Red Dwarf: A way with words

RD: Midnight Terrors

The Cat's face wrinkled up. His face showed various expressions, all showing signs of discomfort. Mumbled words pass his lips into the void of nothingness. Again his face twists into ridiculous emotions, a tear escapes his eyes that are clenched shut. His body begins to twitch, trying to wake him up. Finally his mumbled words turn into words that are only barely audible, at last for definite this time words, fluent in English and no longer gibberish, began falling from his mouth. It abruptly ends. Ends with screaming.

Cat wakes up covered in sweat still screaming. His brown eyes open, tears stain his cheeks as he sits up, his silk pyjamas sticking to him. He swallows hard, as if he was a child taking a pill for the first time. Cat looks at the clock '3:47am' it was morning, but too late to get up at. After this he didn't much feel like going to sleep anyway, he'd just have to alter his schedule and add one extra nap before his main nap. Adjusting his position he tries freeing himself from the pyjama prison that had tried to devourer him, if he wasn't going to go to sleep he may as well get up and iron his shirt. Or he would've, if it wasn't for Kryten.

Heavy footsteps came to a halt outside Cat's quarters. Great, just great this was all he needed. He managed to slow his breathing enough to give the impression of false sleeping, not moving either. Then a robotic voice came "Mr. Cat sir, is that you screaming?" Kryten remained outside of the room much to his dismay.

But no one knew that secretly, Cat wanted to be comforted, by anyone. To tell him it's going to okay and that the dreams he was having were never going to come true. Mostly due to the fact they're three million years into deep space rather than him imagining it or Lister ever finding out re-enacting it just for 'fun'.

Cat held in a breath as his pointy ears pick up the sound of the door's quiet hiss, signalling it was about to be opened. How could he of been so stupid and forgotten to lock the door. "Lock" he said, hoping that the voice command would pick up his voice. There was another hiss as the door slid open and neatly slotted back into its original position, Kryten walked in.

"What'd you want?" Cat spoke with a flat voice, his back facing the mechanoid. He wanted to be left alone, or at least that's what he kept telling himself. Maybe if he said it just enough he'd start to believe it. Before he even had chance a chair was pulled up, no lights were on but that was no problem for Kryten.

"My apologies Mr. Cat, I heard screaming." The Mech sat down on the wooden chair with a noise that sounded as if the chair had cracked. He ignored it. His friend was more important than the chair. Kryten got no response from Cat and decided a different approach would be best, it could go one of two ways. One being the cat testing to attack him, the second just having insults thrown at him. Either way he was prepared.

Cat felt the bed dip by his waist, quite a lot. He lets out a 'growl' from under his breath as a cool but soft, silicone hand found itself on his arm. He didn't move, instead he appreciated the gesture and slowly fell back to sleep.

Kryten didn't return to his duties until he heard soft deep breathing.