The Summer Anthology ✔

Story #14- The Queen of Cats

Written by user maybeiwas2shy

I had three bags with me. One was my school bag, not worth much given the situation. The other was my handbag and that thing could barely even hold my makeup. So that left one option. My duffel bag.

Moonlight fell in a straight beam through my window and onto the duffel bag, like God himself ordained that I use that one. It was a disgusting shade of ochre, with something that might have been a floral pattern embroidered on it. I don't remember why I had bought this bag, but it was perfect for the occasion.

I opened it out, slowly tugging at the zipper. Then I chose the things I'd need when I go.

I opened my closet and pulled out the dress I would wear. It was my mother's old dress. It was old and musty and blue (blue is her least favourite colour she hates the colorblue with a vengeful passion). But it smelled like my mother, and I figured that that was a good way to go, if I was going. I folded it and put it in the bag, trying not to crease it too much.

I got a clean towel from the bathroom and put it in along with the dress. Then, I lifted my pillow put my hand in the gap between the mattress and the headboard. I found what I was looking for.

It was my father's razor. It was the foldable kind, the kind where you have to put a blade into the slot. It had a beautiful mother-of-pearl handle. It was perfect. I put it in the bag, slung it over my shoulder and opened the door. That was when I'd realized that I didn't take anything to read. I went back and opened my bookshelf.

I closed my eyes, grasped at one of the books and pulled it out. Women's World, issue 452. 'Priyanka Chopra- Bollywood's Dream Come True' was emblazoned across the front cover. Yes. Perfect.

I looked back at my bookshelf. The only things I'd miss. Then I turned around and went back to the door.

Sneaking out of my house isn't the most difficult thing to do. My father sleeps in the door just across mine with the door wide open. The servant sleeps downstairs in her corner room with the door bolted tight.

I got so far as the spiral staircase and began to climb down when my mother's ghost popped up in front of me.

My mother's ghost started showing up last year. I have no idea what she had been doing for the past twelve years. I don't know how she got here. 3:00 am is her special time. She usually shows up around then, wakes me up, and does a pantomime of how she died. As suicides go, you can't say she wasn't creative. There's a building in the neighborhood called tower mall. She hid in one of the toilets till it was closing time, climbed up to the roof and at exactly 3:00 am, slit her wrists and then jumped off.

Tower mall was twelve stories high. But my mother wasn't the luckiest of people. She landed on an inflatable bouncing-castle, and slowly bled to death.

Local legend has it that she died laughing.

She was laughing now, looking at me. She held out her thumb and placed it under her left ear. Then slowly dragged her thumb cross her throat to her right ear.

"Good luck." She told me.

"Goodbye, mum." I told her. Then I left the house.

I got on my bicycle and looked around. All the houses

were quiet. None of the lights were on. Except on the house in the middle. The front door was open and I saw a cat sitting there, licking its paws.

I walked up to the cat, my hands clenched into fists. The air was misty but I did not feel cold (did not feel cold because she soon would feel nothing and then with her paws on the ground would she feel everything). I crouched in front of it.