Girl Psycho

Home is where the heart is (Hope)

I walked down the path towards the house. Such a cute little thing, really.

Front door flanked by yellow daisy bushes, hanging baskets of pink flowers on the walls, the welcome mat that said, "Home is where the heart is." Yeah, it's also where your heart stopped beating.

I stepped through the doorway putting my most reticent face on. Concerned, nervous and maybe a little scared too. A girl like Hope is never comfortable around crime scenes.

"Hey?" I said tentatively into the room, peeping around the door for extra effect.

Detective van Der Merwe turned around and gave me the faintest of smiles.

"Raising Hope." He said it with no joy in his voice today. I bet he was thinking about his daughters, those blue eyed, raven-haired beauties. I bet he feels sick to his stomach. I bet he saw that video and now wishes he could wave a magic wand and un-see it. Only he can't.

Good!

He should know what sick fucks there are out there in the world. Maybe it will make him watch his daughters a little more closely. I've done him a favor actually, I've pulled the veil back on human depravity and let him look inside. Not many people get to look the devil in the eye.

We walk around being all civilized in our shiny shoes, with our whitened teeth and our rules and morals and not eating meat, going free range and vegan and recycling and shit like that. But what we forget is that actually underneath those designer clothes, we are all just primates. Primitive. Driven by instincts, base desires and needs. When you strip it all away, we're just monkeys in clothes. 

Yup, today I have shown the good old detective that a little grey-haired man in a lazy boy chair can actually be a monster. Peel that layer back people, look inside carefully, squint into the darkness and you will see it... you just need to know where to look. Like me.

"The cat is through here." He walked across the room and started to usher me down the hallway.

I glanced down at the TV and noted that the VCR player was open. I tried to hide my smile, it was confirmation that they had the tape in their possession now. Some poor tech guy was probably being made to watch it. Frame-by-frame-by-frame searching for any clues, was it even real? That guy's not ever going to sleep another good night in his life again. But they won't find any clues on it. I made sure to remove those bits. The clues, you see, are mine and mine alone. I've worked hard for them... I deserve them.

On a side note, do you know how  hard it is to find a VCR machine in this day and age? I had to trawl just about every second-hand shop and all the old pawn stores where junkies go to fob off their stolen wares, desperate for another hit.

I entered his room and found the cat lying in her basket next to her master's bed.

"Hey, kitty." I bent down and approached her gently. I could see she'd had one of her ears removed, that was probably where the cancer was. She looked like she was blind in one eye and her arms and paws were shaved, probably from surgery, and IV's being inserted.

Ok, we'll give Eddy one point for at least being a good pet owner. I mean, he did walk his dog every day in the park too... that's how we met.

I picked the cat up and she meowed. "Ssshhh baby, it's going to be ok," I whispered gently.

"Take good care of her," the good Detective van Der Merwe said as he gave me a gentle squeeze on my shoulder. I looked up at him and smiled. We'd never had any physical contact before until today; it didn't surprise me, though. He was probably feeling instinctively protective towards me, and any other young woman who would cross his path today.

"I will," I said before walking outside holding the cat as gently as I could. I exited the house just in time to see the interaction between Angela and Detective Dlamini. People are so easy to read. If they knew how easily I saw what they were all thinking and feeling, they would be embarrassed.

The poor detective. She'll never be able to let anyone in, she doesn't wear her scars on her arms, she wears them on the inside, but I can still see them clearly. We all said our goodbyes and climbed back into the van and drove back to the RSPCA. I gently slipped the cat into a cage, but instead of putting it in the back of the van, I kept her on my lap. I stuck my fingers through the cage and stroked her tail the entire time we drove, and at some stage, I heard the faintest purr.

Angela looked over at the cat, "We'll have to put her on the list for Friday."

I looked down at the cat through the bars of the cage and as if she knew I was looking, she turned and faced me. In a few days she'd be dead. I sat in silence for the rest of the drive contemplating that finality and trying to be okay with it. But when it came time to put the cat in a kennel and leave, I just couldn't.

"I'll take her," I said. I could see Angela was shocked by this.

"Hope, this cat is probably going to die soon. It's old, it's half blind and who knows if they got all the cancer."

"But..." The cat looked up at me again with its one green eye as if it understood what I was saying. As if it wanted me to take her home. "Please...?" I beseeched.

I could see Angela was thinking about it, but she quickly shook her head. " She'll probably be dead in a month, Hope."

"Let me take her. I can give her the care she needs and I have you in case I need advice and I can always bring her back if she gets too sick."

Angela hung her head and gave it another shake, "Hope, I know how much you care, I was like you too once. But you can't take every animal home with you. You can't save them all. It's sad, but it's the reality."

"I'm not taking every animal home, just this one." I was overcome with this feeling; I needed to take car of this cat. Despite what a sick fuck Eddy was, this cat loved him, and he looked after her. And I had taken him away from her. It was my fault she was alone now and about to go through the yellow door. It was my fault and my responsibility to save her.

"Fine. Fine." Angela said, "But promise you'll bring her back at the first sign of any sickness or suffering or..."

"I promise." I scooped the cat up, put her back into the cage and started walking out as fast as I could in case Angela changed her mind.

"Have you got a cat box and food?" Angela suddenly called after me.

"No." I admitted.

"Take some. Quickly, I want to go home."

"Thanks." I ran back inside and grabbed what I needed and then climbed into the car with my cat. My cat. I put her on the chair next to me and looked down at her.

"Come kitty, we're going home." I started the engine and pulled out of the lot. It was Monday evening and my mother wouldn't be home tonight, she had "Book club."

I really liked it when I had the house to myself, even if I knew there was no book club. I'd followed my mother from work once. I might be good at keeping secrets, but so is my mommy...

She's a master secret-keeper in fact. And she has a secret that no one would ever guess...