Lost in Cat Brain Land

by Cameron Pierce

  LOST IN CAT BRAIN LAND

  He might kill or torture the innocent child.

  “Open the door, honey,” Bill yelled. “I have a right. I’m your husband.”

  “Go take your pills, Bill,” Joy said.

  “It’s too late for that,” he said, ceasing his pounding. He must have exhausted himself. “Open the door.”

  “No,” she said. “Not until you calm down.”

  “I am calm,” he shouted.

  “You’re furious,” she said. “You can’t be calm if you’re furious.”

  “Give me a break,” he said, and stomped away.

  Abel burped. He pulled a book from the shelf he sat on and groped several pages before tossing it to the floor. The book landed a few feet from Joy. It was The Idiot’s Guide to the Bible.

  Joy heard Bill on the staircase. She crawled out from beneath the desk and inched toward the office door. She grabbed one of Abel’s hands and pressed her lips to his forehead. As she kissed him, Abel cooed and hopped off the bookshelf. He pawed at Joy to move the bookshelves. She shook her head left and right.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. “Daddy is a bad man. We can’t trust him.”

  The angel whimpered and pushed on the bookshelf. It did not budge. The angel whipped its tongue against the spine of a book. The needle tongue pierced the teal hardback jacket and flipped the book into the air. It sailed through the air and banged—muffled, rather—against the far wall. Richard Ellis’s Monsters of the Sea, Joy noted. It had been a gift from Papa Haniver shortly before his death. The book had never been read. She only kept it for sentimental purposes.

  Abel lowered his head and charged the door. He rammed into the shelves blocking it, then collapsed on the floor and cried. Joy scooped her baby in her arms. She scolded herself once more for being a negligent mother. She inspected Abel’s head but found no sign of a serious wound. The angel pointed a claw at the door and sobbed what sounded to Joy like a close 93

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  approximation of mama.

  “Mama’s right here, mama will take care of you,” she said.

  The angel screamed. The window rattled and cracked vertically.

  Joy shuddered. She debated lowering the blinds to hide the cracked window from Bill until she could get it replaced, but Abel twisted her hair between his claws and yanked hard. She yelped and nearly dropped the baby. “Alright, sweetheart,” she said. “Are you sleepy? Are you hungry? Oh, you must be. I’m sorry you have such a careless mother.”

  She set Abel on the floor and slid the shelves away from the door. Abel clapped his hands together and leaped up, hurrying to open it. He didn’t even wait for Joy as he scuttled out of the office and into the entryway. Breathless and fearful of what Bill might do to the child, Joy followed as the angel struggled up the stairs one step at a time.

  Abel nudged the door and slithered into the master bedroom. Joy leaned against the doorframe and wiped her sweaty palms on her damp robe. Bill laid on the bed, jerking off and holding a phone to his ear. It was getting light now.

  “Show some decency,” Joy said. She scooped Abel off the floor and cradled him.

  Bill muttered into the receiver and hung up. He flung the phone into the bathroom. It skidded across the tile and cracked three ways against the bottom of the counter. Joy bit her bottom lip and sat on the edge of the bed. She faced away from Bill but tilted her head at such an angle that he remained in her periphery. His penis started to go limp and he pulled the burgundy comforter waist-high.

  He said, “Come to bed.”

  “I’m not tired,” she said.

  “You’re not tired because you’re crazy. Crazy people never sleep.”

  Joy rocked Abel in her arms. The angel stared back at her, alert but silent. “You never slept before they put you on 94

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  medication. Were you crazy?”

  “Get over the insect and come to bed. I won’t stand for it.” “Why should I trust you? I stopped loving you.”

  “You can’t stop loving me.”

  Joy sighed and curled up with Abel on the bed. She craned her neck. Bill was staring at her. “When did you stop loving me?” he said.

  She tilted her head to her left shoulder. “I don’t know. Last year, maybe.”

  “Since last year,” Bill said.

  “Maybe the year before last, or yesterday. It’s all the same if I don’t love you.”

  “If you don’t love me,” Bill said.

  Now Joy cried. She cried because if she no longer loved Bill, then the last six years had been wasted nurturing this disaster.

  She had fallen head over heels for Bill, and he for her. All of that fled long ago, she realized. It was so easy to mistake love’s ruins for the real thing, but even as she thought this, her terror of isolation engulfed her. She barfed on the angel.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Bill said, hopping out of bed. “You’re pitiful. You’re pitiful, you know that? Just pitiful.”

  He dressed in the bathroom in the dark. Joy rolled her head in vomit and sobbed. She puked herself into a black smear of stars. Abel slipped from her grasp and the stars smothered her.

  FIVE

  Laughter in the daylight.

  Joy scratched at the bile that caked her eyes shut. Her chest ached. Laughter again. It hurt to breathe. The laughter came from the stairs. She opened her eyes. She got out of bed and slipped out of her robe, into a white paisley dress on the floor.

  She staggered from the bed to the door, the door to the stairs.

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  Her eyes took another minute to adjust to the sunlight washing everything in a golden pale haze.

  First she saw Abel sitting on the top step, and she remembered the previous night. But she hardly recognized Abel. He had undergone another transformation. Not only was he laughing, her baby was now three feet tall. The tentacles with their emerald eyes still waved all over his body and his scales glinted darkly, but his wings had fallen off. The skeleton of an umbrella had sprouted where his head used to be. It twirled, perhaps to the rhythm of the angel’s thoughts, or for no reason at all.A booger hand unfurled from Abel’s chest and pointed a webbed finger at the banister. Joy laughed. It was so wonderful to hear her baby boy laugh. She had been concerned about abnormal development and laughter was a good indication of a normal, healthy child. She laughed louder because Abel pointed to a very funny thing. A cat’s tail wrapped around the banister and stretched over the edge, beyond her line of sight. She stepped forward to get a look at this curious and oh, how funny thing. It hurt to breathe but Joy screamed anyway because Bill looked so absurd on that side of the railing. She laughed and screamed and nearly fell down the stairs. The cat disappeared into the back of Bill’s skull and jutted out of his mouth. Panda’s head poked right through Bill’s split-wide jaws. His eyeballs dangled from the cat’s front paws, which had penetrated his sockets from behind. They had crusted over, much like Joy’s eyes. The top of Bill’s skull bulged, probably because his brain now had to accommodate the cat’s bulk in that cramped space.

  Bill wore a Raiders jersey and no pants.

  So what if Abel killed Bill? Abel was her son and Bill had proven himself untrustworthy and unloving. She could not fear her son. She could not afford to. She used to fantasize nightmare scenarios where Bill died or left her, abandoning Joy to the 96

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  sideshow horrors that tormented lonely people. She had feared Bill’s loss more than any of the heinous acts he committed because Joy thoroughly hated herself. Now that her husband was dead, the situation necessitated that she shift every atom in her body to motherhood. Otherwise, Abel might leave. Not that he had anywhere to go, for he was only a child, but he might run away or call child services. Abel’s actions betrayed no sign that he might turn on her, and she swore to appease him at all costs. That meant taking care of business, beginning with the most important thing in construct
ing a young person’s moral foundation: education.

  Bill’s corpse could hang there for a while. The cat’s tail held pretty strong. Also, Ronald Reagan Elementary School was only a few blocks away. Abel could be on the fast track to knowledge in no time

  “I am glad,” she said, trembling and very frightened. “I am blessed with a beautiful son.”

  He would need to be properly dressed for his big first day, so Joy found her car keys and purse. She compared the country club virtue of the polo shirt to the lumberjack charm of flannel.

  She ushered Abel downstairs and out the front door.

  SIX

  They waited outside of Macy’s at the Valley Plaza until a short, wiry man with a shaved head opened the door. His nametag said he was Kevin Donihe, store manager. Joy nudged Abel from behind, urging him to walk by the man, but Kevin blocked their path. He rubbed his tired, baggy eyes and stared at Abel.

  “Are you treating a trickster,” he said, “or tricking a treatster?”

  “We’re looking for the children’s section,” Joy said.

  The manager looked nervous. He sidestepped toward a rack of ties, dropped to his knees, and disappeared. From the tie rack, he called out, “Second floor, but be on guard! My guru 97

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  says a happy demon lives up there.”

  Joy thanked the manager and hurried toward the escalator.

  What a crazy little man, she thought.

  The second floor was devoted entirely to children’s clothes, half for boys and half for girls. She took a few steps toward the boy’s section. When she looked behind her, she realized that he had gone ahead. He headed directly for a line of dresses. She went after him.

  “Those aren’t for you,” she said, grabbing a tentacle. He slapped her hand away and yanked a striped green and yellow dress off a hanger.

  She watched as his goop sank into the flesh of her palm. She shut her eyes and rubbed her temples. When she opened her eyes, she glanced around and noticed that no other customers milled about. Nobody stood behind the cash register. This spared her some embarrassment. She had never taught Abel that boys and girls wear different clothes, that breaking the clothing conduct can result in mockery, insults, and social exile. Maybe he can wear a dress just this once, she thought. If I don’t buy it for him, he will be upset. He might hate me. It would be unfair to deny him what he wants without first teaching him why he cannot have it.

  “Alright, get the dress,” she said. “Make sure it fits.”

  Abel had already slipped it over his head. He pressed his tentacles against the fabric, cutting holes for his many limbs.

  His slime seeped through the dress, darkening the green and yellow to shades of brown.

  “Can I help you with anything?” said a voice behind them.

  Joy spun around. It was Kevin. He wore a grinning Chinese demon mask. She stood in front of Abel to block him from the manager’s view. “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I am the happy demon. I am here to assist all customers.

  With my wisdom and guidance, you will find the ultimate purchase.”

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  “Fine then. We need a pair of shoes.”

  “Baby shoes are on sale for two dollars,” the manager said.

  “My son is not a baby.”

  “Rattlesnake boots are fifty percent off.”

  “Are they fashionable?”

  “The forefront of fashion. More popular than roller-skate shoes.”

  “A pair of those sounds swell. You can leave us alone now.

  We’ve had all the help we need.”

  The store manager in the demon mask did clapped his hands and moonwalked toward the escalator, backwards. A moment after he vanished from sight, he cried out. Joy cringed as she listened to his yelps. He had tripped and fallen on the escalator. She considered helping him, but decided to find the rattlesnake boots first. Another employee should be around to help him.

  They came to the boot display in no time. Abel seemed overjoyed by them. At least he wasn’t a hopeless cause. Joy sat him down on a bench and slid a boot onto each of his feet.

  “How precious,” she said. She hoped wearing such stylish boots would balance out how silly he looked in a dress. Then maybe other children wouldn’t make fun of him. “Let’s ring up and get you to school.”

  They stepped on the escalator. Joy bit her lip as she realized that the step they stood on was actually the store manager.

  Somehow, after his fall, he must have gotten sucked into the machine and turned into a cubic step of man and demon mask.

  They walked out of the store without paying for Abel’s outfit and nobody was around to stop them.

  Joy turned the car into the pick-up loop in front of the school office. A few latecomers hurried through the halls and parking lot. “Hurry now, honey,” she said. “You want to be on time for 99

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  your first day.”

  She kissed the skeleton of Abel’s umbrella and felt a twinge of regret. She would have to be away from her baby for an entire afternoon.

  Joy drove away after Abel turned down a corridor and vanished in the grid of stucco classrooms. She hoped the school accepted unregistered students. It was the beginning of October. School had not been in session for very long. Surely no kindergarten teacher would deny the virtues of education to any child, especially a boy as loving and well-behaved as Abel.

  Back home, Joy made a pot of coffee, scrambled two eggs, and toasted a slice of rye. She piled the eggs on the bread and sat at the kitchen table. She took a bite and found the bread tasteless and stale. She sprinkled pepper and salt onto the eggs and toast and ate her meal in quiet thought. The bread still tasted stale.

  Joy put her left elbow on the table and pinched the bridge of her nose. She hardly believed her husband had died on such a breezy October day. She knew people died all the time, every day in fact, but it seemed unnatural that anyone could die on a perfect autumn day. Those days rarely came and never lasted.

  It was plain misfortune to die on one. Maybe I’m wrong, Joy thought. Maybe those are the days given to us for the sole purpose of dying. Anyway, she needed to catch up on her eBay auctions and would have no time to fetch Bill and Panda from the stairs until evening.

  SEVEN

  The morning and early afternoon slipped by until the phone rang. Joy glanced at the clock as she reached for the phone.

  “Already three?” she said, recoiling from the phone. “How did I let this happen?”

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  She scooped up her keys and rushed out of the house, but the phone never stopped ringing. She hesitated in the driveway.

  What if it was an important call? She ran back into the house.

  The phone still rang. She took it off the receiver and slowly lifted it to her ear. “Hello?” she said.

  Hoarse breathing on the other end.

  “Who is this?”

  “Bill Erickson is dead.” It was two voices speaking in unison.

  “How do you know that? Tell me your names.”

  “Give us the angel.”

  “There’s no angel here. Why are you calling?”

  “When an angel kills, we are the first to know.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “We are willing to negotiate a deal. If you do not return the angel, rest assured, Bill will return.”

  “You fucking creeps. I’m calling the police.”

  Joy hung up the phone.

  She screeched to a halt in front of the school office. Abel sat on the sidewalk, slumped over and spinning his umbrella head with his hands. He stood, walked to the car, and opened the door. Despite the parking lot full of cars, Joy saw no parents or teachers. She saw no children but Abel. He climbed into the car and they sped away.

  “How was your day, darling?” Joy said.

  Abel hissed. Joy guessed that meant the othe
r kids took as kindly to him as they typically did with students who began after the start of the school year. She recalled her own move from her father’s apartment in Chicago to live with her mother in Lone Pine, California. The children of that lonesome, unattractive town didn’t even speak to Joy until her fourth month at Eagle Elementary. It had taken that long for them to determine that she wasn’t the weird little alien girl they initially took her for.

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  “I suppose some things never change,” Joy said. She patted a tentacle and said, “Be happy, Abel. Mommy knows kids can be mean, but let them act dumb and immature. You just keep on being the shining, precious thing you are. They’ll realize their mistake soon enough. Then those little idiots will be knocking on our door every day, begging to play with you.”

  “I ate the school,” Abel said. They were his first real words.

  “What was that?” Joy asked, puzzled.

  “I ate the school,” he said.

  “Do you mean you hate school? I bet those snot brains said some bad things to you on the playground, but hate is a strong word. I don’t care if you heard it from someone or whatever awful things they said. I will not tolerate my own child romping around as a hatemonger. If you have a problem with someone, you should talk to me or say something to your teacher. What’s your teacher’s name? Did you find your classroom alright?”

  “I ate the school,” Abel insisted.

  “Oh, I get it. You ate in the school cafeteria. Silly mommy.

  She’s so oblivious sometimes.” She pulled into the driveway. A black Town Car was parked in front of the house. She failed to notice it when she drove to the school. Must’ve been in a hurry.

  Nonetheless, it put a sour sickness in her stomach.

  Inside the house, Joy put a bowl of instant macaroni and cheese in the microwave. She started a load of laundry so that Abel’s dress would be clean for the next day. She turned on the television and found a stop-motion cartoon about camels sitting in an empty white room. Abel sat a foot away from the television. His tentacles slapped against the screen. Although Joy disapproved of children sitting so close to televisions—