SEVEN SINS

FIVE (Part 1)

Being a person who could smell colours, taste songs and feel numbers, life was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Though this eccentric ability of mine was both a curse and a blessing, over the glass being half empty, I considered the glass was the yummiest thing I'd ever heard.

Having spent thirty five years in utter joy and solitude (I was envisaged as a 'weird madman on loose' by others, hence I'd never made friends, and lived sans parents in my own little apartment in New York since I was twenty), I had devoted the rest of my life to art and social service.

I'd found my Utopia in helping others, and that was not just limited to humans.

And so was the incident which had occurred five years ago when one midnight, I was heading back home from an exhausting art exhibition. While walking down the isolated street, I heard moans and cries, those not of Homo sapiens, but of an animal, a cat.

Unlike the usual, long-drawn late night sour meows which cats used to 'sing' from the streets below and wake me up, only for throwing curses, or at times food to shut them up, this bitter one was an outcome of excruciating pain instead of boredom.

Concerned, I paced towards the shrieking soul. Being right to some extent, I'd found a black cat with ceaseless tears emerging from its amber-rimmed green eyes, and a fresh yet curable wound on its forelimb.

With a heart full of pity and sorrow, I held out my hands to her, and the injured kitty ever so simply surrendered under my offer, a behaviour very un-catlike.

And I continued home, carrying her with me, stroking the ebony fur all the way.

I wish I would've left her there, just like that. It was the biggest mistake I'd ever made.

Once at home, I cleaned the dried blood off the long gash and bandaged it, yawning all time long. After pouring some milk in a little bowl for the kitty to drink, I headed to my bed and drifted to sleep instantly. By that, I meant I was pretty irresponsible and had left the windows as well as my bedroom door open.

As this side of the planet slowly turned to face the enormous star, I gradually came to the state of consciousness as the sun rays penetrated through the windows. I hardly ever needed an alarm, for after about five hours, I would naturally wake up, no matter how effed up I was. Collecting my senses, I recalled about the cat and wondered if she'd left through the window.

But as I turned a little, I noticed the kitty sleeping on my bed near the bed post. The mewment was quite claw-inspiring, but it had ended up soon as I tried to get up without making any noise, for the cat jerked and sprang to some nook, away from sight.

Days passed by rather quickly, and the kitty, now all healed, never wished to leave my abode, and I was paw-sitive enough that I'd made a friend. Being an editor in New York Times , I would leave for work in the mornings and be greeted by her purring at the door in the nights.

I had named her Khamsah- the number 'Five' in Arabic, since she felt like the number 'Five' to me. And how did Five feel, you may ask?

Comfortable, cozy, warm. Like drinking hot chocolate on your comfy couch and reading your favourite book while soft music is played in the background, on a wintery evening. It was the mere definition of what home felt like, what love felt like. It tasted like dark chocolate and felt feminine to me. So, my favourite number had turned into her identity.

Yet, her cattitude was exactly like every other cat's-: ceiling-high.

Nonetheless, I was mistaken, greatly mistaken. Mistaken that a friend (be it a human or a pet) would make my happy-go-lucky life purr-fect, mistaken that having a companion would bring 'good' changes in my life, mistaken that the bliss I'd found in solitude was not the real bliss, that there was more to the word bliss than just painting in the silence.

If I have still kept you in the shade, do let me state the incident that hadn't happened long after I'd rescued the 'poor' animal.

Happily I strolled home one evening when work had finished unusually early. All the way long, I made plans about finishing the current painting I was working on ('The Bright Darkness', a painting of an ethereal feminine creature purely from my imagination), and to take the timid, antisocial Khamsah out for a walk in the park.

Little had I known that my plans would drastically change.

As I slowly turned the door knob, so as not to wake her up in case if she were taking a nap, and walked inside the sitting room, what my eyes showed me seemed pure illusion.

There, lying on the couch on Khamsah's favourite pillow was a creature probably from another dimension.

Browsing through the channels on TV, the horned feminine creature, only whose shadow was visible to me, for she was away from my sight, was humming the tune to something that resembled of True Blood's theme song.

Luckily, she hadn't noticed me, for I was standing right beside the door, quite a distance from the creature's sight, but unfortunately, I witnessed what happened next as I accidently bumped into the glass jar and made it smash to smithereens onto the ground. The shadow of the being got instantly transformed to the silhouette of my cat's.

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(A/N: Hey lovely! :) Thanks for reading, vote and comment!

Excuse all the cat puns, I had to! XD Any idea on what will happen next, and how do you find the protagonist? Tell me your views about it! Lots of Love. XOXO)