After Death

Chapter 2

Cassandra woke up to find herself lying awkwardly on the comfortable overstuffed couch in her living room. Still gasping for breath, she quickly scanned the room while rubbing her aching upper arms, she felt bruised and her pummelled chest continued to heave.

In the early days, she would have mistakingly thought that she had fallen asleep and been dumped into a nightmare.

She knew differently now.

Trembling, she slowly rose from the couch, her mind struggled to break through the suffocating fog as blurred images continued to whistle through her mind.

"Stop it now!" she screamed out.

One of the cats scuttled past her feet and began meowling for the back door, the urgent sound broke Cassandra's disorientation.

A sharp rap on her front door startled Cassandra nearly half to death, she could feel her heart rate slowing down just seconds before the unexpected intrusion. She hastily relased the cat from the it's house arrest and stumbled to the front door.

One  of her few and closest friends scowled at her from the pavement.

"Are you in the middle of a Reading?" Anastasia-oh-god-don't-ask-how-my-parents-came-up-with-that-one-just-call-me-Nat Lewis breezed regally into Cassandra's small living room, her floor length peacock patterned dress flounced a few seconds behind her voluptuous body. Barely waiting for an answer she spun angrily upon her life long friend. 

"You don't answer your phone you don't reply to my facebook messagesyoudon'ttextmebackfordays!" And that's exactly how Nat's words plumed from her mouth; increasing in volume with each word and no pause inbetween words. As if to accentuate her disbelief  and outrage she punctauated mid air with an angry witchy finger.

Cassandra was still standing by her open front door, mouth agape at her friend's concern. " I spoke to you yesterday!" she whined, hating the way that she always appeared to sound like a petulant defensive child in front of her friend.

Nat was having none of it. She charged into the galley kitchen which extended from the tiny living room and examined the unwashed contents of the sink. Dried food stared accusingly from abandoned plates. Cassandra watched stupified as Nat's head twirled from the kitchen sink to the adjoining bathroom. Cassandra followed her friend's detective gaze and gaped stupidly at the seperated packages of cat faeces which had spilled out from the litter tray; the acrid smell assaulted Cassandra's nostrils.

"How? What the he..." Cassandra briefly wondered if she was stuck inside her nightmare and shook her head vigorously.

Nat proceeded to delve into the cleaning cupboard under the kitchen sink and triumphantly claimed disinfectant. Her heavily made-up eyes rolled in exasperation. "Make yourself useful and at least put the kettle on!" she snapped.

Cassandra did as she was told while her mind tried to fathom out why there was at least 2 days worth of cat faecs on her bathroom floor. No wonder the poor cat had been frantically pawing the back door and yeowling its head off. Cassandra wondered where her other cat was hiding.

Two days?

She had cleaned the house only this morning.