Cat Fight

Chapters 15 & 16

Previously on Cat Fight:

At the animal control facility, Mary's routine examination of the sedated kitten Damien takes a terrifying turn when she discovers dead cats seemingly coming back to life in garbage bags amid supernatural chaos, only to find Damien has vanished when the ordeal ends. Earlier that day, details emerged about a gruesome cult-like murder where a woman's organs were removed and replaced with communion wafers and rosary beads, with her heart mysteriously missing. After returning home from the hospital, Olga's already difficult day becomes worse when she discovers her husband's suspected mistress Jen is in their kitchen, having stayed behind with her daughter Kendra long after the housekeeper Estelle had left.

Chapter 15

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Mary was searching for Damien, a bowl of cat food in her hand, trying to coax the little guy out of whatever hiding spot he crawled into. Now she was walking from the front of the store through the kennel where Sam, the golden retriever they picked up a few days ago, was barking up a storm. The rest of the dogs followed along, turning the kennel into a madhouse.

She dismissed the hallucination. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if it was real anymore, because how could it be? Dead cats don’t suddenly come to life and start yawping and jumping and fires don’t automatically start on their own.

Maybe I’ve been sniffing too many chemicals.

She scoffed it off to being tired. Tired and overstressed. Not to mention the amount of chemicals she was exposed to throughout the day. Between euthanizing, vaccines, dewormer, flea and tick medicine, and cleaning chemicals, she wouldn’t be surprised if a hallucination happened every once in a while. She wondered if her parents ever suffered from hallucinations. A thought she dismissed the moment she stepped back into the hospital.

She scanned across the room, finding nothing out of the ordinary and definitely no kitten. She noticed Sam’s bark turned into a whimper. Noticed how all the barking ceased at once, but the whimpering continued. Seemed like he was afraid of something.

Mary dropped the bowl on the exam table and went back to the kennel, where Sam’s continued whimpers raged through the kennel. “Oh, Sam, what is it?”

She stopped in her tracks. “Oh.” Damien was sitting in front of Sam’s cage, staring at the dog. “There you are. Don’t you know I’ve been looking for you?” Sam backed up to the back of the cage. He didn’t lie down like he usually does, instead, he appeared as though he was cringing, wanting to be as far away from Damien as possible. She noticed Sam never looked away from his feline visitor and continued to whimper. Mary looked over the kennel. Noticed all the dogs had scooted to the back of their cages. Noticed the cats did too.

Whatever, Mary thought. She didn’t have time to indulge in the psychology of animals. It was getting late, very late, and all she wanted was to finish with Damien and get home. A good shower would feel good right now. “Come on Damien, we’ve got things to do.”

She scooped Damien into her arms, forgetting how hostile the kitten had been to Joe and Bobby. Forgot because he seemed completely subdued, resting against Mary’s stomach and cradled in her arms. She placed him on the table and Damien strolled over to the food bowl. “Hungry, buddy? Not yet though.” She took the bowl before he had a chance to eat. “The medicine works better on an empty stomach.” Damien looked at her with a crooked stare. He lapped his tongue across his mouth, and Mary’s blood curled in her veins. His tongue seemed too long for a kitten. And what’s with the split end? It turned her blood cold.

“After we’re done,” she said, as if he knew what she was saying. He responded with a meow. “Soon, I said. Let’s get you fixed first. Maybe that’ll calm you down a bit.” She used her fingers as if they were scissors. “Cut those balls right off.” She looked at his claws. “Those are gone too.” Then looked at Damien in his eyes. “No more scratching for you, Damien.”

Damien had no response. He just kept staring, ominous and calculating. There was something about his eyes that seemed off. As if she could tell he was aware of everything she had just said.

“Well…” She paused, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Let’s start.” She walked around the table, noticing Damien’s stare followed her. His head seemed as if it turned completely backward to stare at her.

Fucking cat is eerie.

She opened the cabinet, scanning across her supplies and medicines. Took a syringe and a few vials of antibiotics. The declawing blade, forceps and a scalpel. She placed them on the grated steel table, on top of the garbage bags she’d yet to incinerate, then found the anesthesia, took it off the shelf and closed the door.

Damien jumped at her with a loud screech. He didn’t come from the table but from the sink and when or how he got over there was beyond her. He cut her, too. Right across the forehead and she dropped the mask she was going to use to administer the anesthesia.

Pain raced across her forehead. Her hand went to the wound immediately after a hollered screech ripped from her throat, anger rifled up to her brain. She waved her hands in front of her. “Fuuuckkk!” she hollered. The pain stung like a son of a bitch, and she felt blood drip across her closed eye that she wiped clear and spun around.

Damien was nowhere to be seen.

Meow.

She looked up. The damn cat was on top of the cremation chamber, hiding in a dark alcove above it. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she hollered.

Nothing from Damien, although she could have sworn she heard a laugh from somewhere deep inside her brain. She shook her head. “I’m not fucking around anymore.” She went to the sink and pressed her fingers to her wound. Saw blood on the glove, then ripped off a piece of gauze and pressed it to her forehead when she turned to Damien. “Alright fucker. You want to play it soft; we can play it soft, but if you want to play it rough, I’m fine with that too.”

She took the mask and anesthesia off the floor and dropped it on the medical table, then went back to the cabinet, reaching up to grab the crush cage. She’ll coax him in with the food and then he’ll be trapped, and she’ll pump this fucker up with so much anesthesia he may not live past the next morning and if so, so be it. Her head hurt something awful, and she was done playing games with him.

She looked up at Damien. It was high, too high for her five-foot three-inch frame to coax him out successfully. Mary put the cage on the grated table and moved the garbage bags to the front before slipping her bottom onto it. She took the cage and stood. From this height, Damien was at eye level. She reached the cage up. “C’mon Damien. Let’s get this over with.”

What happened next was something out of a horror novel. One moment Damien was there, the next his claw swiped across Mary’s eyeball. The pain jutted to the back of her brain as a scream lifted from her throat. She stepped back and immediately closed her eyes. Closed her eyes with a wince, her body cringed, and she fell.

Fell back and slammed against the steel grate. Her back arched over the dead cats in garbage bags. The back of her head slammed against the edge of the steel grate.

She saw stars before the world turned black.

Chapter 16

“I’m fine. Thank you for staying with Kendra.”

That was Olga’s response to Jennifer’s inquiry. A response Olga cursed herself for. She should have told that bitch to get the fuck out of her house. Put her foot down and told them both to fuck off. But she didn’t. Instead, she slipped right into the façade she put up every time she walked into the dance studio. The perfect picture of calm and courtesy. Graceful is how Olga described it. Be graceful and the world will follow.

A façade she was fed up with. She thought she was living in a schizophrenic nightmare. What the hell was happening in her little world of family and success?

After the Jen mishap, she and Kendra went to Olga’s bedroom, where they are now. Sasha had walked Jen to her car-Olga double cursed herself for not noticing Estelle’s car was not in the driveway-then returned to check on his ladies before excusing himself to attend to some work he needed to do before tomorrow. Olga could hear him in his office now, plucking away at the keyboard. Kendra asleep next to her. Thoughts looping through her head a million miles an hour.

Her daughter? That bitch had spent time with her daughter. It wasn’t enough she was fucking her husband now she had her claws in her daughter too. Cheating was one thing, but bringing your whore home was a completely different story altogether. It crossed the line. She couldn’t believe that Sasha had gone this far. Some things were sacred. Some things you just didn’t do. She wanted to tear Sasha’s heart out. Wanted to claw out his eyes. Wanted to beat Jen with a stick until every bone in her body was broken.

That clickety clacking of keys continued, and all she wanted to do was jump out of bed and bash his fucking brains in.

She got up out of bed, soft and calm, not wanting to wake Kendra, listening to those keystrokes and thinking of Sasha before shuffling to the kitchen for a glass of water. Olga noticed the clickety click click ceased. Noticed the washed wineglass sitting in the dish rack. She poured herself a glass of water from the sink when Sasha came in.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, stepping behind her to the refrigerator.

Olga didn’t know why, but for some reason that wineglass burned her britches more than anything else that had happened today. Maybe it was the final nail in the coffin. The last slight.

“Kind of hard to sleep when your husband brings his whore home.” There, she said it, although with immediate regret. She knew in her heart he was cheating, but she didn’t have ironclad proof, and all she was doing now could be seen as simple paranoia.

“What?” said Sasha. Olga turned to him, still standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me.” She looked away from him. Couldn’t stand staring at him and that dumbfounded look in his eyes.

“Olga, what’re you talking about?”

She snapped her head around, her eyes narrow. “Don’t placate me. I know what you’ve been doing. I mean really, Sasha, it’s not enough that the two of you go missing at the studio for hours, but you’ve got to bring her here too. To my house!” Her voice raised. “With my daughter?”

“Woah. What are you referring to? This is out of left field. Maybe those pills made you paranoid.”

She shook her head. “Of course it’s the pills. It’s got to be the pills and has nothing to do with the fact that I just came home to find another woman in my house.”

“Estelle had to go home,” Sasha blurted. “What did you want me to do? Leave her here alone?”

Olga ground her teeth. She didn’t want to say the next part out loud, but she did just the same. “What do you think Kendra will say when she finds out you're fucking Jen? A customer, of all people.”

“Did you just lose your mind?” He threw his hands up. “This is insane. Go to bed and get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” He closed the refrigerator and walked around her.

Olga watched him. “Wait until she finds out,” she hollered, and Sasha turned to her. “That’s right. Just wait. You think she’ll be happy that you destroyed our family? Do you think she’ll be happy with little Ms. Jen?” Her head was shaking. “No, she’ll hate you is what’ll happen. Hate every part of your existence.”

“My daughter will never hate me. I give her everything she wants and needs.” He looked at Olga, all crooked eyed as if she were insane. “You’ve lost it, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tapped his skull. “This is all in your head, Olga.”

She threw the glass at him. The glass that shattered against the wall after Sasha ducked, raining down in a hail of broken glass that skittered across the tile.

Sasha looked at her, his stare filled with rage. “You have lost it.” He gestured to the mess. “Now clean it up,” he ordered.

“Not a damn chance,” she said. “I’m done allowing you to get away with everything.” She stared him down. “You clean it up.”

Olga stomped across the tile, her slippers crushing broken glass. She eyeballed Sasha as she passed him into the hall. Sasha put his hands up as she passed. Tears pricked in her eyes the moment he was behind her.

“Don’t you ever threaten me with my daughter,” said Sasha. Olga stopped in her tracks and looked at him from over her shoulder. “No matter what,” he said, “I’ll make sure my daughter is always on my side.”

His voice was cold, sinister even. He offered no time for a response. He just simply walked back into the kitchen.