Now that you’ve read all the stories the kids concocted in their clever and crazy little brainiums, I might as well ante up and offer my own results to your scrutiny.
The following little tale was generated based off of the student’s brainstorming of possible topics. The title had to be “The End of Ends” and the story had to be about the death of a cat. The other pieces will remain mysterious in an effort to not spoil the story. Enjoy.
The End of Ends
By Scott Lambridis
“I couldn’t have been a whale in a past life, could I have, Olive?” asks the flea of the cat with a mouthful of feline skin. The black cat doesn’t flinch while she completes her landing atop the bookshelf. The old Siamese who suggested the idea is unmistakable to the flea amidst the general scent of dry paper wafting from the books. The smell carries echoes of the Siamese’s constant meows about the signs and how the eight lives reflect into the ninth and how to recognize them and when you jump and on and on. The flea releases his bite and his mouth is filled with the same faint hint of fish oil that the cat has always had, acquired from licking the ground beside the trash cans four years ago, starved and all but abandoned. They left together, the cat, the flea, the book that stinks, and the customer who carried them all. That was the cat’s first life.
The cat is running after the shifting spot on the wall again, not paying attention to the flea’s reminiscent bite. Her body shakes with determination as the flea maintains his oral hold. The cat jumps atop the slumped laundry bag as the spot crosses the wall. She isn’t thinking about the freshly laundered scent or about the flea’s many relatives who have died in its heated folds, nor is she thinking about the flea’s canine allergies which haunt him. The flea’s grip softens with remorse for never making it to dog level, the true Promised Land for fleas with grit and gristle. He lets his clutch slacken more, confident that the cat will not scratch him away as she balances on the bag.
“Olive, over there in the box. That smells like the old leash from the black sand beach. Remember the pit bull?” requests the flea of the cat with a chomp. The cat flinches and skirts between two cardboard boxes as the spot doubles back and dips towards the carpet. She’s not thinking about the mongrel that bore down on her at the beach. Its slobber had been close enough to soak the hairs of her neck with the rank odor of dead meat before she slipped the food keeper’s collar and ran off to safety under a car.
The scent on the leash has been softened only slightly by the spices from their food keeper’s old Himalayan restaurant which made the cat’s skin taste sweeter than it does now. The flea tries to hasten his remembrance with another taste but is interrupted by the faint air of gauze and plastic accompanying the cat’s tracking of the spot from atop the boxes. She is a cat burglar stalking the rooftops for a glance at her prey. She isn’t thinking about the cone she was forced to wear after she ran outside later that year, hiding again beneath rubber rounds which this time moved faster than she ever had.
The spot takes a sudden leap across the floor and up the side of an old trunk. The cat launches itself towards it, landing disoriented inside the musty wooden frame. Her skin pulses with her heart’s rhythm beneath the flea’s moistened feet.
“Slow down, please. There’s always going to be another spot to chase, right?” asks the flea of the cat with a firm press of his jaw. The cat isn’t thinking about her captivity in the trunk two years ago when her food keepers left for the weekend after emptying the trunk of photo albums and their characteristic chemical smell. The cat catches the spot in her vision again and launches her slenderness out of the box. The flea burrows itself into the cat’s coat for safety as he had when the cat had first jumped inside that empty box like a tick to blood when the hinge broke, slamming the top shut. The cat lands on the carpet and sidesteps towards the wall, back in pursuit, not thinking about those twenty four hours when the flea held her skin tight in his mouth, slowly suffocating, dreaming with her before the humans set them free again.
“Careful Olive, that’s the ribbon! I know you’ve always hated it hanging there, but it’s a good reminder, no?” inquires the flea of the cat with a release of her skin. The cat’s neck tenses as she hurls herself onto the ledge of the window, the forest of silk around the flea bends as she grazes the bottom of a square black picture frame. Even under the glass, washed and pinned on contrasting green like a treble clef, the red ribbon’s smell is acrid, the bile’s stink enduring. Instinctively the flea buries his face in the cat’s fur to avoid it as she persists along the sill. She is not thinking about the week the ribbon had been in her stomach last Christmas and nearly sliced her open, nor of the night the flea, also driven by instinct, remained unmoved until her skin tasted healthy again and her body was rescued from the hall of feline sickness and death.
The cat lunges down from the shelf and across the floor again, the spot a mere foot in front of her paws. She stops herself from pouncing too early as the spot zigzags before making a sharp left up the wall of the kitchen island. The cat follows close, bobbing left and right and as far up the paint as its paws can go. She knocks a photograph held within a potpourri frame over her back. The tall black shafts of hair flutter around the flea, a dance of reflected light, and the floral sweetness clouds his senses.
“Take your time! Don’t break our image of the city,” implores the flea of the cat with a nibble which does little to slow her down. The cat doesn’t see the photo of the giant buildings taken the week she visited the food keeper’s mother in the city but scurries around the wreckage and tracks the spot ascending towards the ceiling. She doesn’t think of the week she spent flirting in alleys, running with a gang of Manx misfits ridden with sheisty fleas and fat cat ticks. Within the mist of flowers the flea smells only the rat poison the cat had licked from her paws outside the gas station. The flea tries to bite down as hard as he tried when warning her of her impending seventh life, but is stuck in the same moment of hesitation. The cat follows the spot high across the divider and over toward the kitchen window where she teeters as the flea’s moment passes.
“Olive, seriously, we don’t want to be outside there again. Wouldn’t you rather go get some tasties? Or maybe some scratches from the food keeper?” concerns the flea of the cat with a kiss that goes unnoticed, as always, along with the sidewalk far below. The cool dawn’s hour is later than it was when the food keeper lay on the floor below the open window amidst the odor of alcohol. The welcome chill isn’t there to catch the cat’s attention this time, nor is the smell of a male Persian somewhere on the wind to drive her heedlessly down and towards it. Instead, the cat darts across the countertop, clinking glasses and dragging utensils to the ground with her.
“That was the eighth, wasn’t it?” asks the flea of the cat in his mind. The cat doesn’t notice the remnants of her lives all around her. The spot on the wall is directly ahead now, moving and taunting her with slight shakes. The cat feints right, ever the minx, before her final pounce. She steps forward, then accelerates, but gains no ground. The flea loosens his jaw, dizzy as the eight lives circle his head like whiffs in a breeze. The eight signs lead into the ninth. As the cat hastens, the flea lets go of her skin to sample the mixture of rubber and human sweat. The cat runs harder, confused and frantic atop the food keeper’s running machine. The shadows of each of her past lives hover around the flea and point to the end of ends. The flea wonders if the price cats pay for the privilege of having nine lives is the inability to avoid the last once they see the eight lives they’ve used. He doubts if their memory even affords them that much. The cat will hesitate for a moment, and the machine will pull her under, him and her under, and with a violent jerk it will be over. The flea won’t jump to safety. The flea sees not just the cat’s nine lives, but his own, and he sinks his lipless mouth over her skin. He holds on and savors her. At least they are together. Though he will miss the fish taste. Maybe the Siamese was right about the whale too.
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