where broken humans go?” I ask. I’ve heard rumors that some humans there can see what cats see, but remain uncertain whether to believe it.

“Some end up there because of Griefleech. It breaks them, ma’am, and it can break your kind too!”

“It can break cats?” I scoff in disbelief. The moth-mouse must be trying to scare me. And yet some part of me knew, somehow, to keep my distance as it lashed those warnings…as if I sensed it could harm me, even if I did not yet know how. “How do I kill it?”

The moth-mouse squirms, but it still cannot free itself. It lets out a toot of acceptance. “It could be made…sick,” it finally suggests. “If its host is ill with something it could catch. Then it would go away.”

“You want me to make my human ill?!” I hiss, slashing further down its wing, accidentally tearing all the way to the bottom. The moth-mouse squeals in pain, but no longer pinned down, it’s able to escape me. It flies away in crude loops and spirals, one wing now like two hanging strips of paper. I growl, but let it go. The pitiful thing has probably told me all it knows, and trying to eat it would wreak havoc on my stomach.

I consider the moth-mouse’s words as I trot back to my human’s apartment. I refuse to make my human sick to banish the Griefleech, but there is another option. It is so dangerous that I hesitate to even consider it, but just in case, I pick a flower on my way back through the red channel. This is a Pox Lily, a pale green snarl of a plant with thin, spider-like petals. I take its stem carefully between my teeth, and slip it through my collar. As it is a plant of the in-between, my human will not sense it, but the Griefleech might.

I leave the in-between, pushing my way back into the apartment…and see my human lying on the floor, face down. The creature is on top of her, now looking like a slowly shrinking tumor. Eyes open up on the back of its sack-like head: brown, like my human’s. Its tendrils have burrowed deep into my human’s back. Even its head is partially merged with hers. While I have some misgivings about my plan, there is clearly no time to spare.

“Take me instead,” I hiss, leaping towards them. I pass a fallen bottle, and avoid the many pills scattered across the floor. The creature follows me with its eyes, not lashing this time. Is it considering me? My human lets out a quiet groan, still alive but fading fast.

“You know I am a higher being than that human,” I tell it. “You know I have powers that she does not. I give myself freely, you fiend. Take me!”

What I am doing goes against my kind’s way. We do not put a pet’s life above our own. But it is the only way this terrible plan can work.

The creature’s eyes open wide. Its pupils dilate.

And then, with a vicious squelching sound, the Griefleech pries itself free from my human’s back…and leaps onto me instead.

I instantly feel a sense of violation: worm-like shapes digging into places where there are no holes. I scream and twitch, rolling over in a futile attempt to get it off. I was not ready for this. There are no physical wounds on my body; nothing a human could sense. But I can see and feel the writhing shapes burrowing through my fur and flesh.

My human stirs. She shakes her head, slowly pushes up from the floor. She looks at me, as if remembering I exist for the first time. Her eyes soften. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit, what did I do?”

Then she sticks her finger deep into her mouth and runs into the bathroom, almost slipping on the scattered pills on her way there. The sound of her hurling fills the apartment, so loud that I hear it even over the wriggling of the Griefleech’s fingers.

My human comes back, cradles me in her arms. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to forget about you. I just felt so overwhelmed. I just wanted it to stop.” She watches me twitch, then looks down at the pill-scattered floor. “Oh no, did you eat them too? Do I need to take you to the vet?”

I mew weakly, not needing to feign the pain I’m in. I am physically much smaller than an adult human, and the Griefleech is much faster to absorb me. It hovers over me, its eyes already attaining my yellow color, its pupils forming thin lines. If my human does not hurry, this thing will kill me, and then it will take her, and I will have given myself to it for nothing.

My human crams me into my cramped, closed carry-box. She walks like she is drunk, but nonetheless takes me outside, to the large, metal beast that inexplicably takes her where she pleases. I don’t bother to meow in protest as I usually do; the space around me is taken up by the Griefleech, and I feel too sorrowful, too suffocated.

Into the metal beast we go. My human puts me on the seat beside hers, and then the metal beast roars to life, launching us down a terrifying path. The Griefleech gurgles in pleasure. I can feel its tendrils caressing my ribs, tangling with my guts, tickling my throat. It is now deeply attached to me…just as I planned.

It is difficult to move, but I manage to work with my paws to pull the Pox Lily up to my mouth. Then I eat it whole.

I made the mistake of consuming a Pox Lily petal once before, years ago. For a week I felt terribly sick, vomiting endlessly. Eating the whole thing may kill me, but it may also be just enough. Either way, it works fast: already I feel my bile rumbling around the Griefleech’s tendrils.

Its eyes bulge and throb, green swimming around in their yellow. It gurgles, a low lurch of a sound. Attached to me this way, it is becoming as sick as I am. I manage a vindictive hiss.

All the leech’s tentacles rip out of me, but it remains trapped here inside my carrier, unable to phase out through the mesh walls. I summon what little strength I have left to pin it beneath me. “You’re going to suffer for this,” I say in a low growl. I know it cannot understand my language, but I care not. It makes me feel stronger. More able to pierce through it. I slash my claws through its liquid flesh, over and over. More of my energy fades with every blow I give.

“You okay in there, Willow?” asks my human. She stares ahead through the window, glancing only briefly as I rake the Griefleech to ribbons. Goopy blood bubbles out from its wounds and mouth. It is near-death…but unfortunately, so am I. I collapse, unable to fight any more. The world darkens and blurs. The metal beast rocks back and forth, lulling me to a sleep from which I surely will not wake.

+++

I do wake. The metal beast has stopped, and my human is taking me into the White Wall Place, where they open my carrier at last. I crawl out onto a table, but the Griefleech does not follow. It remains motionless in the carrier, goopy chunks of its body splattered all over.

More humans come, and stick their fingers down my throat until I vomit. They search my bile in confusion, for they do not find what they’re looking for…but they have saved me nonetheless. In that gross yellow mound lies the remains of the flower they cannot see. I am safe. I am tired, queasy, and sick, but I am no longer in danger. And with the Griefleech fading from this world, neither is my human.

My human scratches behind my ears. “You had me worried there, Willow. I’m going to do better, okay? For your sake. I’m going to do better.”

I slowly close my eyes at her, then open them again. You better, I mew. After all, I can’t let her think she’s the one in control.

Fiction © Copyright Jonathan Fortin
Photo by Artyom Kulakov

Jonathan Fortin is a neurodivergent author and voice actor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His debut novel Lilitu: The Memoirs of a Succubus was released in 2020 from Crystal Lake Publishing. A lifelong lover of spooky stories, Jonathan attended the Clarion Writing Program in 2012, one year after graduating summa cum laude from San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program. In 2017, he was named “The Next Great Horror Writer” by HorrorAddicts.net. His work has been published by such markets as Allegory E-Zine, Siren’s Call, and Mocha Memoirs Press. When he isn’t writing, Jonathan enjoys voice acting, growling along to black metal, dressing up in elegant gothic attire, and indulging in all things odd and macabre.