by Gabi Moore
Death.
Violence.
Nightmares.
Drugs.
Frankly, I was impressed that tobacco and coffee were my only consistent vices.
“Fucking cat,” I said out loud, cursing it for my own failures as a human.
As I sat there, I began to feel poorly for the cat. I actually regretted cursing it, and offered a silent apology. I thought about all of the different ways that the cat had hunted during its life. It might have been a house cat, but it looked mangy sitting there in the morning sun. No real way to tell.
Likely it hunted mice in this very field, I thought, letting out a long exhale.
Sipping on my coffee, I remembered a time when I had watched a cat involuntarily salivate and twitch its jaws when it saw a bird in a tree. There was no way that the cat would have actually reached the bird. It was an older bird, and it knew how to stay clear of predators like that. However, the bird’s distance from the ground made no difference to the cat. A base level feline instinct to kill and puncture was operating in practice regardless if there would be any contact with the bird at all. I was astonished, just thinking about the fact that killing was bred into their genes.
What really got me thinking was that my reflections of the cat as an innate killing machine were not entirely accurate. As I continued to sit and stare at the corpse, my rational grew increasingly more clear. People liked to look at a thing, and then classify it as that thing to the exclusion of all other identities. What’s more is that since humans have so much ego, they play that game with themselves. Projecting an image is powerful; that’s what “Stoker” is all about. The only problem is that when you wear the same mask all of the time, or when you discriminate and simplify, you tend to miss out on the larger picture.
For instance, cats also use their killer instinct to play. I had seen both housecats and semi-domesticated jungle cats at the zoo. Both of them hunted for food, and both of them used their prowess in a playful manner when a non-threatening situation arose. Cats were incredibly playful. They would fuck around with a piece of string and be completely satisfied, if only you left them alone. Not to mention the fact that the way they pick fights with one another, even from youth.
After all of that stalking and play fighting, cats also tend to sleep. When sleeping, cat’s look as though they are so lethargic they couldn’t hurt a thing. If you knew what a cat was, and you looked at one that was asleep, you’d simply think they were lazy -- not that they were incapable. The whole point is that they actually look like soft cuddly, purring pillows, more than ruthless killing machines.
Sometimes, cats just want to share affection. I can’t even tell you how many times a stray has come up to me on the street with the expressed interest in reaching out to me and rubbing on my leg. They start to purr, and then if you’re not too busy pretending to be a badass, you can’t help but bend down and give them at least a scratch or two. I haven’t had any cats personally. If I was to be honest with myself, I’ve been far too self-involved to care for anyone besides myself for most of my adult life. Regardless of my own personal habits, one can’t help but appreciate the fact that other people have chosen to take care of cats, and that I receive whatever incidental affections these animals happen to offer.
Though I project myself as kind of a hardass, I actually do a bit of reading in my spare time. Mythologically speaking, cats can even be protectors. I mean, just take a look at Egyptian mythology. You have Bast, who is basically a Goddess of Families and Protection. Don’t even get me started on the fact that cats have long been the choice du jour of as witches familiars. Even if you don’t buy into all of that stuff, the fact that people still think in that way is astounding evidence that something is happening on a psychological level. Frankly, after last night, I’m a lot more inclined to believe in the metaphysical than I have been. Personal experiences tend to push a person from indulgent materialism to agnosticism pretty fast.
What a strange beast, to be both viscous and tender in the same life, I thought to myself, while stubbing out my cigarette.
The cat didn’t bother with conscious transitions. Life is complex enough without have to be self conscious over when you are vicious and when you aren’t. I know that as humans we can’t just go on and be assholes whenever we feel like it. If someone cuts us off on the street, it probably isn’t a good idea to throw a rock at them -- that sort of thing. However, I don’t see cat’s throwing rocks; their aggression is in balance with nature. Maybe we as humans could use a bit more wrestling in the streets -- as long as we knew when to start and when to stop. You don’t see too many feline to feline murders either.
In spite of the lack of consciousness, each extreme is not under-utilized. The cats don’t have any problem sharing themselves as cuddly one minute, and biting into the neck of a bird an hour later. After it’s eaten, it likely will fall asleep, and then rub up against your leg an hour after that. Self moderation is probably a natural consequence when you’re living without an excess of ego and cruelty.
Really too bad that humans believe they have to pay so much attention to how they behave. Just walk down the street and pay attention to how people interact with one another. It’s so fuckin’ sad sometimes -- I don’t even like to think about it. People are afraid of one another, and they police their own behaviors just to continue forward in some tenuous, anxiety-ridden existence.
I wondered if it was possible that humans could be just as compassionate and just as feral as a cat. Likely it has to do with a decision making process. The decision not to be an asshole just for the sake of it. The problem usually isn’t that sometimes people are assholes to one another without thinking. Casual interpersonal fuck-ups are just a part of human nature, and are a byproduct of our society.
Wouldn’t it be great if humans allowed themselves to be just as well rounded. Seems like a social issue which contributes only toward arrested development. There are so many different ways that we can invest ourselves in this society. We can become extremely involved in social processes, or we can simply be artists and characters of our own right. I have personally opted to present myself as a character in the larger social context. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I should allow my character to be a bit more mutable.
For those who don’t care to be more than one-dimensional. Surely, in a larger context humans are representative of both extremes; compassion and cruelty. If one were to take a larger perspective on the whole issue, one might say that all aspects of the human emotional spectrum are accounted for at any one given moment. The problem is that when we do that we are letting serial killers and nuns own all of the different possibilities of our expression.
Fuck them, I thought, standing up and kicking dried plant stalk down to the ground.
The plant merely bent at a midpoint and rested on the surface of the field. I couldn’t even see the ground. The field had been abandoned for so long that a thick mat of grasses and weeds had grown over the soil. I noticed there were a few sizable rocks in the area, and an impulse struck me. I don’t know why -- I’m not really the type of person to give into those types of impulses, but maybe that’s what all of this was about…
I walked around the field for about a half hour, leaving my empty coffee mug next to both the chair and the cat. I was looking for rocks. I wanted to find about ten or twelve of them, and it took me a while. I didn’t want to find any small rocks either. I wanted some big fuckers. Something that I could use to make a cairn. The cat deserved to to have a final resting place, and what’s more is that I wanted to be able to use that chair tomorrow morning.
That climax experience was really something, I reflected, thinking passively about the evening before while stacking the rocks on top of one another.
I had found a pit not twenty feet or so away from the tree. I also got to take a look at the field from a few different perspectives. Usually, I go straight out to my chair, and straight back to the house. It seemed to me that there were a lot of rote beh
aviors that could use a bit of change. The pit was more like a shallow depression in the soil, but it would work for my purpose.
The rocks were piled up at the edge of the pit. The only real problem left to solve was the transportation of the cat. It wasn’t that I was necessarily squeamish about dead things, but I also wasn’t overly fond of touching them. I decided it would be undignified to carry the thing on a pair of sticks, or something like that. Just the thought of dropping the cat en route, or poking at its skin with a stick was undignified for both myself, and the animal; we both deserved better than that.
The strangest thing about altered states of mind -- you can’t tell if it’s reality that has been altered, or just yourself. I came to a more visceral appreciation of my own confusion while I picked up the corpse.
“Just yesterday, I’m not sure I would have picked you up,” I told the cat.
The fur was dry, and the body was stiff, but not too dead. The eyes were gone, and little flies buzzed around the body. The corpse smelled like a dead thing, but the smell wasn’t atrocious. Just a bit musky -- the scent of bacteria eating the body, instead of bacteria living within the body.
We walked over together to the pit, and I set the corpse down with a fair amount of attention. Unlike the rest of my morning, the ritual -- if you could call it that, was much more somber. I was operating in a zen-like state, thinking about nothing except respect for the fallen.
Placing the stones on the corpse required a bit of balance, but they all seemed to fit in the appropriate place. By the time the whole thing was done, I had created a small, ugly pyramid as a headstone for an unknown dead cat.
“Good work, Stoker,” I congratulated myself.
I wanted another cigarette. I felt like it would have been a good time to smoke, but my hands smelled like the dead, and my tobacco was inside.
“One will have to do,” I said, and then turned away from the funeral mound.
Then it hit me. Really, the cat had been the catalyst.
Sometimes I can’t believe myself. Usually I think I have it all together, and then I get slapped in the face by something that had completely slipped my consciousness. Just like that cat needed closure in order for my life to move on, I needed to get some closure with that guy from the night before.
Christ, I thought, I didn’t even get his name.
I totally beat myself up for shit like that. Usually my conscience stays quiet and out of the way, but that Foxy had done a number on my brain. Sometimes, when you open a door and step through, you find that the door you came through has been closed, and you can’t quite get back to the other side.
Fucking Thomas… I realized. He would know.
I needed to find that Faerie.
Chapter 10: Daniel
The walk wasn’t that far overall. My mind ended up drifting a couple of blocks into the journey, and soon enough, I was there. I loved going for walks for exactly that reason. I could have anything on my mind, and by the time I was done, I usually had come to some new perspective on life which was going to help set things straight. My brain really was so fantastic, if only I would give it enough of an opportunity to share its thoughts with my moment-to-moment experience. Strange as it is to think of my problem solving abilities as something that is external to myself, it sure felt like that sometimes.
I spotted Stoker a block away. He was looking calm, and relaxed. The sun was low in the sky, so the lighting wasn’t too harsh. He was wearing some beat old clothes that weren’t really stylish at all, but he managed to pull it off.
Some people can wear anything and make it look good.
He must have felt me looking at him, because he paused and turned toward me as I approached. For a minute, I was afraid he was going to blow me off, but it turned out that my fears were unwarranted. He raised a hand up to glare from the morning light, and when he recognized me, he just stood there for a while. He didn’t wave. He didn’t walk away. In fact, all he did was take a seat on a wooden planter that was posted outside of the nearest apartment building. I wasn’t sure if that was his building, but I suspected as much. I was in the right neighborhood, and he looked comfortable.
“I stalked you,” I told him when I was within comfortable speaking distance. “Actually, somehow, I ended up stealing your jacket.”
His posture was relaxed, and he had a coffee cup in his left hand. I realized that it could have simply been a case of ‘rose-colored glasses’, but I loved the way that he sat. He looked so casual, yet not sloppy in anyway. Some people look sloppy when you look at them like that, but this guy seemed like he could do no wrong. His eyes narrowed while he looked at me, but he wasn’t angry; more like perplexed or suspicious.
“How the hell did you get here?” he demanded.
His hand went behind his ear, as though he were reaching for something which wasn’t there. I watched him fidget for a moment, and then close his eyes. He took a deep breath through his nose, and then settled down again to look at me with renewed focus. I had to sigh myself in order to catch my breath. Eye contact with him was an incredibly satisfying experience.
I didn’t respond to his question. Not really because I wanted to play it coy, but because I didn’t feel a response was necessary. With a smile, I brought my hand out from inside of the jacket, and stepped forward toward him. Reaching my hand out, I passed him his billfold and identification.
“Here you go Mr. Genier,” I offered. “I was going to steal a couple of bucks for a cup of coffee, but I didn’t get around to it.”
“Everyone calls me Stoker,” he replied. “I’ve got some coffee. You can come inside if you like.”
I nodded, and followed him up the steps to his apartment.
He struck me as different from the night before. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, but his entire disposition seemed less harsh. I wondered if it was because he had just woken up, or if maybe he put on that hardened exterior like a mask before heading out for a night on the town. Another thing I noticed was that he wasn’t so self-conscious. The first time I saw him, it was incredibly obvious to me that he was one of those naturally magnetic types of personalities. In that moment, I didn’t feel that same level of magnetic intensity, but there was something else in its place.
His eyes were softer. He wasn’t pulling me in toward him with his sex appeal. I felt like I could be comfortable in his presence. The whole experience was totally different for me, and frankly I enjoyed it a lot more. I didn’t have as much tension in my body. The thrill of getting fucked by the Stoker from last night was great -- don’t get me wrong; it’s just nice to be able to relax and spend time with someone.
“You look different in the morning than you do at night,” I told him; obviously my thoughts were a bit more expansive than that, but it would have to do.
He nodded, and we entered his apartment. The place was spartan, yet another surprise based on what I had expected his lifestyle would be like. I’m not sure what I thought his living room would have looked like.
Cigarette boxes and empty bottles of whisky.
Trophies from previous lovers, and an electric guitar.
Maybe even a stripper pole in the center of the room next to a mirror where he snorted all kinds of drugs.
Those were the sort of things that I expected to find. Instead, I saw a relatively humble place. Practically no furniture was present. Honestly, it looked more like the home of a practicing zen buddhist more than a late night club hot shot. There wasn’t much mess at all, but then again, there weren’t really many things around which would lead themselves to creating mess.
His kitchen was also similarly basic. He had a clear jar of oats, and some fruit on the counter. Looked like he had all of two pans. One of them was a cast iron skillet, and the other was a small pot. He pulled a ceramic mug from the shelf that had a white dove against black.
“Celebrate Him,” the cup said.
I looked at the mug while he poured me a cup of coffee, and he noticed my attention on the
mug.
“The church down the street offers free coffee sometimes, and I stole their mug,” he offered.
I nodded, and smiled. “Of course you did,” I replied. “Thanks.”
“I hope you don’t take cream or sugar, because I don’t have any,” he said, dismissively.
“Black works fine for me,” I said, raising the cup to my lips.
The coffee was good. A lot of coffee is acidic, or generally not pleasant to drink, according to my personal tastes. The coffee that Stoker gave me had rich floral notes to it, and was more like a rich tea than anything else. Though my first sip was tentative, I soon was bringing entire mouthfuls into my mouth, even though the liquid was still a bit hot.
