Cat Fight

Chapters 17 & 18

Previously on Cat Fight:

At the animal control facility, Mary's attempt to perform medical procedures on Damien turns violent when the supernatural kitten attacks her, slashing her forehead and eye before she falls unconscious against the grated table containing the dead cats. Meanwhile, after discovering her husband's suspected mistress Jen in their kitchen, Olga confronts Sasha about his alleged affair, leading to a heated argument where she throws a glass at him and he ominously threatens to turn their daughter against her. The tension escalates as all the animals at the facility, including dogs and cats, show intense fear of Damien, who displays increasingly unnatural characteristics including an unnaturally long, split-ended tongue and the ability to seemingly teleport around the room.

Chapter 17

Mary could feel the heat before she opened her eyes. Felt the sweat on her forehead drip into the wound with a sting. She tried to open her eye, but it refused to follow her command. Pain raced through every part of her body. Her back ached from when she fell, and her face felt like a balloon from Damien’s scratches. She felt nauseas too, sickly, as if her veins were pumping venom to every organ in her body.

She wanted to puke, her head spinning, but she managed to open her unwounded eye. Opened it to a slit when her eyeball rolled behind it. She had to focus on moving her eyeball so she could see. Could see she was still on the grated table, although no longer was the table pulled into the hospital room. Now she was inside the crematorium. Inside, with the dead cats around her.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she lifted her head. Lifted her head and saw through the crematorium’s door window how Damien was sitting on the hospital table, watching her. This is when she realized she was locked in the cremation chamber. Her one good eye widened, the other ripped open, her eyes widened so fast, casting blurred vision across her field of view. She wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw Damien lap his tongue across his mouth.

Now she heard an all too familiar sound. She’d heard it before. A thousand times before, but the sound of the fire starting was different from inside the chamber. From the outside it sounded fierce, like a marching band signaling the coming of wrath with a loud boom of a drum, but from the inside it sounded like a distant rumble. A distant rumble that brought the heat with it.

Panic set in and she started kicking the door, but the steel wouldn’t budge, and pain raced up her hip to her spine. She winced, holding her hip. Her skin was on fire from the heat, the flames yet to devour her flesh. Sweat dripped from her brow as if a floodgate had been opened. Her skin was hot and burning. She could feel her flesh cooking. She could smell it. The cooking, searing skin bubbled with heat, rippling blisters up her arm that popped in the same second they formed.

Suffocating now, Mary had to force a scream from her throat. A blood curdling wail attempting to alert someone on the street she needed help, lifting her adrenaline to where the pain didn’t matter. All she needed was to get out of the chamber and breathe fresh air. Mary felt the heat across her face. Felt the blisters bubble and pop across her cheeks, kicking the door, frantic and terrified.

“Damien, please,” she wailed. “Oh, my god.” The heat raging, scorching her skin and Damien just sat there, watching the scene unfold. Another kick and her hipbone shattered. She could hear it exploding like glass when the most god-awful screech erupted from her lungs. Her eyeballs were on fire. She could feel them bubbling as her eyelids burned down to a crisp. She sucked heat into her burning lungs, needing the breath. Needing air but denied the simplest thing in life. Her lungs were on fire, scorched and disintegrating. Her eyeballs melted in their sockets, the gelatinous ooze searing the flesh around her eyes.

Felt her sneakers melt across her toes as she gargled and garbled on her own melting lungs. The heat was so intense, her skin turned to ash the moment the fire ripped across the whole of her lifeless body.

Chapter 18

Freda Costello was late again. That girl couldn’t be on time if her life depended on it. She was always coming in late. Most of the time by a few minutes, sometimes fifteen minutes and occasionally a good half hour, like today. Worst part about it was that she was opening today. Or, at least, supposed to open. She hoped Joe and Mary weren’t already there. Sometimes, even when she was on the schedule to open, both Joe and Mary would already be there, in the back, taking care of the animals, having hired Freda to deal with the customers. Neither of them was good with people.

Now she’s pedaling on her bike, weaving through the city streets as fast as she could manage, cursing herself the entire way. When she rounded the corner to Henderson’s Animal Control, she paused and breathed a sigh of relief. The lights were off, which meant Joe and Mary hadn’t come in yet.

“Thank frigin God!” she said, pedaling slowly across the street. Freda wheeled her bike into the bike rack in front of the store. Took the lock from her backpack and chained it up before keying into the store.

She flicked the lights on, grateful she was alone. No one knew she was over a half hour late and, for that little secret, she was thankful. First thing on the to-do list was to check out the inventory. She took the clipboard off the nail by the door to the kennel, scanning the list as she opened the door to unrelenting barking and meowing. Freda checked off each dog and cat, assessing their state of cleanliness.

She didn’t know what it was, but there was a stink in the room she couldn’t put her finger on. Freda wasn’t even certain if the smell had happened recently. The scent was faint, existing beneath the folds, as if it had lingered for way too long, dissipating close to nonexistent. Nonetheless, it remained. She noticed acid building on the back of her tongue. It smelled foul, unnatural. Wrong was the best word to describe it. Freda shook her head, mouth gaping to ward off the stink. She could taste it on her tongue.

Not that she hadn’t had her share of grotesque smells before. Try transporting a bag of animal feces to the garbage in the summer heat. Now that’s a smell that’ll stay with you for a long time.

Maybe one of the newbies came in with something foul?

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Freda matched the descriptions on the paper with the animals in each cage, checking off her inventory after assessing each one. All the animals were accounted for. All except for…

The new kitten was lying down in its cage, all orange fur and sleeping, sound and peaceful. “Oh, hello there, little one.” She craned her head, assessing the poor little thing. “Someone forgot to include you on my inventory sheet.” She waved the clipboard in front of the feline as if it cared. “Well, it’s good to meet you, little one. I’ve got some things to do, but when I’m done, you’ve got my full attention.”

She stood tall, noticing how the kitten’s breathing was heavy and labored, his little chest rising high with a stutter and falling slow. “Poor guy,” she said before moving on to the medical room.

Mary always left a list of to-dos for Freda to complete before noon. Now that she was late, she hoped the list wasn’t too long. She’ll have to move fast if it is.