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November 2008

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DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

Harry
by Doug Murano

My only consolation was this: if the whackos on the Discovery Channel turned out to be right, and infinite parallel dimensions exist, wherein infinite possibilities for each instant in time can occur and do occur simultaneously, then in at least one of those parallel dimensions, the shoe that I threw would have punched right through Harry's fucking head. Or maybe it would have taken a magic bullet U turn and buried itself straight up his dirty little poop chute. Or how about this one just for fun? It could have contacted his skin, absorbed into his body and created some sort of terrible wingtip/mammal hybrid. This is a theory that excludes no possibilities, remember.

Instead it tumbled just over his right ear and thumped on the wall behind him. He didn't yowl and dash under the nearest piece of furniture, didn't spin around in confused circles, terrified. No, he wouldn't give me that little morsel of satisfaction. Not Harry. He only momentarily transferred his attention from the lump of vomit in my slipper at which he had been staring since God knows how long before I finally stopped filing team progress reports, negotiated no less than five traffic jams, and then after an hour and a half on the icy February road inched my 1999 Taurus into the garage just until the front bumper tapped the ping pong ball suspended from the rafter.

The tabby reached his back foot up, flicked his sleek little ear twice, mewled nonchalantly and trotted back through my legs on up the stairs.

Shithead Harry. Harry that relieves himself in my bathtub. Harry that shreds up my New York Times. Harry that, if I forget to shut my bedroom door sneaks in during the middle of the night, purring (I know he purrs when he does this since last time I purposely left the door open and pretended to be asleep) and hops up onto my bed. He rolls around on my comforter, making sure to create a lustrous layer of fur. After that he'll slink up beside me, bury his claws into my thigh and then run like hell out through the door and back downstairs. I, of course, am always too tired and disoriented to do anything about it.

* * *

Who would name a cat Harry anyway? What about Puffs, or Snowflake, or Ginger or any of the normal names that people give to cats?

Kirsten.

I can remember the day that she picked him out. June humidity mixed with August heat as we walked downtown towards the pet shop hand in hand. The sun reflecting off of car windows and her radiant summer blonde hair in brilliant bursts of white light that left green after images on my retina that danced through the shimmering lines rising from the pavement. Fat people in spandex shorts, the whole works. She loved days like that. I myself never really fell in love with the kind of weather that sticks your balls to the insides of your legs, but it was her birthday. Her day.

The creature we brought home with us that day was little more than a ball of fuzz with eyes, and God help me I couldn't help but to fall in love with it a little. Not all the way. Thank goodness for that. It didn't hurt the way that Kirsten talked baby talk to the little thing. Even though she'd never tried that with me, it sort of turned my crank.

Kirsten started calling him Harry a few days later, but wouldn't tell me why. I must have badgered her about it for half an hour but I never did get it out of her. A little secret between her, the cat and God I guess. Naturally, I assumed that Harry was one of her old flames from college.

* * *

I decided not to bother with my slipper and simply plodded up the staircase to my bedroom, loosening my tie and unbuttoning my trousers as had always been my habit. Kirsten always told me that someday Publishers Clearing House was going to show up at my door with one of their jumbo checks for ten million dollars with my name on it and ring the doorbell while I was in this compromising position. I was going to fall down the stairs with my pants around my ankles, and hang myself with my tie on the banister. (Here's where my imagination always kicked in) They'd get it all with their cameras of course, and my poor mom would see me on live television, my purple face, my bulging eyes, and in her shock she would mutter something about auto erotic asphyxiation that she had seen on 48 Hours or Law and Order. And Harry would be on the stairs, jumping and batting away at the dangling end of my necktie.

Such would be my luck, she said. She was always giving me a bad time about something, or laughing at some silly thing. Kirsten always said I should laugh more.

Kirsten's laugh. For some reason it always reminded me of the tinkling sound icicles make as they fall during the first thaw of a cold hard winter. How she'd laugh at the things he did. She'd giggle every time Harry figure-eighted his way between her feet, tickling her ankles with his tail, and when Harry played tag with nothing in particular; just leap into the air as if something had startled him and then tear off across the floor to the other end of the house, and then skid to a halt, bat the air once or twice and then turn around and run the other direction. She'd laugh when she noticed that he'd been staring at the same spot on the wall late in the afternoon as when she left for work. He'd gaze with his baby blue eyes, the intense stare that only cats can achieve. Kirsten told me once that she was sure that he could see ghosts, the way that he acted sometimes.

* * *

The harassment started during the second month of Harry's occupation. I came home from work one Friday afternoon and Kirsten was in a panic. She couldn't find the cat. Did she check the hampers upstairs where he loved to hide out sometimes like a soldier in a pill box? Yes. Did she check underneath all of the furniture? Twice, she said. I told her that I would walk around the neighborhood until I found him. I started walking circles around our block, then the surrounding blocks, and finally a four block region. No Harry, and Kirsten was crushed. I hugged her and told her that Harry knows who feeds him and where his cat bed was, and that sometimes cats need to prowl.

At eleven at night, and we decided to stop Harry Watch 2002 until the sun came up. The second we turned around to go inside, no, the instant I realized how great it would feel to melt into my brand new no-flip mattress and make love to my beautiful wife for the first time that week, a pathetic squall cut through the night air from the top of the old silver maple tree in our front yard.

Harry. Somehow he had gotten outside, and decided to climb up the tree. The problem wasn't up, obviously. I didn't need a flashlight to know that he had ascended to altitudes where not even the smaller songbirds would build their nests in the tiny branches. Down was the difficulty. Cats climb down trees headfirst, and I guessed he never learned how to do that on a smaller tree, a training wheel tree if you will. Another yowl as if he was being drawn and quartered alive.

A pleading look from Kirsten.

I could go into agonizing detail concerning the rest of that ordeal, but I won't. I've said enough about Harry already so that you won't be surprised when I say that I got suckered into (when I say "suckered into" I mean by Harry, not Kirsten) spending that night outside and that he didn't come down from the tree the next day. Or the next. I spent the majority of that weekend staring up into the maple, trying to coax Harry down into at least the lower branches so that I could prop a ladder up against the thick trunk of the tree and climb up to retrieve him. On Monday morning, I fully expected men in white coats carrying clipboards to circle my house, pounce on me and inject "that crazy man who stares at his tree for days" full of some powerful sedative.

Up until the end, he never moved at all, and then it was all at once. He just let go, and fell down spread eagle like some half assed flying squirrel towards my open arms. From that moment on, I was convinced that animals have emotions, because as Harry fell I was sure that I could see not fear but triumphant, brazen, wide-eyed glee in his eyes. My stitches were removed about a week later.

* * *

I went over to my bed and lay down. I glanced at the clock. It was only seven, but I was already exhausted and ready for sleep. But I knew sleep was more of a dream than those I was hoping to welcome. I told myself (still have to tell myself) that it's been a year, but every time I close my eyes I can remember the way she left me. How I yelled at her on her way out the door. Of course Harry was there. He was always there.

It was February, and time for another round of shots for Harry at the veterinarian . The weatherman had said for drivers to beware the slippery ice that covered the road following the last bout of sleet. I tried to talk her out of keeping her appointment. She wanted to go anyway. Did I remember to tell you that she was as stubborn as she was lovely? When that didn't work I gave her all kinds of grief about how stupid I thought it was to care so much about a cat. She told me I didn't understand. She was right. I made her cry. I asked her to wait. She left.

Later that evening I answered a knock on my door. The sheriff was standing in front of me holding Harry. Harry was soaked with melted ice, looking as pathetic as only a wet cat can. His orange fur was matted in several places with what I have ever since wished was his blood.

* * *

I lay staring at Harry, and he sat across the room looking back at me and occasionally licked his paw in a smug way. Some people might say that it's impossible for a cat to look smug, but then again they don't live with Harry, do they? Smug is his preferred modus operandi.

"Fuck you," I said.

Harry rose to a standing position and began to approach the foot of my bed, all the while twitching his tail.

"Good, you just come on over here, and do that trick you love to do. That's gutsy, boy-o." I hadn't noticed that I was crying.

He continued his route to the bed, and most of him momentarily disappeared as he reached the section of floor that I could not see from where I was on the bed. I could see the top of his twitching little shithead tail though. I sat up and leaned on my headboard, fists clenched. I watched him reappear as he jumped up onto the mattress and continued his slow, deliberate journey. Harry was purring. Instead of digging in his claws, he arched his back and began to nuzzle up underneath my hand. He looked at me with expectant eyes.

"This is how you want it now, Harry? You can piss off. I don't like you," I said. But despite the swelling of anger I felt, his soft fur against the palm of my hand started to take the edge off of it. Harry was moving into my hand with more force and the rumble in his throat sounded like an idling Harley-Davidson. I smiled and stroked his back from neck to tail.

"Well I still say fuck you, Harry," I said.

Harry sat up hissed and sprang his claws out at me. They found purchase in my thigh about an inch below my manhood. I swung out at him with both arms, but again he was out the door before I could do much. I slid off the bed and ran out of the bedroom door after him.

When I reached the staircase, Harry was almost all the way down and I stormed down after him. I tripped on the way down and plummeted headfirst down the carpeted stairs, rug burning my chin and chest, and couldn't help but imagine the good people from Publisher's Clearinghouse standing there with their gleaming game show smiles and holding an immense cardboard check with my name on it. Thank God I'm not wearing a tie, I thought.

I skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stairs on the tile floor of the kitchen. I was afraid to open my eyes because my body ached in a hundred places, and my face burned. Then I remembered I was furious and my eyelids snapped up. I wanted to grab him by the tail and throw him out into the snow by it. I wanted to raise a set of uprights in my front yard just so that I could kick him through it.

Harry stopped me. I saw him there a few feet in front of me. His eyes were closed in an expression of divine pleasure, and he walked tight little figure eights around nothing at all. Somewhere, I know I heard the tinkling sound of falling icicles.