He Laid Screaming

He laid screaming on a worn, cat hair covered light blue sheet as he awoke from his delirium laden dreams. In waking light there was little relief for his fragmented mind. As the visions drifted from his reddened eyes the screams' last echoes reverberated through the basement.

A large grey and white Persian/tabby emitted a long low good morning meow. He replied with a grunt. The cat copied.

The young man swung his semi-muscular naked legs over the edge of the bed, his head being supported only by his skinny fingers and sweaty palms. He moaned. The cat, now out of the tiny bedroom and in another part of the basement, copied him.

Her face resonated in his memory, flashing guilted pain, stirring long suppressed emotions. He screamed in his mental torment.

"Quit that infernal noise!!" came the angered call through the ceiling." I'm going to get evicted again," he thought.

The cat returned, purring loudly. It almost seemed that the cat smiled at him.

I am losing my mind, he thought.

The cat kept on smiling. Not a human, all teeth and gums smile, but a smile of pity and scared knowledge that animals give humans who don't really need to see that kind of thing.

He quickly looked away almost succumbing to his youthful fear. He had hated and despised cats since he could remember. Perhaps it was because his father hated cats. He remembered his father tying two cats' tails together and hanging them over the clothes line and watched them claw each other to bits as they tried to get free.

Another memory flashed - one of his father and older brother walking down the center walk of their dairy farm, bending down and picking up stray cats and kittens by the tails, swinging them like a bola, three or four times, then smacking their tiny furry bodies up against the cement pillars. They would then throw the misshapen leftovers in the dung gutters that the cows used. He had several memories like this.

About the age of 16 his hatred turned to fear of the feline. He was attacked by a young cat and scarred by its claws upon his face. He managed to get free from the attacker, he had provoked, by drop kicking it like a punter, by twisting its head 180 degrees clockwise and its white, light black and now red body 180 degrees counter-clockwise. He had heard a distinct snap, as a high-pitched squeal and a vibrating shock issued from the now dead cat. From that day on, his hatred was now coupled with a fear.

So why did he bring this cat home three days ago? All he recalled was that he was walking home from the greasy-spoon, in which he worked, when this large Persian cross tabby leapt from a darkened alley. His fear of surprise overcame his fear of felines. His feet left him and he fell back unto the cold sidewalk, half covered with leaves, He struck his head.

When he came to, it was light. How long? He thought. Eight maybe ten hours he had been lying there. And no one helped him? His anger fuse lit and he began to get up, when he noticed an unusual weight on his stomach. He quickly brought his head up and met eyes with the cat. Its emerald green eyes penetrated his browns immediately, meeting no resistance.

He knew he should be afraid. Now he wondered why he wasn't. It was like looking into the eyes of his first love, and seeing her love him again. Like looking into the eyes of his mother when the kids at junior high picked on him and sent him home bleeding and crying, more mentally than physically. Like looking into something that you know you've seen before but with a glint of the unknown to it.

Somehow he lost his fear and took the cat home. And home is where he stayed.

For the past three days he hadn't left the house or the cat. Even when his mind told his body to go to work, go to the grocery, go to a movie, go anywhere. His body wouldn't let him.

Neither would the cat let him tonight. If he tried he would get clawed or hissed at or both if he tried too hard. So he quickly learned not to bother the cat, rubbing his balmy palms over the long white slash down his right cheek.

Unnoticed by him, from the time the cat was at his apartment, he'd been having those dreams or rather vicious nightmares. At this point, let me make this point clear, he was not afraid of the grey white Persian/tabby in his house. He was, however, still very afraid of other cats. Imagine this now, for the reason of the tens of cats that sat outside his window, his lone, street level, solitary window. They, as nightmares, had arrived at the time of the arrival of the cat inside. And this occurrence only strengthened his belief of the reoccurring nightmare.

Over the last three days his nightmare had become something of a horrible unsavory trilogy of terror.

On the first night the cat was in the house he dreamt of a dark carved cavern of grey slate with small pillars of sewer pipe holding up the low ceiling. A rumble came from outside and shook the stone floor upon which he stood motionless, paralyzed, and naked. He could smell heated garbage and the unmistakable stench of rotten fish. Then a deafening "MEOW", from which he could not hide from. And he awoke, sweating, delirious, and of course unrested.

On the second night it was a continuation of the first, from where he stood he could see a door, half open, with a room and a window on the far wall. Outside the filthy windows were shadowy, four legged figures walking past the window, in pairs or alone. He could count over fifty of them, for their sizes and shapes differed. This he could see with remarkable clarity for a nightmare. The figures stopped and began to mew and paw at the window. Louder and faster they mewed and pawed until he thought the wall would collapse if the window didn't. And again a deafening "MEOW" and it ended.

On the third night the dream began exactly where the others had ended with the loud "MEOW" still echoing through the small cavern. The shadows were pawing and mewing at an ungodly rate. He felt an ice prick penetrate his mind, as his eyes were forced open by unseen hands.

He tried to scream but failed. The window shattered with a thunderous "MEOW" and it ended.

He awoke screaming, making up for the sounds he could not make in his nightmare.

He passed the third day by eating what was left in his apartment, half a box of wheaties, half a quart of milk and a frozen pizza. While he was not eating, he paced his 45'x25' basement that he rented from the owners who lived upstairs. The cold unfinished walls and floor were comfortable to his leathery soles and palms, but not today. They felt like a swami's iron spike mattress. Although it pained him he paces the grey floor, trying to regrasp his imploding mind. The cat sat and smiled.

Finally he could pace no more and withdrew reluctantly to his bed. He whispered "no more dreams, no more dreams, no more dreams, no more dreams" over and over until sleep took him.

The fourth nightmare was the whole series ran again from day one to day three but with another installment. As the figures behind the window shattered it, the figures poured through the breaking glass like hot steel, flowing down the bare wall, en mass, and then reforming into the shadowy figures they had established outside. He screamed and succumbed.

The grey mass surrounded him, some on the ground, a few on the shattered furniture, stored here by the owners, still other wandered to the reaches of the light of his vision, disappearing. The circle of shadows suddenly parted as the three day familiar grey white cat strutted up to the screaming man.

"Remember me?" hissed the cat.

Its teeth barred and its razor claws extended.

Followed by a deafening "MEOW".

His white scar on his right cheek burned.

And then he remembered no more.