The Queen of Cats

Chapter 4: Now She Stands On Thin Air

This chapter is dedicated to @coolelf who is the quintessential "talented writer without enough reads or appreciation". His School of Shinigami is a fascinating, confusing, complex, brilliantly executed and just plain wacky novel. This story can't hold a candle to his amazing novel. Seriously. It's so good it could be published. Read it!  

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"Maybe there is a beast... maybe it's only us."

― The Lord of The Flies, William Golding

There was blackness below me. And around me. I walked through the wall. I fell. I fell towards the moon and the stars. A vast cosmos stretched out beyond me. And I was falling toward it.

I twisted in the air (twist and slide with the billowy cushions of my wind did eye). Karim was seated in the air beside me, his legs crossed, his hands on his thighs, palms up. He looked like an absurd little sadhu.

"Learn to sit. It is not too terribly difficult." His voice was crystal clear through the din of the wind as I fell.

I twisted and writhed in the air, my ridiculous blue dress twirling and parachuting. I held it down with as much force as I could muster. I sat. Somehow.

"Good." Karim told me. "Very good. If you can sit, the rest of it is easy."

"Is this the underworld?" I asked him.

"I can't hear you. You must learn to speak."

I shouted.

"Speak. Just speak."

I spoke. It worked.

"No." He told me. "That's the underworld." He pointed straight up and I followed his gaze. A desert stretched out above me. Men and women hung from giant hooks, boring into their eyes or their mouth or their navel. I saw death, now without her umbrella. She was walking upside down (for her downside up for eye neither downside nor up) dragging an implausibly huge trolley full of people on hooks. She gently, almost lovingly hung them on hooks. They dangled with the breeze. They juddered as the trolley rolled passed them. They swung like tentacles.

I looked away as quickly as I could.

"Why are we falling into the sky?" I asked Karim

"Because you're not dead." Karim replied. "And I'm a ghost, not a penitent soul."

"There's a difference?"

"Certainly."

The two of us floated, saying nothing.

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"I don't know." he told me.

"Here's the thing about the mouthpiece. You get one question. It better be a good question. Then, he either lets you go, or he kills you. Do not say anything to him. Do not argue. Do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just be still. Alright?"

"Alright."

Karim turned his head around. Completely. "It's almost time. Almost."

My head started to ache. A sharp pain erupted in my nose. The ache boomed like a drum. Sharp, then receding, then sharp again. I screamed. Karim closed his ears.

"Stop shouting!" he said. "Be still. Be still."

I tried. I failed.

Then, the voice began.