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November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

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

La Nuit du la Chat Noir
by Nora B. Peevy

“That is the most ghastly picture.” After almost one year of marriage, Trevor knew this would not be an argument he would win, and the famous poster for Le Chat Noir mocked him, the black cat sitting smug with its slit yellow eyes like two rotten grape halves, an impervious fixture in the red and yellow bathroom. Trevor suspected Ginny decorated the bathroom with the precise intention of buying this hideous piece of iconic art. He winced even before she opened her mouth to speak with a mouthful of toothpaste, a habit he abhorred.

“You don’t like it?”

“I like it about as much as I like dog shit on my shoe.”

“Well, I think black cats are very fashionable. Did you know Poe’s black cat, Catarina, inspired the story, The Black Cat?”

Trevor turned away, queasy, not wanting to watch the toothpaste dribbling over her chin as she spoke. “So what, now you’re a budding horror savant? Since when did you become Tom Savini? I’ll meet you in the bedroom.” He stomped off to bed. And what does Poe have to do with anything? Since when did Ginny read Edgar Allan Poe? She’d preemptively googled black cats, storing that annoying nugget of information away in her obsessive-compulsive brain to fire off later when he complained. He yanked back the covers and flung himself into bed like a six-year old.

Ginny padded to bed in her purple slipper socks. It was apparent to her now she’d been possessed by bridal envy, for what woman in her right mind would marry Trevor with his sagging piggy paunch and the doughy flesh slipping beneath his raisin eyes. Why, he looked fifty, though barely forty-one. “Until death do us part,” looked grimmer than a never-ending root canal with no analgesics accompanied by Kenny G.

“Are you going to wear those things to bed?”

“Yes. My feet are cold.”

Resigned to another sexless evening, Trevor turned off his bedside lamp and rolled away from her.

With a small huff, she pounded her pillow with a closed fist, imagining Trevor’s face, and when she elbowed him, trying to get comfortable, she grinned like a smug cat. Serves him right, she thought.

Trevor lay listening to his wife’s snoring freight train symphony, every snark and snork fueling his boiling frustration. Restless, he tossed and turned, checking the alarm clock every five minutes. And to think, he’d married this woman “until death do us part.” God certainly had a wry sense of humor. The snaky bastard. Groaning, he threw back the covers and headed downstairs in the dark, stubbing his toe on the antique table in the hallway. “For the love of Mephistopheles,” he roared. Not like Ginny heard him. She was sawing logs with a thousand lumberjacks at this point.

He padded downstairs to the refrigerator, and like a cranky badger comfortable in his environment, reached with a blind paw for the milk, squinting at the diagonal swatch of light falling across his toes. He drank from the gallon jug, asserting his manhood and reminiscing about his bachelor days as he felt something furry brush against the plaid pant leg of his pajamas, but upon inspection, found nothing there. However, the hair standing up on the back of his knuckles alerted Trevor to something watching him in the murky darkness with a hunter’s prowess. And on the way up the stairs, a slight breeze floated past his ankles.

Attributing the breeze to a draft coming from the floor to ceiling windows in the hallway, Trevor settled back into bed beside his snarkaleptic wife and prayed God would come and take her away. He kicked at the blankets. He hated how she always tucked the sheets in at the bottom of the bed like an obsessive nursemaid, trapping his feet. He liked his feet free to move while he slept. She knew that. But she didn’t care. Ginny only cared about her stupid cat collection. She couldn’t have a hundred real cats because he was deathly allergic, but their likenesses gawked at him from every unoccupied inch of space in every friggin’ room. She was the Pied Piper of cat bric-a-brac. Ugly cats. Calico cats. Black cats. Striped cats. Cats ubiquitous. Cats omnipresent. Cats everywhere. Trevor fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of cats. He couldn’t even escape them in the private sanctum of his own mind.

Ginny woke late in the morning, Trevorless, a smile on her lips as she lay in bed thinking not of her husband, but her lover, Rosalia. Her smile faded as the musky scent of Trevor’s cologne attacked her nose. Once, it made her tingle with anticipation, but now she’d prefer the stink of goats rutting to that horrid stench. Why, even an outhouse used by a hundred greasy, slick-haired truckers would smell sweeter. She’d never been in love with a woman before. She didn’t know what this meant, except she didn’t want to be married to Trevor. His name sat like a raised welt on her tongue, heavy, bruised, and blackened as she reached for the phone to call Rosalia.

“Good morning, love.”

“Good morning, Rosalia.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Not as well as I would have, if you were beside me.”

“I know.” Rosalia’s soft Spanish lilt reminded Ginny of rain dripping off green leaves in the summer. “Did you put up the picture mama gave you?”

“Yes, and nothing happened.”

“Patience, dear. Just remember what mama always says.”

“And what’s that?”

“Con paciencia y con mana, un elefante se comio una arana.” The words rolled off Rosalia’s tongue like liquid drops of sunlight. “Little strokes fell great oaks.”

“Fine.”

“Can I see you today?”

“No. I don’t have time. Trevor expects this big dinner to celebrate his latest advertising pitch. And I have a zillion and one things to do.” Ginny’s voice lulled lazily as she thought of Rosalia’s skin. She smelled like lemon chiffon and tasted like oranges and ginger. Her tongue burned with the memory.

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you mad at me?” Without waiting for Rosalia to answer, Ginny told her, “I have to go. I’ll call you later tonight, if I can,” and hung up. Ginny hated to disappoint Rosalia, but she still had commitments to Trevor and she didn’t have the strength to end the relationship herself. Rosalia’s mother offered to intervene. Her mother, a bruja, a witch, wanted to bring them together, though, what the woman could do to help, Ginny didn’t know, but for the first time since late last year, Ginny could almost breathe and taste the food she ate. She shivered and wrinkled her nose; jerked back to reality by her marital chains and Trevor’s yellowing boxers crumpled on the floor beside the bed. She hated that.

In between loads of laundry, Ginny googled brujería and learned from Wikipedia about Spanish witchcraft, which some non-traditionalists combine with voodoo, while others do not. The art originated from Mayan culture and ancient paganism. Ginny found the idea of ancient Mayan roots very exotic and mysterious. A bruja, a female witch, was capable of shape shifting and glamours, and spell casting, charms, and herbal remedies just like European witches. She wondered what all of this meant for Trevor as she prepared a spinach, apple, and sweet onion salad to go with dinner.

Ginny winced as Trevor came in the door and left his Trafalgar briefcase on the kitchen table, sweeping past her without any sign of affection. Five minutes later his bossy bullhorn voice boomed from the top of the stairs, “Ginny!”

If he didn’t have the decency to come talk to her like a civil human being, she wasn’t going to answer. She continued finely chopping sweet onion, fantasizing about carving up his precious briefcase and serving it to him with gravy for dinner. The type of reaction that would get made her giggle and her shoulders shook as tears ran down her face from the onions.

Trevor came stomping into the kitchen holding something almost invisible. “Do you know what this is?”

“No. I can’t even see what you’re holding. I’ve got tears in my eyes from the onions.” She bit back a snicker.

“It’s a cat whisker. You know I’m allergic to cats, Ginny,” he scolded her like a puppy who’d piddled on the floor in front of him.

“And what do you want me to do with it?”

“I don’t want you to do anything with it. I want to know where it came from.”

“Well, obviously it came from a cat.” She stifled another snicker.

“Well, thank you Sherlock Holmes for that wonderful deduction. If I wanted an answer to the obvious, I’d ask for it.” He looked even less becoming in the shade of radish his face turned. “Where is the cat it belongs to?”

She slammed the knife on the granite counter. “Trevor, this is ridiculous. There’s no cat.” She wiped her hands on her apron.

“Well, then where did this come from?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea where it came from.”

“Well, it must have come from somewhere.”

“Maybe, it blew in from outside. It was quite windy today and I had the upstairs windows open.”

That answer seemed to satisfy him and he left the room, thankfully. She didn’t bother to tell him he trailed a piece of toilet paper stuck to his left loafer; rather, she tossed the salad for dinner in apple vinaigrette, sniggering to herself.

Dinner passed with the clink of glasses and the scraping of forks between them, and after Ginny cleared the table, which Trevor never offered to do, she made a phone call while he settled down to watch Antiques Roadshow, a real snore fest.

Ginny hid in the walk-in pantry, thankful the phone cord stretched that far. Trevor proved stodgier than a pair of old English biddies at tea time. He refused to even think of getting a cordless phone until this one broke and that would happen about as soon as the Republican Party had to hold a bake sale. The phone rang at least five times, before anyone picked up.

Rosalia’s mother answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Adega, it’s Ginny. Is Rosalia there, please?”

“No, she’s out. I tell her you called,” she offered in broken English. With a faint cough, she hung up the phone before Ginny could say anything else.

Disappointed, Ginny curled up with Jane Austen in bed with a mug of hot chamomile tea.

***

A low growl pierced the darkness. Trevor woke and Ginny, predictably, did not. A nuclear holocaust could happen and she’d still be snoring away with the best of them. He didn’t bother to wake her, just shoved his feet into his worn blue corduroy slippers and trudged to the top of the stairs, holding his breath and listening to the night around him. There it was. Another low rumbling growl.

“Achoo! Damnit, Ginny! When I find that oversized flea-bitten fur rug I’m going to pitch it right out in the backyard where it came from!” Trevor broke into a sneezing fit as he rushed downstairs, slippers flapping on the linoleum in the kitchen where he thought he heard the growls. He flipped on the light and found an empty room. No cat. Cursing his bum knee from that skiing accident a few years ago, he checked under the kitchen table. No cat. Huh. Where did it go? He knew he’d heard a cat. He was sure of it. For the next half hour, Trevor led a fruitless search, checking under all the furniture, even behind the washer and dryer in the laundry room, and finding no cat. His sneezes gradually subsided, and he grabbed a Claritin from the cupboard above the sink before returning to bed. It was then he saw a tiny ball of black fluff against the mopboard, so small, he’d almost missed it. But he’d found the evidence he lacked. And Ginny would answer for it. With a triumphant grin, he grabbed a Ziploc bag and picked up the furry evidence with a white tissue, not exposing his skin to any stray cat dander, and sealed the bag shut, stowing it away in the kitchen cupboard with the coffee grinder. Satisfied, he returned to bed and stubbed his toe again on the antique table in the hallway. “Mother-f,” he yelped, limping to bed.

The next morning Trevor stood before Ginny in his white business executive shirt and red striped tie, drinking a cup of coffee, frowning. Not that she gave a fig, but for harmony’s sake, she asked, “Sleep alright?” She sipped her coffee from her cat mug.

Just the sight of her standing there in her pink cat pajamas sipping coffee from her frickin’ cat mug caused Trevor’s blood pressure to rise. He could feel his face flush as he answered in a cold professional tone, “No. As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”

Then he stood there blinking like a stupid sheep, expecting her to read his mind. Well, she wasn’t in the mood today. She turned her back on him, switching on the garbage disposal.

Trevor shouted above the noise, “And you know why I didn’t?”

“I’m sorry, Trevor, I can’t hear you. The garbage disposal’s on,” Ginny yelled, biting her lip to stifle a giggle, hoping he didn’t see the girlish glee in her eyes.

Trevor switched off the garbage disposal with a glare that could split iron. He spoke each word slowly. “I didn’t sleep well because there was a cat in the house." He picked at a hang nail on his left thumb, a bad habit when frustrated, something that happened quite frequently around Ginny. Soon he’d have no skin and his nails would drop off and he’d be dead. And things would be much better. He bit his lip and forced himself to use the even, non-threatening tone he did at the office when disciplining an employee, “It was making me sneeze. And it was growling. And I went downstairs to find it and I found this, instead.” Trevor threw open the cupboard with the same over-dramatic flair he used for everything and looked quite stunned, something that didn’t happen very often. He stammered, “Wh-where is it?”

“Oh, you mean the bag of fur?” Ginny smiled, goading him on and knowing full well he wanted that bag of fur.

“Yes, that bag of fur.”

“I threw it away. It didn’t belong in the cupboard.”

His eyes bulged like a goldfish, lips moving silently. “Well then,” he said after a long, awkward pause, trying to recover his dignity and realizing he’d lost yet another battle with his hellish wife, “I guess I’ll be off to work.”

“Have a good day then. If I see a pussy, I’ll let you know.” Ginny winked and raised her cat mug to her lips, grinning as the door slammed. The entire day stretched before her, husband-free.

Rosalia called just as Trevor pulled out of the driveway. Her lover’s voice slipped over Ginny’s shoulders like cashmere. “How are you, Ginny?”

“Fine, if you consider marriage to be better than nuclear holocaust.”

“That bad?” A peal of laughter erupted from the phone.

“What is your mother up to? And when am I going to be free of him?”

“Patience, my little chickadee. All things in good time.”

“Well, you’re not living with Archie Bunker.”

“No, and if I were, I’d take care of the problem myself.”

“I can’t.” Ginny lowered her voice. “I told you before I can’t do something like that and I can’t divorce him. It’s against my religion.”

“But it’s not against your religion to get help from an outside source, to sleep with someone other than your husband, or to have a lesbian relationship?”

“Yes, it is, but I can live with those sins, but not murder by my own hands.” Ginny bit her lip and sipped of her coffee.

“Well, you won’t have much longer to wait. Mother will finish things tonight, if everything goes as planned.”

“Fine. I have to go now, but I’ll see you at the book club meeting later.” Ginny hung up the phone, feeling better. Somehow she made it through her normal Wednesday routine, even though her thoughts were preoccupied with Trevor and Rosalia.

***

Trevor arrived home late, much to her relief, heated up dinner, and ate by himself in the kitchen. By the time he finished, Ginny laid passed out to the world upstairs, another mug of chamomile tea beside her bed in another annoying cat mug. He got ready for bed and fell between the sheets, grateful. It’d been an exhausting day.

He woke to a loud rumbling purr and something furry nuzzling his chin. In a sleepy fog, he shoved it away. “Go away, Ginny,” he mumbled with a fuzzy, cotton mouth.

The purring became feverish and more determined, as sharp claws began to tread on his chest. Trevor felt a slight tickle under his nose, possibly a tail trailing across his face. Wait. A tail? He shot up in bed, confident he’d finally caught his wife’s cat in the house, but found only Ginny. Then he heard the faint click of cat claws on the wooden floorboards and the tell-tale creak on the topmost step as something shifted its weight.

Trevor crept barefoot from his bed. A chill tightened around his throat like a garrote as he entered the hallway, and paused to check the thermostat. It was unusually cold for an August night. From the gauzy shadows of darkness, a claw swiped his ankle, slicing a razor-fine line across his Achilles’ tendon.

“Yowch!” Trevor hopped on one foot, flipping on the lights, blinding himself. Something rustled. Trevor turned towards the landing. Empty. He flipped off the lights to remain invisible, forgetting cats have excellent night vision, and tiptoed, holding his breath, trailing his hand along the cool, smooth banister he’d sanded and finished himself. A low growl rippled through the curtain of darkness and he paused, before placing his foot on the next step, his mouth dryer than a rattlesnake’s. He heard and saw nothing. He snuck downstairs as a streak of midnight darted under his foot, pitching him headfirst down the stairs.

Upstairs, Ginny heard what sounded like a herd of elephants on roller skates tumbling downstairs, something finally louder than her own snoring, and she leapt out of bed without her flashlight or robe, tearing into the hall, her eyes wild with panic, her chest heaving, flipping on the lights as she ran to the second landing before the last set of stairs. Trevor sprawled at the bottom of the stairs with one leg bent beneath him at an unnatural angle, his head turned away in an inky pool of crimson on the white carpet.

A scream curdled in her throat and she staggered downstairs with jittering hands, as a warm, lithe body pushed her from behind. She careened downstairs, crashing on top of Trevor with a sick, squishy, thump. Ginny felt cool and warm at the same time. She shivered, going into shock and her bladder let go. Her wet nightgown stuck to her crotch and buttocks. Paralyzed, she lay like Raggedy Ann, with her head turned towards the stairs, watching as a misty outline of a cat metamorphosed into Rosalia. A black viscous sludge of fear bubbled tarry in her throat as Rosalia slunk down the few remaining stairs to stoop beside her.

Ginny gurgled, her tongue clumsy in her mouth. What was she doing here? She smelled cinnamon. Or was it lemon chiffon? She wasn’t sure. Her senses betrayed her. She saw dark, when it was clearly light in the room, and smelled something sweet, but pungent at the same time.

Rosalia read Ginny’s question in her eyes, as she bent to whisper in Ginny’s ear, “Yes, lover. It’s me.” She kissed her and Ginny tasted oranges and ginger and felt light caresses, like cat whiskers rubbing her neck. She would have cringed, but paralyzed, her muscles didn’t respond. She lay still while Rosalia’s napalm touch burned her flesh, fire and ice at the same time.

Ginny’s lips quivered as she attempted to speak, and Rosalia’s mouth curled in a mocking sneer, revealing a gleaming mouthful of needle sharp cat’s teeth. “What’s the matter, darling? Cat got your tongue?” Rosalia cackled and rose, stirring the clammy air around Ginny’s legs, her filmy flower print sundress swirling in a cloud around her well-formed legs as she traced her slender fingers over the frame of an original Norman Rockwell, a family heirloom from Ginny’s grandmother in great need of dusting. She admired the painting, knowing it would bring a pretty penny or two.

Rosalia knelt again beside her, and Ginny smelled cinnamon musky and sweet. “You are in love with a cat burglar, my chickadee.” She grinned and placed a cool palm over Ginny’s fluttering eyelids.

The fog comes on little cat feet, Ginny thought, a line from her favorite Carl Sandburg poem. She tasted ginger and spice for the last time as Rosalia pressed her warm lips to hers and sliced her carotid artery with a glinting blade, admiring the pretty red river running down Ginny’s pale equine neck.

Rosalia’s tongue flicked out with a serpentine grace, tasting the salty copper tang of Ginny’s blood as she murmured, “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought her back.” She rose and pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her sundress, dialing a number. “It’s done,” she said to her mother. “We can start moving the items in the house.” And she went into the kitchen to put a kettle on for tea, while she waited for her mother to join her.