I hate the cheesecake factory. People treat this rat's nest like a five star restaurant, but if customers spent just a single shift behind the counter, they’d realize the entire establishment is just a Denny’s with dim lighting. Here’s a kicker. How often do you think the menus get cleaned? You know, the menus that get touched on by hundreds of slimy fingers day in and day out? Wednesdays, they get cleaned on Wednesdays. That means if you come in on a Tuesday night, you’ll have an entire week's worth of snot and herpes piled up on the pathetic pamphlet which you’re almost certainly touching before diving into an overpriced fish taco. Don’t even get me started on the food. They recently took the salmon dinner off the discounted employee menu. Are you kidding me? Those 6 ounces of sockeye were 90% of what was getting me through doubles. Who the hell do I have to kill to get a reasonable cut of salmon?
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Calm. I riled myself up and it’s probably showing on my face. The last time my manager caught me getting pissed she told me to “work on my service smile.” I looked around to see if she was around. It’s pretty late in the evening so the coast is clear. My phone screen lights up underneath the host counter and the lock screen photo releases all the tension from my shoulders. It’s a picture of my kitty cat, Pork Floss. Yeah, I know she’s got a weird name but there’s got a lot of sentimental value here. When I was younger, I’d ask my Grandma to make me sticky rice rolls stuffed with pork floss every day. She told me I ate too much of the stuff and that’s why my hair was wavy and dark brown, just like pork floss. So two years ago, when I found a kitten stumbling down the street with big hazel eyes and blackish brown mangy hair, it reminded me of my grandma and the nicknames she’d give me. Fast forward two years, and I am the proud owner of the cutest kitty in the whole world, Pork Floss.
I must’ve been pretty engrossed in looking at cat pictures because I didn’t even notice my manager standing directly across from me. A brief moment of disgust on her face was wiped away by her service smile.
“Hey Nick, it’s ten o’clock. Get your closing tasks done quick so you can get out of here!” She beamed with a little too much force. But I shuffled away to start collecting the booster seats from booths.
“And Nick, I know it’s late, but remember, no phones behind the host counter. How are people going to see that handsome smile?” I felt a scowl coming in so I choked out a chuckle instead.
“You got it boss!” Those words tasted like plastic. I need to get home. I need to veg out with Pork Floss and watch reruns of House MD. This restaurant is suffocating. After wiping down some booths and collecting some booster seats, I picked up my dinner from the kitchen and headed out. Spaghetti and meatballs, huh? Guess my blissful days of eight dollar salmon dinner are over. I shuffled over to where I parked my bike.
Somebody stole my bike. Well, most of my bike at least. There was still the front tire and the bike lock looped around the spokes. I can’t believe some dickhead teenager stole my bike and is probably doing a wheelie all the way to the pawn shop. Looks like I’m walking tonight.
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The walk home was predictably uncomfortable. Washington nights aren’t really dangerous, but they are suffocatingly dark. Washington is known as the rainy state, but a more accurate title would probably be the overcast state. Combine thick clouds with long nights and you’ve got the recipe for pitch blackness. It also doesn’t help that the streetlights are spread pretty thin in my town. Vibing my way home isn’t really something I've been itching to do, but I really can’t afford an uber right now. I really wish there were some cars on the road though. Seeing some living people would put me at ease.
“Meow”
I stopped underneath a street lamp. That was a cat. There was a cat somewhere out here, but where? Petting a cat would cheer me up until I can get home and hang out with Pork Floss. It’s so dark I can’t see anything past the twenty feet of fluorescence that the lamp is supplying. I glanced at the road, but I didn’t see anything. That’s relieving. I met Pork Floss in a similar situation and I was always haunted by the fact that if I wasn’t at the right place at the right time, she’d probably would’ve been turned to red mist by an SUV or something. That meow was probably just somebody’s outdoor cat which they let explore. I think there’s a neighborhood past this patch of woods. Its owners are irresponsible for letting the cat out at night in coyote territory but that’s not my problem.
“I guess some people just want their pets to die.” I grumbled and started walking off.
“meew”
I stopped again. That meow was a lot weaker than the first one. Are there two cats? There’s no way those two cries came from the same animal. That second one sounded like a soft cry, and not in a healthy way. Pork Floss sounded that way when I pulled her out of traffic. At the time she was scared and weak, just a baby. I turned back towards the woods and squinted at the trees. The evergreen branches formed a wall that the streetlights wouldn’t be able to penetrate and there was a sizable ditch between the sidewalk and trees…
“meew”
Ah screw it. What kind of sick bastard wouldn’t help a kitten. Maybe Pork Floss is gonna get a baby sister. Or a brother? I don’t want any kitty cat romances in my house, so the new kid will be losing his balls immediately. These thoughts loosened my knees enough to trip my way through the ditch and push into the thicket of trees.
Trying to navigate through evergreen trees in pitch blackness is miserable. The branches were flexible, catching onto my clothes and slowing me down, keeping me from pushing forward. And to be honest, I didn’t know where I was going. With how hard the brush was thickening, I almost turned back. How the hell was I going to find a single cat in this woodlot in the middle of the night anyways?
“meew… WREEE-”
I broke into a fast paced hike towards the wail. Wherever this cat is, it’s in pain now. That scream was pretty abrupt, and there’s been a lot of coyote warnings lately. If it was attacked just now I probably still have the time to scare off a coyote or bobcat. Against the will of the evergreens, I forced myself through another fifty feet. Nettle stung my ankles and my legs were already feeling the burn from my double shift, but it feels like I’m so close-
*snap*
I almost fell onto my face. It was like all the weight pushing me out of the woods broke at once and I threw my arms out. I stumbled into a tiny clearing with a giant tree in the center. The bag holding my dinner splattered onto the ground. My arms latched onto the centerpiece evergreen, and I could tell from how wide my arms were spread that it was a sizable tree. I barely had time to breathe before I heard it again.
“Meow”
This time it came from above me and I breathed a slight sigh of relief. Whatever was attacking the kitty couldn’t get it up there. After stabilizing myself with a deep breath I squinted up into the branches. It was so dark I couldn’t see past the first layer of leaves, although my eyes were starting to adjust. I have to bait this thing down, but how? While regaining my footing, I stepped backwards into my dinner. Bingo. I fished out a stomped meatball from the dinner container and waved it up at the darkness.
“Here kitty, I’ve got something for you,” I hushed up at the tree, trying to keep my voice as soft as possible.
“C'mon, I know you can’t resist this” I popped the meatball into my mouth before pulling out a second, “Mmmmmm, yummy yummy.”
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Silence. I might be scaring it. I need to try something else.
“Hey Kitty, everything’s gonna be ok. Come down for a snack. You can even come home with me, I got warm fluffy blankets and big old cardboard boxes. You’ll be safe with me, I promise.” I put my arms out and smiled weakly into the void.
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*snap*
There was movement in the tree, maybe seven or eight feet up. I stood for a minute in contemplation, weighing how sturdy the branches looked. Honestly, the cat itself isn’t too far up considering the height of the entire evergreen. But the last thing I want is it scampering further up the tree and all this talking has not been helping. It’s so close, and I’ve come this far.
“Ah screw it”, I mumbled to myself. I reached my right arm into the darkness and grabbed a hold of a branch. In my other arm, the plastic bag full of meatballs was slung around my forearm in case more bait was required. Slowly and shakily, I hoisted myself up into the tree.
I’m definitely not a kid anymore and it’s showing in my joints. Each time I hoisted myself up, I felt my knees and elbows crack and pop. It doesn’t help that most of my exercise comes from carrying around booster chairs for toddlers. The bark was rough and ripped rugburns into my hands. At one point my foot slipped and my ankle sliced itself against a broken dead tree branch. I winced hard and could feel hot blood soak into my socks. Before a curse slipped from my mouth, something made the hairs on my arm stand straight and I whipped my head upwards.
Two dim amber eyes staring directly down at me, glowing in the darkness, no more than two feet above my head. Blinking hard, my eyes adjusted to the dark just enough to make out the outline of a cat’s face. My chest swelled momentarily, as I was right about a cat being up here… but there’s something odd. Those eyes are really far apart… and so… big? Yeah those eyes are huge actually. Wait no, the cat’s whole head is huge. The head itself was probably the size of a cat. A metallic taste formed in my mouth. If I’m only seeing a head, where is the rest of the cat?
My whole body froze. Attached to the cat’s head was a human body, twisted and contorted around the branches above so that its face could be close to mine. The body itself was wrapped tight in a black morph suit. The fabric clung so tightly to this thing’s emaciated body that I questioned whether it was skin or clothes. Scattered across its body, mangy patches of fur hung off its body like tape peeling from a wall.
“Meow” Its meow sounded realistic, but the cat head didn’t move. A mask? Or maybe a helmet? To be honest, I don’t care what this thing is, whether it’s some freak furry or a mountain lion. I need to get out of this tree NOW. I tried to move my legs, but they weren’t responding to me. I understand how roadkill must feel before getting turned into roadkill. Staring into these “eyes”, I didn’t dare breathe, much less climb down.
Time felt frozen for what couldn’t have been more than ten seconds. Then its eyes started getting bigger? Oh god, not bigger, but closer. Its spidery limbs contorted and snapped so that the giant cat head could lower towards my face. A stench of rotting fish and dried cat piss wafted so strongly it burned my eyes and infiltrated my held breath. I wanted to gag but something stronger than my consciousness kept me completely still. It stopped about half a foot away from my face and I could hear purring coming from inside of the cat head. I got a better look at its features against my will. The cat head was fake, its beady glass eyes glowed in the moonlight. The rest of the head was shoddily crafted, bumpy and unevenly layered with matted fur sourced from several different animals. Where fur didn’t cover the mask, the base layer seemed to be something leathery and grey.
Out of a corner of my eye I saw a scrawny arm reach for my abdomen. Its hand extended out with scrawny fingers and sharp blackened nails, pointed at my stomach. I winced and closed my eyes, bracing myself for a touch that did not come. Then I heard the rustling of a bag. This moment of confusion brought breath back into my lungs and I gasped for air. My eyes flung open, expecting to see a talon digging into my gut, but I was completely unharmed. Instead, its arm was investigating my spaghetti. The gaunt hand slowly retracted from the bag, pulling out a handful of spaghetti and a meatball. It rotated its head at an ungodly angle to investigate the snack it just thieved. My mouth fell open.
“W-wha?”
*SNAP*
The branch holding up both of my feet caved, and suddenly I was falling. I felt my hands rip against the bark I was holding onto as my body plummeted. My head hit something hard on the way down and a sharp pain shot up my tailbone after landing on a rock. Everything went white for a moment and I realized I must have lost consciousness for just a moment. My hand instinctively reached for the back of my head and I felt something hot and sticky, but touching the wound made my eyes blur and my brain ache. My breaths were short and raspy, as I regained control of my body. Oh god, the cat. My eyes shot upwards at the tree. My vision was still too blurry to see anything past five feet, but I heard a sickening slurp and gagging noise, like someone was gargling vomit. I tried to lean up but saw those amber glowing eyes lower from the branches.
“Safe.. wih… yuo? mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmh”
I ran. I don’t know what came over me but I got up and ran like I’ve never run before. I sprinted through the evergreens like I knew the woods better than the back of my hand. The branches weren’t against me this time, but instead felt like the trees were pushing me through. This burst of adrenaline carried me out of the wood, helped me clamber up the side of the ditch and I began sprinting down the street. I wasn’t looking, I wasn’t thinking, and my toes hit a dip in the sidewalk. I ate shit one more time, but this time my bloody hands took most of the fall. My head whipped back to see if anything was chasing me, and the sight made tears pour from my eyes.
Under a streetlamp, maybe 200 feet away, I could see the silhouette of a man facing me. He stood at almost seven feet tall, emaciated and gangly. A giant round head with cat ears sat atop of slumped shoulders. In its right hand, it held my plastic dinner bag. It stayed perfectly still, and probably watched me drag myself to my feet and limp off into the night.
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I got home. It feels surreal. I don’t know if what happened was real, but I definitely stumbled back into my apartment covered in blood and… cat piss? I cried a little more at my door. Feeling a little braver, I took a few shaky steps into my apartment and saw my baby, Pork Floss, curled up on the couch. She looked up at me warmly and gave me a warm welcome.
“Meow”
I opened my mouth and screamed bloody murder at my cat.