Hellcats: Anthology

by Kate Pickford

  So much to read. So much to adjust to. So much to learn.

  Right after he took a well-deserved nap.

  He curled up in Angela’s lap, and snuggled down. It was warm here, and comfortable. He might even stay a while. Just until he got the hang of things.

  Just for a little while…

  Mhairi Simpson is a fantasy writer and inveterate traveller. An only child who grew up in boarding schools, with a background in modern languages and paper pushing, Mhairi long ago decided her best shot at faking sanity was to be a full time writer.

  Find out more at viewauthor.at/MhairiSimpson.

  35

  The Midnight Journey of Cat’thulu

  by N.H. Paxton (Shadow Alley Press)

  At night, killers stalk the Kitchen and the Living Room becomes a dangerous savanna. Luckily, the great Cat'thulu always gets his man. Er, cat. Er, the thing he's after.

  Part 1 - It’s Probably Morning, Maybe

  I stretched across the blankets of my servants’ bed, yawning mightily. I checked the clock, noting that it was definitely a period of time, though I couldn’t read the stupid thing.

  But it must have been late because my manservant was asleep, and snoring rather heavily, while my womanservant tossed in her sleep as she often did.

  A fist came from underneath the bedding and narrowly missed the manservant. Ah, good, it was time to play.

  I leapt at the opportunity to bite moving prey and managed to sink all ten claws into the womanservant’s hand.

  “Ow, damnit, Thule!” The womanservant awoke with a loud shout.

  “Your fault,” I meowed, though she likely only understood Mrow.

  “Out, you damn cat. Out!” She picked me up—how dare she?—and tossed me into the hallway, closing the bedroom door behind her.

  Annoyed, I sat down and licked my paws, adjusting my fur and preparing for the night’s joys. I had several things planned this evening: yowling, hollering, and skittering across the floor as though I were a giant monster chasing small children through a park, among other things.

  “Shiny,” I mewled, watching a fleck of light streak across the room.

  I chased after it, using the full strength of my intensely powerful legs to bound and leap, knocking over a small glass of water that the manservant had carelessly left sitting on my table.

  I would need new servants soon if things were to continue the way they were going.

  Suddenly and swiftly, I was transported to a world where darkness reigned, and I was a god, which wasn’t far from the truth anyway.

  I saw a helpless mouse sitting in an alleyway, and I stalked it. I watched it for a while, letting it mill about as though it were safe and happy. Then, I wiggled my butt, ensuring the maximum amount of pounce for the effective landing.

  I would strike both terror and awe into the soul of that mouse upon arrival, then I would rip it to shreds with my enormous, tentacle-laden arms. For I was Cat’Thulu, and I would not be denied my respect!

  The moment finally came, and I had wiggled sufficiently to launch myself the several feet to land in front of the mouse. It squeaked and panicked as I landed, leaving an enormous crater in the alleyway. For I was large and terrifying.

  I struck swiftly, picking up the mouse with my tentacles, and thrashing it side to side, ensuring that it was sufficiently dead.

  It squeaked again. Odd, it was supposed to be dead. The world in all of its normality crashed back onto me, and I was lying on my back in the livingroom, kicking at my little squeaky mouse toy.

  My conquest would have to continue elsewhere.

  The darkness of the city rose above me, the mist in the air was thick and heady, and I loved the smell of a good mystery. I was a sleuth in a noir city, like the movies my manservant watches late at night instead of writing like he tells my womanservant he’s doing.

  Me being in his way infinitely improves his skills, I’m sure. After all, him petting me and providing the ‘skritches,’ as he calls them, would improve his words better than watching these horribly acted films. Moreso, even, than if he were to just mindlessly put words down on the keyboard. But I digress.

  The smell was coming from somewhere deeper in the city, I could tell. I would bet my detective’s badge on it. And also my nose.

  “Joe, I’d bet the next round of kibble and wet food that this is a murder,” I purred to my colleague. He was an old cat, probably in his late seventies, and just short of retirement.

  He always told me he didn’t ever think he’d make it to retirement because of his old heart. Well, I was going to make sure he made it, even if I had to do CPR, which of course meant yowling loudly in his ears, myself.

  “What makes you think that, Thule?” he gently meowed back.

  “Well, you don’t hear them moving, do you?” I asked.

  “No, I certainly don’t,” he replied.

  I stalked the streets, into the “Kitchen,” where the worst gangs of roaches, flies, and ants had set up shop. They were tough and nasty, and they refused to go down without a fight.

  “Alright, Joe, just let me do the talking,” I said as I walked into a bar at the end of the street, aptly named The Trash Can.

  The doors creaked open, and every head turned to look at us as we entered.

  “What’re ya havin’?” a young man behind the bar asked. He was wearing the garb of the Roaches: black leather jacket with black jeans and a pair of nasty, almost plastic, wings stuck to his back.

  “I’ll have a dirty cream,” I answered, taking a seat at a nearby table.

  There were several Roaches and Ants having a drink at the table themselves.

  “Morning.” I said, nonchalantly as the barkeeper brought over my dirty cream, which was really just a fancy way of asking for cream in a flat dish.

  I brought the dish to my mouth and enjoyed the taste as it rolled down my throat and into my belly. Ahh, was that good.

  “Yeah, and?” one of the Ants asked after I had a nice, long drag from my cream.

  “Just making a statement is all,” I replied, putting the saucer down on the table.

  “Make a statement elsewhere, copper,” he said, raising an eyebrow and flicking one of his antennae with a hand.

  It bobbed in the air, and I had to surpress the urge to bat at it to make it bob more, or to rip it from his skullcap and eat it. Both things were viable options at any moment.

  “I’m just looking for somebody. Name’s Daddy Jones,” I said, pulling a picture from my coat pocket and laying it on the table.

  It was a fellow cat, with long whiskers, pitch-black fur, and horrifying yellow eyes. He wore a black trenchcoat in the picture, with a tommy gun hanging from his shoulder on a leather strap.

  He was a mean one and had done his share of murdering in the area as of late. “Taking out the trash,” he called it. We couldn’t ever pin anything on him, but I had a feeling this one was his doing.

  “What of him?” a Roach asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “Just looking for some information, that’s all. He knows some things; he might not know about this. But I have to be sure,” I said, taking the picture back and shoving it into an interior pocket of my jacket.

  “Alright, but you ain’t gonna like his response, I betcha,” the Ant said, getting up from the table and hooking a thumb over his shoulder to a back room at the bar.

  I followed him, carefully, making sure not to step on his back legs. That was a sure way to piss off the entire colony, and there were a lot of Ants in the bar tonight.

  The back room was secured by a pair of Roaches who were wearing dark coats and had pistols tucked into their waists.

  The Ant nodded quickly, and the Roaches stepped aside, letting me through.

  I strode through the entrance and found Daddy Jones sitting in a pile of random rubbish.

  He was fatter than I remembered, but that happened when you ate all the food first.

  “Daddy Jones,” I said, taking a seat at the table in the middle
of the small but well-decorated room.

  “Detective Thule,” he said, giving a nearby Fly a side-eye.

  The Fly took notice and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “What can I do for you this fine morning?” Daddy Jones asked, a big smile on his face.

  “I’ve got a dead mouse downtown. Word on the street is it’s your doing. Something about trash and whatnot,” I explained, tilting my head.

  “Nope, don’t know of any dead mice,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Ah, well, old Joe out there says you had a few mice what owed you some money. A couple bills from what he heard.” I stretched the truth a bit.

  Joe didn’t actually say that, but he did have a few insiders, and Daddy Jones knew it.

  It was enough to make the fat cat puff just a bit. He tried to smooth himself out before I noticed, but it was too late.

  “So you do know something,” I said, leaning harder on the table.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I can tell you this conversation is over. Buzz, get this guy out of my parlor,” he called outside, and the Fly who had just been there stepped into the room to escort me out.

  “No, no, I can leave myself, thanks,” I said, getting up and walking out without a word.

  “How’d it go?” Old Joe asked me after we left the bar.

  “Oh, he’s our culprit, alright. But how do we connect the two with actual, hard evidence?” I paced the streets, stretching and clawing at the hardwood of the kitchen floor.

  It was one of the few places I really enjoyed clawing, aside from my man- and womanservants’ hands, legs, feet, and various other body parts.

  “I don’t know, Thule, but you’ll need to be figuring it out soon. The sun will be rising shortly, and that means that the humans will be up soon,” Old Joe reminded me.

  Ah, yes, sunrise. The magical time where people, namely my servants, awoke and fed me. And Old Joe. And Fat Daddy Jones.

  I rolled my eyes and looked at the dossier I had been given regarding the murder case.

  The mouse had been jumped in the middle of an alley, in the darkness of night, and torn to shreds, then left to rot.

  It sounded awfully familiar, though I couldn’t place exactly why.

  “Let’s go back to the scene of the crime,” I told Old Joe, and we headed back out of town, toward the nicer districts: the “Living Room.”

  Part 2 - It’s Definitely Morning, Probably

  The world shifted in my view, and the carpet of the Living Room suddenly became a savannah of grass. I was a fierce predator, stalking another jungle cat who had taken my dinner from me. It was a disgraceful tactic, but some cats preferred to hunt other’s meals.

  I was not going to be taken lightly in my own domain.

  Quietly, I stalked the savanna, following the scent of the dead animal as far as I could, until I happened upon the very creature that had done it.

  He lay there, batting the mouse around, as though it were nothing more than a plaything, listening to it squeak as it bounced back and forth between his enormous paws.

  “Fat Daddy Jones!” I shouted, leaping from the cover of the “couch line,” a thick and sprawling grassland.

  “Oh!” he shouted, tumbling over onto his back, the mouse bouncing away from him.

  I leapt on top of Jones, biting at his neck while he batted at me with his claws.

  I hissed and clawed and bit, while he also hissed and yowled and bit back. We tangled for what felt like forever before I disengaged for a better, more advantageous position.

  A tactical retreat is not cowardly; it is simply a smart maneuver when you’re overpowered or overwhelmed.

  He lay there, his hackles up and his paws in the air, while I stood, ready to leap. Our tails whipped wildly in the air, ready for the fight.

  “I see you found me at the scene of the crime,” he said, a smug smile cresting his cat-lips.

  “Yes, I always get my man, err cat. Err, look, I always get the thing I’m after,” I said, stumbling over the right words.

  “Well, if you care at all, it’s right there.” Daddy Jones raised an eyebrow and pointed over to the mouse, which lay defeated on its back.

  I considered his offer for a moment before deciding to go with the more aggressive approach, leaping at him once again.

  He managed to block my leap and got his arms around my neck, but that just brought my teeth in closer.

  I kicked him rapidly with my claws out, shrieking at him as I did and biting at his ear.

  He chewed on the side of my face and managed to get a tooth into the soft place of my jawline, causing me to jerk backward.

  His claws dug into my back, and I knew I had made a mistake.

  Just then, Old Joe leapt from a tree, high above, landing on Daddy Jones, forcing him to release me.

  I scampered away, watching Old Joe and Daddy Jones tangle for a while before Old Joe tried to escape as well, but couldn’t.

  “Go without me,” he cried, dragging himself along the savannah floor with his claws.

  “No, I won’t leave you,” I said, leaping back onto Daddy Jones, causing him to make a tactical retreat of his own.

  He rolled away from both of us and skittered away, deep into the savannah grass of “couchland.”

  I procured the mouse in question, looking it over, then began to chew on it myself, knowing that I had earned the prize.

  The real world crashed back down, and I was playing with Squeaky Mouse again, rolling over it and making it squeak as loudly as I could, hopefully annoying my servants.

  I carried it to their bedroom door, and placed it gently at the crack underneath, then sat back, stretched hard, jerked my head back, and yowled as loudly as I could.

  Over and over again, I yowled about the Squeaky Mouse I had wrested from the alleyways of the dark city, the murder mystery I had solved, and the final bout with the great Daddy Jones himself.

  I had won this trophy, and I’d be damned if I didn’t get a chance to show it off to my servants as a prize worth yowling about.

  “What in the hell, Thule?” the manservant asked, through the door.

  Good, he was awake. Finally, I would get the recogn—

  My manservant picked up the Squeaky Mouse and chucked it across the hall, back out into the living room.

  “What!?” I meowed, watching it go and chasing after it like I needed to catch it before Old Joe or Daddy Jones did.

  “Stupid cat,” I heard the manservant say before he slammed the bedroom door closed again.

  Oh, if he thought I was stupid, just wait until he got a load of the surprise I left downstairs for him before bed.

  I chased after the Squeaky Mouse and caught it before it hit the floor, rolling into a dive that took me several feet until I bumped into a wall.

  I was slightly dazed, but I managed to hold onto Squeaky Mouse, and that was the important part.

  I took my trophy back, past the front door, where I could see the sun was rising. Light was beginning to color everything with gentle crystals, like dew on the fallen leaves in the autumn.

  The bedroom door opened again and out stepped my manservant. His socks were white, and I wanted to tackle them, so I did.

  His foot shifted, and I latched onto his leg, digging my claws and teeth deep into the soft material of both his leg and his sock.

  “Ow!” he said but didn’t do much about it. He just continued to walk, so I continued to attack.

  “Pet me,” I said through a meow.

  The manservant reached down and gave me a gentle rub on the face, then scratched softly behind my ears while whispering to me.

  “Please, don’t wake us up tonight, okay?” he asked politely.

  “Sure thing, boss,” I said sarcastically, though all he heard was me purring.

  I rolled over so he could do belly scratches, and he provided. But then, shortly after he started, I remembered that I suddenly hated belly scratches and attacked his hand, chewing on t
he skin of his hand with soft, yet serious bites.

  “Hey, whoa, Thule, chill.” He stopped the tummy scratches and went back to petting my sides, so I moved and squirmed and let him do all of the good rubs and scratches he wanted to.

  It was a morning routine, after all, that I annoyed the crap out of my servants, and they provided me love and affection in return.

  The womanservant was getting into the shower, and the manservant was getting coffee, so I followed him to the kitchen table, leapt into a chair, and stared at him while he sat, waiting patiently for my breakfast.

  “Oh, right, food,” he said, putting his coffee cup down and moving to the cabinet where I knew food was kept but just couldn’t open myself.

  A can of tuna fish was cracked open, and the air smelled alive with the intense fragrance of fish.

  The manservant scraped the can into a large bowl, then mixed it in with my favorite wet and dry foods, making a mushy mess of the meal.

  He placed it down, and Old Joe and Daddy Jones came running, through I was the one who was always stalking the humans to begin with.

  They were old, tired, and fat. I was slim, and spry, and also a kitten, so I didn’t care.

  I hissed at them as they came, and they just rolled their eyes, pushing past me to get to the food.

  “Oh, sorry, Thule,” Old Joe said, nodding.

  “It’s fine, you go ahead. I can make it.” I stepped back, letting them eat first.

  There was only room for two cats at the food dish anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal. Unless Fat Daddy Jones ate all the food again. Then there would be hell to pay, for sure.

  Not that I could enforce any kind of hell. I was just a small kitten, after all. But I did love to scrap.

  After breakfast, I took my time to lounge around the house, sleeping in various places, mostly on clean clothes.

  Then night came, and the humans went to bed. I followed them and hopped up on the bed with them, snuggling down at the end of the bed, where I could attack small, moving objects if they got out of hand.