Danielle's Inferno
Page 6
Weeks later, they let me go. I had countless interviews with bloggers, news reporters, and people who actually knew me. They all got the same story. I saw a bright light, and I started for it but decided to turn back. Poof, I came back to life. Unfinished business and all that. It wasn’t my time or some such nonsense. Most of it I pulled from every ghost flick I’d ever seen.
I only told my Dad everything, even about the part he played. I figured that he was one of the reasons I made it back, so he deserved to know the truth. Whether he believed me or not, I didn’t know, nor did I really care. He was trying to believe me, and that was enough. He was positively ecstatic to hear I quit my job and wanted to move home with him for a while.
Dad wheeled me out to the car parked in the front. He fussed around me like a mother hen, loading bags and adjusting seats. When he readied my chair, I stood like a trembling fawn, hanging onto the car for support. It took some doing, but I managed to shift into Dad’s passenger seat with little pain.
Dad was about to shut the door when I heard the tiniest mewing sound. It was so high and sweet. That meow only kittens can make that’s both adorable and insistent. It was coming from a nearby bush.
“Wait? Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
“That sound over by the bush.”
“Is that a… kitten?” he asked, squinting in the direction of the noise.
The mewing got louder, and I spotted a familiar, fuzzy face poke out of the shrub. It was her, no doubt. A much younger version, but it was her. The notion wasn’t a sane one, but those things didn’t really seem to matter anymore. Not to me.
With little more than a gallop, the tiny thing ran from the landscaped bushes to my feet. She stopped there, looked up at me, and mewed. I smiled down at her, and with a little stiffness, bent down to pick up the kitten. She didn’t flinch at being lifted and butted my mouth with her head gently in greeting. She purred so loud it vibrated the car.
“Hi there, Pudding. I didn’t think I’d get to see you again.”
I held her to my face, and she rubbed my cheek with her head. Her tiny nose daubed wet triangles against my skin. Dad smiled in awe as he rounded the old car and settled into the driver’s seat. He scratched the kitten behind the ear.
“Do you think you have room for me and Pudding at the lake house, Daddy?”
“I don’t see why not,” he said as he petted her little forehead.
The kitten circled in my lap a few times before curling up and settling into a warm ball. Dad smiled as he put the car into gear and followed the paved driveway out onto the freeway. It guided us on a long journey through piney forests, the grey road like a knife slicing through the endless trees. We were about ten minutes from the hospital when a sudden realization hit me.
“Pudding, I hope you will understand that your litter box is going to go in the basement, as far away from us as possible.”
The kitten took a deep breath in, sighed with a long purr, and promptly farted in my lap.
About the Author
Michelle Rene is a creative advocate and the author of a number of published works of historical fiction and speculative fiction. She is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and video games.
She has won multiple indie awards. Her novel, Hour Glass, won Chanticleer Review’s “Best Book of the Year” award in 2018. Her experimental novella, Tattoo, released with a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and was a Foreword Review’s Indies finalist for fantasy. The Dodo Knight, a historical novella, placed as a finalist with the Next Gen Indie Book Awards. Her YA historical fantasy, Manufactured Witches was honored by the Indie Author Project as Texas’s best YA novel in 2019.
When not writing, she is a professional artist, museum lover, and autism mom. She lives as the only female, writing in her little closet, with her husband, son, and ungrateful cat in Dallas, Texas.
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