Irregular Creatures

by Chuck Wendig

  From my vantage point on the floor, I could see her jaw working back and forth, grinding those teeth. Those pearly whites rubbed so hard against one another, she could grind coffee and brew it in her spit. I’m surprised that, married to me, she hasn’t worn them down to the raw nerve endings. Sometimes I could hear her doing it in her sleep. The noise kept me awake at times.

  “There’s a cat sleeping on the workbench,” she said.

  I felt a small shadow next to me, and I looked to see Brian come creeping in. He looked scared. Wise boy.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked.

  “I know,” I said, rubbing my stung palms together. “Yes. A cat. I know.”

  “And you haven’t been cleaning up the garage.”

  “I know.”

  “In fact, the garage is a huge mess. Worse than before.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Okay, probably.” She shot me a look. “Fine. Definitely.”

  She still didn’t turn. Her eyes remained fixed on the scene before her. She dared not put her eyes upon us worthless peons. Her betrayers, those traitors of the blood, we were.

  I managed to stand, my hands throbbing with every beat of my heart. Brian was looking at something, wide-eyed. I followed his gaze, and found CB on the workbench, standing there, tail forming an unmoving ‘S’ shape.

  Cat-Bird did not have wings.

  “Dad,” Brian said.

  “I know, shh,” I answered.

  “You both lied to me,” Missy said, still staring away from us. “Joe, I blame you most of all, but Brian, you’re not free from blame just because your father makes you lie for him. You should know better.”

  And finally, she turned. I hoped for fireballs in her eyes, a frowning maw stretched wide with the tongue within as a thrashing whip. We didn’t get that. What we got was a gunmetal stare and a mouth that had flat-lined. Her brow drooped.

  She wasn’t mad, she was disappointed.

  Disappointment was always worse. Anger is born in the moment. But disappointment lives in the soul like a septic infection.

  “Brian,” she said, “you’re grounded. Two weeks starting tomorrow.”

  “Mom!” he pleaded. I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “C’mon, Bri,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later. Go inside.”

  And then, there it was in his eyes. He was disappointed in me. Or her. Or both of us. His face dropped, a mixture of confusion and sadness, and it killed me. It always killed me. It never bothered Missy, not really. She was prepared to not be our son’s friend. Not me. I needed him to be my friend. It’s why I wanted a boy—so I could have a buddy.

  Brian plodded inside, chin to his chest.

  “Missy, I’m sorry. I never meant –“

  “I just don’t get it, Joe. I always figured you’d grow up a little bit. But I don’t have one husband and one child. I have two children.”

  “But look –“ I gestured behind her at the sculpture. “See? I’m working. I’m making progress again, finally.”

  “It’s too late for that. I can’t sit here and wait for your whimsy, your muse to strike when it feels like. Have you looked at our bills lately? As it turns out, they still want us to pay them. And you’re not helping. And this –“ She swept her arm out, encompassing my crazy Cat-Bird sculpture. “Isn’t going to keep the electricity on.”

  “But –“

  “No buts. Tomorrow, this is what’s going to happen. I don’t care in what order you do them, but they are going to get done. First, the cat goes away. I don’t know where you got that cat, but either take it back or take it to the pound.”

  “Brian loves Cat–“ I almost added bird.

  “Second,” she said, ignoring me, “is that you are going to the job agency to find a job. Temporary or otherwise.”

  “But the economy. And what about the –“

  She didn’t even let me finish. “The piece behind me, move or dismantle it. I don’t care which. It’s not staying in the garage, because this is where we are going to park our cars. Like adults. Like adults who don’t need adult diapers. Are you hearing me?”

  It was a bitter pill. I swallowed it and nodded.

  “I’m not angry,” she said, sighing. “I’m past that. I’m just –“

  Say it, I thought. Go on. Twist the knife. Kick the testicles.

  “Disappointed,” she finished.

  “I know.”

  She slid past me – careful not to actually touch my body with hers – and left the garage. I looked over at CB, now looking like a normal, every day cat.

  “Mrow?” Cat-Bird asked.

  “Sorry, cat,” I said. I reminded myself that I didn’t like cats. It didn’t help.

  ***

  The rain still hadn’t come. The air outside was electro-charged as night came, and thunder argued in the distance. But still no rain. A wind kicked up, though, cold and quick.

  I went to see Brian, and I told him we had to get rid of Cat-Bird.

  He sat propped up against a number of pillows on his bed, looking grumpily over a Justice League comic book.

  “Cat-Bird didn’t have wings,” he said.

  “I think he – er, she – can hide them.”

  “You can’t get rid of her.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Then don’t!” He threw the comic book down. “There’s two of us and one of her! We should be able to keep CB!”

  The “her,” I knew, wasn’t the cat.

  He was right. There were two of us, but I was part of the wrong team. Missy’s words, echoing: I have two children. I wasn’t a parent here, I was his brother, his buddy, his pal. I had to play Daddy. If just this once.

  “Your mother’s right. We went behind her back and lied to her. And that was my fault, not yours. But it is what it is.”

  “If you get rid of CB, I’m not talking to you guys ever again.” His eyes darkened, and then he said the words any parent loathes to hear: “I’ll hate you.”

  I knew it wasn’t true, but what hurt me most is that he didn’t. He really believed that he would be able to write the two of us off forever. We’d get locked away in a dark box in the shadow of his heart, and he would never touch it again. I knew the threat was hollow, but I also knew he felt it was real. And that somehow made it true, even if only temporarily.

  Twist the knife, part two.

  “Cat-Bird will be fine,” I said. I got up from his bed, and silently left the room.

  ***

  That night, I didn’t even bother with sleep. I knew I should try (Big day, tomorrow!) but I also realized that it would be a worthless endeavor. My brain played host to a whole army of terrible thoughts, tromping around in big boots and clapping cymbals together. I had a wife who thought I was a loser, and a son who thought I wasn’t his friend. I was finally making art again, art that I had to destroy because my mundane life as a 9-to-5-asshole was poised to begin. Worst and weirdest of all, I had a flying cat – a creature on par with Bigfoot or any given lake monster – that I had to abandon and give to a cruel and uncaring world.

  Forget Joeworld. We’re talking Disappointment City, and I am its mayor.

  “Coming to bed?” Missy asked as she passed by, a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth and a glass of water in her hand.

  I guess I had enough to pay for. Making me sleep on the couch was just throwing a salt lick into a chest wound.

  “Soon,” I said.

  She went to bed. I stayed on the couch.

  I sat like that for about four hours.

  Face in hands. Elbows on knees. Gaze staring at a fixed point that didn’t even exist in our reality.

  It was then, as it was a week before, that I heard a noise.

  ***

  It wasn’t a paw on glass, I could tell that much. It was a hollow, metal sound. A rough whump, followed by a rolling clang. I knew the sound from when raccoons had made a pit-stop at our house on the way to whatever raccoon reunion or dumpster party they were attending. It came from our tras
h can, a metal hulk of a container whose sole characteristic seemed to be that it fell over all the time.

  Just after, the wind kicked up. It whistled, then howled.

  Just the wind, I thought.

  Let the trash can roll forever. I hoped it would roll away and we’d never see it again. And it would leave trash everywhere. Screw the trash can. I hate the trash can.

  Maybe I was being a little petulant.

  I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I found Brian standing there. His mouth was a nervous crease.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said.

  “There are monsters outside my window.”

  Mm-hmm. Sure.

  Instantly, I got it. He didn’t know he was doing it, but he was doing it just the same. He faced a small crisis today, and now he wanted attention. The poor boy was crying out for it. If I could get away with it, I’d see monsters too. Mommy and Daddy would band together and fight the monsters and then we’d get to keep Cat-Bird and have a party.

  “Bri,” I said, “you’re too old to be seeing a monster.”

  “Not one. Lots.”

  “Okaaaay, you’re too old to be seeing lots of monsters.”

  He hugged his arms tight. “I can’t see all of them. Just their eyes.”

  “Brian, go to bed.”

  “Please come in and make them go away.”

  I sighed. Of course, I’d go. How could I not? Poor kid looked like he’d not only seen a ghost, but was thrown in a box with a dozen of the damn things. Fine, I figured. Go in, be the triumphant father and scare away the shadowy boogers.

  ***

  The shadowy boogers were watching us through Brian’s bedroom window.

  Four pairs of eyes: bloody red, like moonlit rubies.

  Shadows shifted and writhed behind them.

  Okay, I thought, so maybe monsters are real.

  “Brian,” I whispered. “Get me your baseball bat. Now.”

  ***

  Bat in hand, I went out the front door.

  The nighttime sky was banded with gray clouds that circled and swallowed the moon. As I stepped forward, the wind kicked up, its fingers grabbing fistfuls of my hair. I shivered. My body was a Braille map of goosebumps.

  I couldn’t believe what I was doing. Did I really think those red lights belonged to monsters? Probably just squirrels. Or possums. Or those sonofabitch raccoons again, sniffing around for old hot dogs and milk containers (and Tuna cans).

  This is ridiculous, I thought.

  Thunder answered my accusation with a rolling growl.

  And then I saw the shape on the hood of Missy’s Saturn, red eyes gleaming. My heart leapt up into my throat, and I took a step backward, stifling a girlish scream –

  -- and I made out the shape of a winged cat.

  Suddenly, it all came together. The fear fled as I realized just what had happened. Cat-Bird got out of the garage somehow. The garage had a bunch of skylight windows, not to mention a vent and some ductwork. Cats are carnival-level contortionists, and that’s when they don’t have wings. That dipshit Cat-Bird had obviously gotten out and was now wandering around outside, scaring us half to death.

  “CB,” I said, clucking my tongue, letting the bat dangle. “I just about peed in my –“

  Cat-Bird hissed, and there was a rush of wings as he lunged.

  Claws dug into the collar of my robe as the cat hit me like a bowling ball to the chest. I couldn’t see anything, just the strobe light sensation of wings flapping in my face. A wing-tip hit me in the eye -- it felt hard, like it was tipped with a nubbin of bone. I staggered backward, bat still in hand, and my shoulder hit the door.

  “Cat-Bird!” I squawked. “Christ! Stop!”

  The wings stopped flapping long enough for me to see the cat’s black face and red eyes.

  Oh, shit. You’re not Cat-Bird.

  The black cat answered me with a mean long hiss, and I saw inch-long fangs in its yawning mouth. I got a look at those wings, too. Black and feathered, like the oily pinions of a tar-slick crow.

  The thing dug its claws in my neck and raked downward. Hooks ripped skin and it burned like fire. I howled and brought up the bat. I gave an awkward whack at my chest and nailed the thing right in the back. It fell to the ground, and true to form, landed on its feet.

  It hissed again as lightning flashed and rain started to fall.

  When the sky went from black to white for a half-a-second, I saw them.

  At least a dozen others like this one. Black cats with raven wings and eyes like smoldering cigarette burns.

  “Dad!” I heard Brian call from behind me, and as I turned to yell at him to go back inside, the cat on the ground shot forward, wings back, aiming right for the boy. Before I knew what I was doing, I had already done it. The bat cracked the thing square in the face, sending it backward like a line drive. The cat tumbled into the headlight of Missy’s car, shattering it.

  The shadowy feline hit the ground crouching. Its fur bristled, now wet with falling rain.

  “Get inside!” I yelled, and pushed Brian backward.

  I didn’t make it inside. I threw the door closed as the demon-cats swarmed me. Teeth sank into my robe. Claws caught my hands. I swung wildly around with the bat, but wasn’t hitting anything but raindrops. The cats were heavy. I fell to my one knee. Inside, I heard Brian yelling, and I thought I heard Missy yelling, too.

  A cat bit my ear.

  A tail snaked down into my throat, gagging me.

  The bat dropped from my hand.

  In the distance, I thought I heard the sound of breaking glass.

  And then, lightning flashed again. Except this time, the light did not fade – this was no momentary flash but rather a sustained light that grew brighter with every passing second. I heard something sizzle. I smelled burning hair. Half-a-second later, a chorus of yowling wails rose up and filled my ears, and the cats upon me began thrashing and shrieking like ants under a magnifying glass. One by one they leapt—or fell—from my body, each taking flight.

  As they fled, my vision returned and I could see again.

  One of the cats was on the hood of my car, wings outstretched, its head tilted toward me. Its mouth was open, and a beam of white light came from its maw.

  This cat was orange. A familiar tabby.

  “Cat-Bird,” I said, my voice a scratchy whisper.

  One of the black cats shot down like a bullet, ducking like a raptor bird toward Cat-Bird. CB cocked her head toward the dive-bomber and caught the other cat in that shaft of pearlescent light. The cat jerked backward like someone had shot it in the chest. The thing wailed and sizzled, its body toppling backward in a parabolic arc. Other wails answered its diminishing cry from above.

  I looked up.

  The air was thick with those dark, demon cats. Dozens of them, now. The wounded one rejoined its swarming brothers and sisters. They circled the driveway like vultures, a vortex of shadow climbing higher and higher. Their wailing rose to a fevered pitch –

  -- and then, suddenly, they massed like a flock of crows and flew off, growing smaller and smaller until they were nothing against the dark clouds.

  I tried to say something, but instead collapsed upon the front stoop.

  ***

  I dreamt during that time. I don’t know what it is about dreams, what makes them so temporary, or why the mind is so quick to let them fade. Usually, recalling a dream is like trying to play catch using a handful of sand instead of a baseball – every time you catch it, more slips away. Not this dream, though. This dream was nagging, persistent. It wanted to be remembered.

  In this dream, the whole family stood out in a desert.

  Somewhere in the distance, we saw a city, and I think it was burning.

  The night-time sky was bright and clear. Stars twinkled, and the moon was pregnant with white light.

  Missy was smiling – a rare treat, as rare now as a cat with wings. Brian, on the other hand, looked upset. He appeared anxious, nervously shifting from
foot to foot.

  “Everything’s going to be fine now,” Missy said, putting her arm around me. I nodded.

  Brian looked up at this, and stifled a small cough.

  “I almost died tonight,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” I answered, giving him a fatherly punch to the arm. “We’re fine, now.”

  “Not if you make the wrong choice,” he said.

  He coughed again. A little louder. A chest-cough, and phlegm rattled deep in those lungs. I got worried.

  “I don’t understand –“ I said.

  He hacked this time, and spit black goo onto the ground.

  “Want to see?” he asked.

  I nodded, and realized then that the hawked-up spit on the ground wasn’t all black. It was white spit with dark hairs.

  Fur, maybe. Like a hairball.

  I looked up at Brian then, and he smiled. He put his fingers in his mouth, curling them around both jaws, and he opened his lips wide. The jaw cracked and split, and deep in the tunnel of his pink throat I saw a hundred black cats, wet and greasy like newborn foals, squirming and yowling.

  ***

  I awoke to Missy dabbing at my ear with something soft. It stung. She was kneeling on the floor, and I was lying on the couch. Next to her on the coffee table, was the Neosporin, hydrogen peroxide, and a few cotton balls.

  “It took me some time to find them,” she said. “I forgot you had them out in the garage.”

  She smiled then, softly. This caused more worry than comfort because it recalled the dream.

  I looked around for Brian.

  “I put him to bed,” she said. “It was a little too much.”

  “No kidding,” I said, barely finding my voice.. “How much did you…”

  “See? Enough.”

  “Cats,” I muttered.

  “With wings,” she said.

  “And you’re okay with this?”

  She laughed. There wasn’t a lot of humor in it.

  “Not really. You should’ve seen me two hours ago.”

  “Wait. Two hours?”

  “It’s almost morning, Joe.” She threw a cotton ball away into a separate bag. I saw the one side was rust-colored. “I had a little panic attack. But I’m doing better now. I can’t quite shake the image out of my head, though. Not sure if I believe what I saw. I thought maybe we should call the police or the news or somebody. But why would they believe us if I’m not even sure it’s real?” I was going to tell her that it was real, but I knew I didn’t have to. Instead I watched as she grabbed another cotton ball, upending the brown bottle of peroxide upon it.