The Cat

I did not hate the cat.

Or rather, I did, hated her more than I had ever hated anything else, but only because I feared her. Feared her more than I had ever feared anything, more than I had feared opening my closet in the dark as a child, more than I feared death, more than I feared a life of agonizing pain.
I do not know why I feared the cat.

Or rather, I do. I feared the cat because no matter how much it seemed I was acting independently, no matter even if I was doing precisely the opposite of what it seemed the cat would have me do, I knew that I had no choice in the decision. The cat was manipulating me. She knew every aspect of my psychology, could anticipate every thought process. She knew I knew. She knew I was afraid. She wanted me to be afraid, wanted me to be so terrified that I would lose all vestiges of sanity, even of humanity...

Eventually, I could no longer stand her. I would have to choose between my sanity, even my very life—and the cat. So I gave her away, that little black kitten with the glowing green eyes. Sent her as far away as I could...

The next day, she came back. She did not appear in a puff of smoke, nor did she slowly fade into existence, first a grinning mouth, as Louis Carrol’s Cheshire Cat was wont to do. She was simply there, sleeping at my feet, as she always was. As, I am now convinced, she always will be.

She awoke, stretched, yawned, purred, asked to be petted.

I was horrified. I did not want to pet her, did not want even to touch her, the unnatural thing, the aberration that I had for some unfathomable reason been cursed with. But I had no choice.
She wanted me to, so I did.

I did not try to give her away again. Much as I wanted her gone, I was too afraid that she would return the next day. There was only one way, I decided, to be rid of the monster.

As Edgar Allan Poe says; “Object there was none. Passion there was none.”

I had once loved the cat, I grieved for her, but I could no longer bear the cross that its foul presence had forced upon my already laden shoulders.

I killed her quickly, painlessly, with a chloroform rag placed over her mouth and throat.
At first I was elated, felt as if I had finally been freed.

‘What if I did not escape her chains?’ I thought, as I buried her, ‘What if she wanted me to kill her?’

Fear ran her icy fingers up and down my spine, but I dismissed the thought.

The next morning, the cat was sleeping at my feet, the slightest traces of decomposition evident. Slowly, she began to rot, a living corpse. First her eyes were gone, yet still she saw. Muscles disintegrated, yet still she moved. Vocal cords tore, yet still she mewed.

If she had been an abomination before, so much worse was she now. Her flesh twisted and writhed with maggots, flies covered her like a rippling blanket.

Soon, a skeletal cat paced my halls.

She was horrible. The scent of decay hung about her like a cloud. Shreds of flesh clung to yellowed bone. The baleful glare of eyeless sockets constantly transfixed me.
I was wrong. Her death could not relieve my burden, could not free me from the bonds of fear in which I had so long been imprisoned.

It was not a difficult decision to make. I think it was the easiest I have ever made. My death would be swift, painless, just as hers had been. I did not know how much chloroform was necessary to kill an adult. I used probably many times more than was necessary, but I could not risk survival.

I knew then what the cat had wanted, why she had wanted to be killed. She knew that she could not die, that her corpse would torment me more than she had in life.

As my vision went dark, I heard her laugh.