Hellcats: Anthology

by Kate Pickford

  The Plan was in motion.

  Winter had almost disappeared. The nights remained bitterly cold, but the morning sun now held a little warmth. Birds called from the pine tree outside after months of silence, the sweet trills heralding the coming of spring.

  Faith was alert, pacing back and forth under the window, a black shadow in the dawn light. “I don’t want you to attack those birds,” she admonished as she lifted the cat to the window. She risked a loud clap, hoping to frighten the birds before Faith reached them.

  “What was that?” he asked, his voice tinged with urgency.

  “It was just me,” she replied. “I let Faith out.”

  He was silent.

  “Are we going to try today?” she asked, crossing to the wall between them and pulling the pin out from inside her mattress, holding the precious item as though it were a rare diamond. It looked like a fragment of tarnished paperclip.

  An inhalation, a heavy pause. “Yes. Today is the day. The weather is warmer, we won’t freeze to death in the mountains. You remember what to do once we get out of this building, don’t you?”

  A spike of anxiety slashed through her and all at once she felt dizzy, but she pushed through the feeling and staggered to her feet. “Yes, I remember. So we do it now?”

  “Yes, let’s do it now.”

  The slip of metal squeezed between two fingers, she walked to the door and ran her hand over its rough wooden surface. Finding the handle, her other hand touched the lock before sliding the pin into the right hole. It seemed to stick, and she used her knuckle to push it all the way in, the action causing a spike of pain and a small puncture in her skin.

  She licked the trickle of blood while moving back to their shared wall. Movement on the other side of the wall and a brief, high-pitched scraping sound. He was by the door. Closing her eyes, she pictured him. Nimble fingers checking the lock one last time. Maybe a face creased with concentration. Several footfalls and he returned to the wall.

  “I did it just like you told me,” she said.

  “That’s great. We’re ready.” His voice had an unusual lilt. What was it? Hope?

  “Talk to me,” she said, the pleading back. She needed a balm to soothe her frayed nerves. It occurred to her that their relationship mainly went one way. All the comfort and good things flowed from his room to hers. The briefest flash of guilt, but not enough to stop her. And maybe he needed her, too?

  “About what?” came his voice, gruff and kind at the same time. He probably wanted peace, to focus on what lay ahead. But he didn’t want to upset her.

  “Anything,” she blurted, her fingers tracing circles on the ground. “Talk to me. Tell me more about your family. Tell me about your favorite memory or a day before them.”

  His laugh surprised her.

  “You just don’t quit, do you kid? Okay, let me think for a minute.” He paused, and she knew he was recalling lost moments, memories cruelly stolen. When he spoke, his voice was low and soft and buoyed with a smile.

  Her mouth curled at the corners in anticipation. Sinking back against the wall, her eyes closed.

  “One of my best memories is from about ten years ago, before this all started.” He sighed and there was a faint crack, like a knuckle flexing. “Back then it was still safe, they weren’t watching us. There were no special police. It was before the world turned to shi—” his voice grew bitter and he drew in a shuddering breath.

  “Don’t think about them,” she said, fighting away her own anger. “That time…the time before. It hardly seems real. My memories are like a movie about someone else’s life.” She bit her lip hard, feeling bad for interjecting. “Go on.”

  A brief pause. She imagined him collecting his memories, ordering them, sifting out the beautiful from the bad.

  “I remember my wife suggested we take the girls for a walk through the hills. It was such an ordinary day. I miss that, the ordinariness of life.” His voice faded and then stopped. A deep, steading inhalation.

  “I know what you mean,” she said, not wanting him to lose momentum. “I just want to wake up in my bed, to see my parents and my kitten. I want to eat a slice of hot buttered toast and sit in the garden drinking tea.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Those ordinary moments. It kills me just thinking about it.”

  “So,” she prompted. “What was so great about this day?” She heard him changing positions on the other side of the wall and did likewise, imagining their backs pressed against one another on opposite sides.

  “It was one of those perfect spring days,” he said, his voice hoarse. “The weather was warm with a light, cool breeze. I can still see the wildflowers in full bloom, waving in the wind. It seemed like there was an entire meadow full of wildflowers.”

  “It sounds beautiful.”

  “There is a twist, of course. The girls went mad. They ran in and out of the flowers, chasing each other and tripping over themselves. We let them run and found a place in the sun. My wife sat next to me and held my hand and we watched our beautiful, sparkling children and that damn gorgeous sea of flowers.” His voice grew thick with emotion.

  She waited for him to continue.

  “Well, next thing my oldest daughter comes running. ‘Daddy!’ she said. ‘Daddy, I found a kitten, and it needs our help.’”

  She smiled, picturing the girl she’d never meet and her excitement over the discovery of the cat.

  “So, I followed her across the wildflowers, her skirt swishing around her grubby little knees, until we found her sister crouched beside a cardboard box. There was a newborn ginger ball of fluff just lying there, mewing pathetically.”

  “A cat?”

  “A cat. It still had its damn umbilical cord attached. I wanted to leave it there—”

  “You did not,” she objected, knowing he was teasing her.

  “You’re right. I couldn’t leave him. He deserved a chance. We carried him home, and the girls made such a fuss of him. They tied a ribbon around his neck and wiped him down with scented baby wipes. But you know who had to get up every couple of hours and feed it a bottle like a baby for weeks on end?”

  A giggle escaped her lips, the noise strange in her cell. But in that moment, she wasn’t locked in the room. A meadow of wildflowers surrounded her. She was up in the middle of the night, mixing kitten formula, holding soft, ginger fur against her cheek.

  “That cat grew and grew. He thrived. The biggest, sweetest cat you’d ever meet. But make no mistake, he could be a hell-cat. Lightening quick when he wanted to be, running around breaking things and creating chaos. When the kids got riled up, I used to call him the Chief Instigator of the Kitten Rebellion. My Felix.”

  “Felix?”

  He let out a chuff of a laugh. “Yeah. Felix. I bottle fed him like he was my own damn baby and I swear he thought I was his mama. He followed me from room to room. He even sat on the bathroom mat and stared at me when I showered. Have you ever showered with a cat staring at you? Not blinking?”

  She laughed again, picturing Faith’s unblinking stare. A light tinkle of noise.

  “You know, I’m not everything you think I am. I haven’t always been a good man. I’ve done…things that I wasn’t proud of.” His voice cracked. She sensed he wanted to confess, but something held him back.

  “You’ll always be a good man to me,” she whispered, speaking the truth. His breaths came out in strained huffs and she didn’t know if he heard her.

  “Animals have a way of creeping inside your heart. You know?” His voice had a far-off quality. “They show us all the good things inside ourselves. Felix came to me when I needed him most. I had lost myself, and he showed me I was still there. That I could be better. Our animals can be our redemption, if we let them.”

  Without warning, memories snatched her away. Her birthday kitten, a white ball of fluff, mewing softly and giddy with love in the way only animals can be. A tiny pink nose resting on her pillow. A warm body, eternal comfort.

  “You still
there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m here.”

  She started to speak, to tell him about her own sweet memories, but stopped herself. The faint, ominous sound of footsteps coming towards their rooms. She pivoted and eased herself onto the lumpy mattress, pressing the pin into its interior. Laying still, her eyes stared at the door in the semi-darkness of the morning-lit room.

  She waited.

  The waiting was always the worst. Anticipation churned her stomach. Quiet fear prickled the back of her neck.

  Through the outside wall, she heard Faith climb the pine tree, readying herself for her share of breakfast.

  Every fiber in her body willed The Plan to work.

  The footsteps grew louder and, even though anxiety was threatening to burst through her skin, she forced herself to stay in bed. It was protocol. Otherwise they might hurt her.

  A mechanical click and a whir as her door swung open first, as it always did.

  “Eyes to the wall,” a voice barked. She turned her head to face the wall and closed her eyes. Her eyelids flickered and her breaths came out too loud. They would notice. She was going to give them away. Teeth gritted in determination. Breathing slowed.

  She barely heard the plate being dropped to the ground, but a loud, liquid splat soon followed it. The earthy, milky smell of porridge filled the room and her mouth watered despite the terrified thoughts plaguing her. She was starving.

  In a movement she was barely conscious of, her body rolled off the bed and she crouched over the food, almost on top of it the instant the door closed, the lock clicking back into place. Handfuls of the cold oat porridge scooped into her mouth so fast her throat hurt when she swallowed.

  Her stomach growled, hurting but wanting more.

  Faith leaped down beside her with an inaudible thud and nosed toward the plate. Using her hand, she slid some gruel onto the ground and the two ate together.

  Through the wall, the same barking voice instructed him to face the wall. A plate clattered. Porridge slopped. She closed her eyes, praying to the universe that The Plan might actually work.

  Finally, his door closed, and the footfalls disappeared down the hall. She pulled herself like an animal on all fours to the wall. Faith remained by the plate, one yellow eye locked on her as the cat moved to eat the leftovers.

  “Do you think it worked?” Her words came out in one jumbled breath. Fingernails dug into the plaster as she waited in terrible silence for his reply.

  “I’m not sure yet. We won’t know until we open our doors. Finish your breakfast and be quiet. We just need to wait awhile to be sure they’re gone.” The gruffness was back. And something else…but it sounded a lot more like nervousness and a lot less like hope.

  “Ok.”

  She returned to her breakfast like a scolded dog. A scolded cat. The thought lifted her a little, and she stroked Faith as the cat hoovered up the last of the gluey gruel. She glanced around her room and thought an almost unthinkable thought: it might be the last time she sat there, eating off the floor.

  Her room was five big steps by three big steps (and a bit). She measured it many months ago when she was first put inside after they arrested her parents.

  Memories tattooed in big, ugly letters. The men in uniform, numb to their violent campaign of terror, blindly obedient. Oppression and persecution of their opponents was only the beginning.

  They killed her parents, her kitten… She swallowed at the sudden, throbbing lump in her throat and focused on Faith, who was busy licking the last sticky oat from the plate.

  When Faith finished, they lay together on her bed, waiting. One hand on the cat’s back, she studied her room. It was always in varying shades of darkness. At night, it was pitch black, and terrible, terrifying sounds woke her. During the day it got gradually lighter, but it was never light.

  Shadows surrounded her, bleak places where her nightmares came alive. Were they nightmares? Or memories?

  Unable to help herself, her mind drifted down into the dark place. Into her own private Hell.

  The United States of America: land of the free.

  Not anymore.

  Her father, ever the optimist, never believed that they were capable of the atrocities they committed.

  “We’ll be all right,” he had said to his family when her mother first raised leaving. “This is our home, we can’t leave. People won’t just stand by and watch. They won’t get away with this. They’re systematically destroying our democracy and people won’t let that happen.”

  She often recalled her father’s words bitterly.

  After her parents’ arrest and trial, they had put her in this room and for many days she was alone, the awful memories threatening to consume her. She didn’t know why they kept her alive. Maybe it was to keep up the pretense of a working judicial system and a stable democracy. Maybe she was already dead.

  Then, inexplicably, they put him in the room next to her. He had saved her life, she knew that. He had listened; had talked to her and made her realize she was not yet crazy. That she could rise from the depths of her pain.

  And when she sank back down, when the days that were filled with light and dark and lengthening shadows became too much…when the cold and damp robbed her of her ability to go on…he had given her hope that she might one day get out of here.

  The Plan.

  She wouldn't make the same mistake as her father when they got out of there. She'd leave, find somewhere else. If she had to cross the ocean, she'd do it. Somewhere, someone would offer her a safe haven.

  “Are you ready?” came his voice—her lifeline. She looked around at the bare room, her eyes probing the dark, awful shadows one last time. There was nothing to take and plenty to leave behind.

  “I’m almost ready,” she said.

  Walking to the wall, Faith held against her chest, she planted a kiss on the animal’s head. “Go now. Get out of here. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.” Raising the cat above her, she felt a pang of sadness at their separation. Faith shot her a final, confused look before disappearing between the bars.

  “Okay,” she said, moving to the door. “Let’s do this.”

  She placed both of her hands on the door handle and listened. He walked to his door and her breath hitched in her throat. The pounding was back in her ears and she wanted it to be quiet so she could hear him.

  “Now,” he said.

  A very quiet click, like the tick of the clock that hung in the kitchen, black metallic hands counting off the passing minutes and hours.

  A long slow noise, like the release of compressed air when her father finished pumping her bike’s tires.

  Tentative hands pushed on her door. It swung open.

  Eyes blinked in the empty hallway’s harsh fluorescent lights. She hurried to the closed door next to hers and tried the handle. It was locked. She tapped anxiously.

  “Are you there? Open the door. We have to hurry before they come.”

  “Can you open my door?”

  “Why? Didn’t it work?”

  “Just try to unlock it.” She could picture his gritted teeth as her eyes roamed the lock. Moving the door handle up and down, she pulled and at the same time, heard the weight of his body straining against the door. The frustrated grunt of his breath.

  “What’s wrong? Come out,” she pleaded, frantic as fear roiled her. The nightmares were back. This wasn’t real. How could it be? The universe wasn’t that sick and twisted. “Didn’t your pin work?”

  The door handle stilled. “There was only one pin,” he replied.

  She tumbled through a deep abyss, falling against the wall, sliding to the floor. Her body was not her body. His sacrifice broke her, shattered her into a million pieces, and then a million more. She burned, the inferno taking her completely.

  “Are you there?” he said urgently.

  Words wouldn’t form on her lips.

  “I can hear you breathing. I know you’re there. Please, kid, you need to get out of here. Now.”<
br />
  “I need you,” she said. Her body folded over on top of itself and latched in place.

  “You don’t need me, you know where to go, what to do. We’ve been over this before.” He spoke slowly and patiently, winching her up out of the bad place.

  Her eyes on the closed door between them, she breathed, inhaling a ragged lungful of air. Somehow, from somewhere, she pulled herself to her feet, holding onto the invisible line between them.

  One hand pressed against the outside of his door. She sensed that inside, he was doing the same. She heard him breathing, heard her own breath mirroring his exhalations. He inhaled, she exhaled. For a moment they were one. Not separated. Not alone.

  “Go,” he whispered. “There’s still hope.”

  She reached up and wiped the tears that tracked down her cheeks.

  “Run!”

  His word sent a bolt of determination through her, firing up her legs. She ran towards the door at the end of the corridor, her bare feet slapping the linoleum floor that smelled of lemon-scented bleach.

  A blue door stood at the end of the hallway. With every unstable step, it grew closer. Not stopping, her hands hit the door and pushed it open.

  She was outside in the bright sunshine.

  A loud, piercing siren burst into the crisp air from behind her. Hearing his voice, she forced her flailing legs to keep running. Razor-wire topped the fence, clawing at her clothes. Her heart exploded. Her lungs almost burst.

  But she made it and slipped between the pine trees.

  Freedom had never been so bittersweet, and sobs racked her body as she fought the urge to go back and save him, too. She never knew his name. Never knew his face.

  But she knew him.

  She knew the intimate details of his life. She knew how his daughters had died when a protest turned violent, how his wife could not go on. She knew when they arrested him, how they held him without charge, trial or judgement.

  She knew he had a cat named Felix. A ginger tom, a rescued, bottle-fed baby who showed him a side of his humanity he didn’t know was there.