Previously On Cat Fight:
Freda finds Walt Hemmer, the man tied to the occult book found at the murder scene. After revealing everything—Joe’s affliction, Bobby’s descent, and Damien’s adoption—Walt confirms the book’s significance and insists they need to talk, hinting at secrets far darker than Freda imagined.
Meanwhile, Olga retreats to the Hudson River to reflect on her broken marriage, Jen’s attack on Sasha, and the poisonous infection still burning in her shoulder. Torn between forgiveness and self-preservation, she struggles with a painful truth: her home no longer feels safe… and she's growing hungrier by the minute.
Chapter 58
The first peculiar occurrence for Sasha happened when he drove down the block to his house and saw all the cats in his yard. There were four of them. They all looked like they were watching the house.
He parked and got out of the car, scanning across the yard and the cats. The scene was peculiar, although he didn’t think about it for longer than a few seconds. His nose had stopped bleeding, but the pain was unnerving, and his eye was swollen and hurt when he touched it.
Broken physically and beaten down emotionally, this day couldn’t get any worse. He desperately needed to pop a few aspirins and gave up his inquiry on the cats, then went into his house. He walked straight to the kitchen, noting how hot it was and to turn the air conditioner to a cooler setting, as he beelined to the kitchen where he dry-swallowed six aspirin.
After which, he changed into a clean shirt-his had blood all over it-then checked on the air conditioner. The thermostat was set to a cool seventy-two degrees, although the temperature in the house registered at seventy-eight. He went to text Olga when he remembered he no longer had a phone and there was no landline. He’ll write a note on the whiteboard on the refrigerator before he leaves. Olga will need to call an air conditioning repair company. Clearly, their unit was on the fritz.
He then reserved himself to find Damien after he located the carrier in the living room, but Damien was nowhere to be found. He checked every room, every closet, and every bathroom, including looking in the cabinets, which he felt like a fool for doing. But then again, where the hell is the cat?
The door to the basement was ajar. He didn’t notice it at first, but the gentle tap of the door against the doorframe drew his attention to it.
Maybe Olga put the cat in the basement?
Which made sense, considering she hated cats. Sasha stood and looked at the door for so long he thought he was paralyzed. For some reason, he didn’t want to go down there, but he did. Opened the door and gazed down the steps into the darkness.
The mood was ominous, somber, and he thought he saw something float across the air. He flipped the light switch, but no light arrived. Flipped it up and down a few times and still no light, although he knew there was a second light by the washing machine and dryer. If he had his phone, he could have used the flashlight, but he didn’t, so why bother even thinking about it right now?
His heart took a jolt when one of his neighbors fired up their lawn mower. The sudden sound was enough to set his nerves on fire, and he thought he was about to have a heart attack.
“Get it together, Sasha,” he told himself, then wiped the sweat from his brow. It was getting hotter in the house. Sasha could feel it, the heat crawling across his skin.
On his way down, he thought about returning to the studio to tell Olga about the A/C and suggest she and Kendra stay in his hotel room while the unit’s getting fixed. No one should have to live in a house this hot. It seemed unnatural.
Maybe they can take a vacation too. Go back to the Jersey Shore and have a good time rekindling the marriage and the family bond.
Now that sounds nice.
He took the last step down and scanned across the basement, using the light from the kitchen to help his search.
“Damien,” he called, but felt stupid. Does this cat even know his name? “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.” He even made stupid cat noises-or what he thought would be cat noises-and felt even dumber than he already did.
He dropped the carrier on the ground, then walked to the back of the basement towards the laundry area and pulled the string to turn on the light. Nothing, although he saw the litter box Olga must have set up.
But no cat. No, Damien strolling out of the darkness to greet him. He shrugged. “Where the hell is he?”
His question received an answer as a chattering growl that reverberated in his bones. To be honest, it scared the shit out of him.
“Damien?” Sasha walked back towards the steps, closer to the many shelves in the basement where he believed the sound had come from.
It came again. More like a growl this time than chattering.
His heart froze when he found Damien lying down on one of the top shelves. It was dark where he was sitting, his orange fur turned a shade of brown, and he appeared bigger than he did yesterday, not like a kitten who had been born a few days ago but more like a full-grown adult cat. His size-not to mention the expedited rate that he had grown-was daunting, and downright scary.
But what terrified Sasha the most were the eyes. Damien’s eyes beamed yellow in the dark basement. In fact, it was his eyes that first alerted Sasha to his location. They looked like two ominous yellow jewels in the darkness.
After Sasha successfully coaxed himself back to the current circumstance, he picked up the carrier and stepped closer to Damien.
“There you are, buddy.” He was staring eye to eye at the cat now, and he swallowed his breath down his throat. “We’ve got to go for a ride, ok?” He noticed Damien was watching as he put the carrier on the floor and unzipped it. When he looked back, Damien had gotten up on all fours. “That’s right, buddy… we’re just gonna take a little ride to the city to see the nice lady from Hendersons.”
The loudest yowling he’d ever heard erupted out of Damien’s throat. The cat was moving backwards, his backside rising as Sasha approached, followed by a hiss from the cat that cringed Sasha’s spine.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid.” He reached his hands out and Damien responded with a growl before leaping at Sasha, slicing across his forehead. Sasha’s head shot back, and he dropped the carrier. His hands immediately went to the wound as a burning pain ripped across his forehead, and he howled something awful.
“Fuuuuccckkkkk.” He gritted his teeth; the sting raced into his brain. He felt blood on his forehead and blood on his hand. He stomped his foot, then screamed while tensing his fists. “Son of a bitch!”
He honestly wanted to cry. He wanted to stomp on Damien’s head too. The blood kept coming, cascading across his eyes-now he’s got to go to the hospital too-so he pressed his forehead to his sleeve and wiped away the blood.
Where’s the fucking cat now?
But the blood kept coming, he held his hand over the wound and looked for the cat. He thought about finding his shovel and knocking Damien over the head with it. He could bury the fucker in the backyard, and no one would ever know.
Something scurried past him. He whipped around to his right, but nothing was there. His breathing was heavy; he could hear it between his ears.
Another yowl and now he felt pain across his Achilles heel that dropped him like a sack of bricks to the basement floor. Collapsed was more like it. His leg had given out, incapable of holding his weight. And now he had a painful sting rippling from his ankle up to his brain. He rolled over, reaching for his ankle, when he saw blood gushing from the wound. Damien successfully tore his Achilles heel to shreds. It was bleeding profusely, and the thought that entered Sasha’s head at that moment was that his dancing career was over.
He gripped the heel, hoping to cease the blood flow. His face pinched in agony. His hand came away slick with blood when he realized he was being attacked.
He stopped his whining and whimpering when he heard the padding back and forth across the room. Everything went quiet as he searched for Damien.
The next attack came from behind him when Damien slashed his claw across the nape of his neck. Sasha immediately gritted his teeth. His spine contracted, as did his bones, and his head dropped to the floor. His hand went to his neck, feeling the blood raining across his fingers.
He went to roll over. An effort to claw himself back upstairs when he saw Damien padding over to him, his eyes now beaming red and his tongue lapping across his mouth.
It happened so fast. He didn’t realize Damien was that close. He seemed to move like the wind.
Before he could react, he felt Damien’s teeth around his throat bite into his windpipe. He heard a crunch followed by pain in his throat as he garbled on his own blood. Damien dropped his paw down across Sasha’s forehead, forcing his head down as his jaw tightened.
The last sound Sasha ever heard was his own breath, whistling out of his windpipe.
