New Beginnings

thethemeis: Curiosity Killed The Cat

theauthoris: LiamD

   It all started with the cat. I first saw it a couple of Sundays ago when I was moving in. There wasn’t much to note about its appearance other than the sleek black fur and those watchful yellow eyes. It had no collar or means of identification. If it wasn’t a stray it must have lived nearby since it came by every day that first week and seemed very friendly.

   I had arrived earlier than expected that day and had to wait for the landlord to turn up and give me my keys to the place. Luckily somebody was by the front door when I got there (I’d later realise this was something of a rarity, despite the eighteen tenants inside) and I managed to haul all of my belongings up the two flights of stairs while I waited. Dad had been kind enough to drive me up to Leamington from my family’s house in Sidcup, Greater London. He and Mum, who had come along for the ride, offered to go and buy some essentials while I waited. After 5 minutes of waiting outside the room, I decided my baggage was safe enough and descended the stairs to wait in the living room.

   ‘PLEASE ENSURE THIS DOOR IS KEPT LOCKED AT ALL TIMES’ read the sign on the front door. The door itself was wide open, my parents didn’t have a key to lock it with. Sighing quietly, I reached out for the handle to lock the door from the inside. That’s when I heard it, just as my fingers closed around the cold steel, a loud unmistakably feline mewing directly behind me. I jumped out of my skin and turned around to see it for the first time. The cat had entered the house and somehow that was when it started. A creeping feeling swept hold of me and I was suddenly convinced that something was wrong, horribly wrong. I had no idea what had happened to the now stagnant atmosphere that had not long before been fresh with exciting new beginnings. All I knew was I had to get the cat out of the house.

   ‘Out,’ I said feebly, restrained by an innate fear I didn’t understand. Pull yourself together, it’s just a cat. I told myself. The cat stared at me vacantly.

   ‘Get out!’ I tried again, this time louder, more commanding. The cat began to mew loudly again, hoping for food probably. The normality of its response had a calming effect on me. After taking a moment to compose myself, I angled my body behind the cat. The gloves were off now.

   Making my body as large as I could manage I stamped towards it roaring: ‘FUCK OFF YOU STUPID CAT!’

   As soon as it had scurried back through the open door I felt better, the remaining fear receding quickly, but that didn’t stop me from chasing it further out of the drive. I wanted to make sure it knew not to come back. While I was no longer scared I still hadn’t lost the unshakeable feeling. I had to keep that cat away from the house. If I didn’t, it would spell something terrible. I didn’t need to think this, it was something I felt I already knew. I was wondering how this could possibly be when I was startled for a second time that day.

   ‘It’s Liam, isn’t it?’ came a voice.

   I turned to see my new landlord. He was grinning in amusement. ‘Not a fan of cats?’

---

   I had given myself a week to get settled into the new place before beginning my new job. I was going to be testing video games at the Codemasters studios (a little over five miles away in Southam) and I had no idea what to expect. I spent most of the week getting to know the area and imagining endless possibilities of what work in the games industry would be like. Until Thursday evening, I’d forgotten all about the incident with the cat.

   I decided to make a shepherd’s pie for dinner on Thursday. I’d ventured to the local Co-op earlier in the day to buy the mince, gravy granules and potatoes. It wasn’t until I’d got back to the house that I realised I hadn’t brought anything with me to mash the potatoes with so after boiling I figured I’d sling them in the oven and hope for the best. It was while the mince was slowly browning and the potatoes boiling when I suddenly heard that loud mewing again. It sounded so close I would have sworn it was in the room if my eyesight wasn’t telling me otherwise.  The kitchen was located on the ground floor and, like most in the suburbs, contained a medium sized window looking out onto the back garden. I could see now that the window had been left slightly ajar and I closed it quickly. I felt that awful feeling sweep over me again;  I had to make sure the cat stayed away. Running into the adjoining dining area I slammed the back door shut before locking and bolting it. I stood still for a minute or so and listened. It was so quiet outside I became worried that it might have found another way in but I knew it hadn’t when the mewing began again.

   Now it was desperate, Let me in! it pleaded in its feline tongue. Never having studied the back door closely before, I looked down to find the remains of a cat flap. It had been boarded up but done so badly with cardboard, as if whoever had done it didn’t have time to do the job properly. The cardboard began to move back and forth as I heard the cat scratching at the obstacle that was keeping it outside in the cold. Scaring it away had worked before, I had to try again. I kicked out at the door with force, growling loudly as I did so. The cat let out a yelp and scampered away from the house. I had just enough time to see it jumping the fence to the next garden when I looked out of the kitchen window again.

   Again the feeling passed and I felt slightly foolish about the whole affair. In any case, it’s crisis averted, I thought to myself. That cat wouldn’t be coming back any time soon at least. If I could scare it enough, perhaps it wouldn’t come back at all. My thoughts were interrupted by Danny as he entered the kitchen. Danny was one of the few housemates I saw regularly and he was friendly enough.

   ‘What was that noise?’ he asked. There was no accusatory tone in his question. I just looked at him blankly.

   ‘I heard a massive bang from down here,’ he explained.

   ‘No idea mate, I’ve been upstairs while this was cooking.’ I gestured towards my frothy mess of potatoes and burning mince.

   ‘Fair play,’ he said simply, before starting a meal of his own.

   I finished cooking dinner and after eating it and washing my plates, returned to my room on the second floor. For no real reason I felt exhausted and slept early that night. By the time the weekend came around I had once again forgotten about the cat that had got me so worked up, though it never forgot about me.

---

   On the weekend I got the Chilterns train back to London Marylebone and made my way back home from there as I had done many times before. I had journeyed back partly to collect some luxuries I hadn’t thought of the week before (a pint glass I had missed most of all) but the main reason was for company. Living in a house that accommodates eighteen tenants should have given me plenty of people to socialise with, but for whatever reason I had barely seen anyone aside from Danny. I felt alone in the house, something that I suspected wouldn’t bother me so much once I started work but made me uncomfortable staying there for too long.

   The weekend at home was a relaxing one and by the end of it I felt refreshed and ready for whatever the new job had to throw at me. I jumped on the train from Sidcup at around five o’clock in the afternoon and once at Charing Cross, took the underground Bakerloo Line to Marylebone. It was just as the tube was leaving Baker Street that I felt it. That awful feeling, that something was wrong. I just couldn’t put my finger on what.

   But I could. I knew exactly what was wrong even while riding a train below the ground, over a hundred miles away from the epicentre. The cat was near the house, maybe even inside and this time there was nothing I could do. As I progressed toward Marylebone the feeling grew stronger and became accompanied by a growing, grim fear. I had no idea what could possibly be so bad about a cat being inside my new residence but that didn’t help my state of mind. For the rest of the journey my anxiety and fear grew. When I finally arrived into Leamington Spa train station at a quarter to eight and it was already dark. I ran through the high street towards the house, ignoring the stares and cries from the bewildered pedestrians I nearly knocked over. As I arrived and walked up the stone steps, I saw the door had been left wide open and immediately my fear mounted. My body was shaking violently as I willed myself to go inside.

   The first thing that hit me as I walked in was the smell. It was far more pungent than anything I had smelt before and my lungs felt dirty breathing the air that carried it. Then I saw the crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. It was Danny, that much I guessed, although I only knew from the clothing. His face had been mangled into an unrecognisable state by what looked like the claws of a wild animal. Surely that small cat couldn’t have done this. A trail of blood ran from Danny’s unmoving body upstairs. I swallowed the lump that had grown large in my throat and proceeded up the stairs. Even before I had reached the top of the first flight I knew the trail would continue. Up to the very top of the building. Up to what used to be the loft before a bright businessmen had converted it to three bedrooms and begun charging people to stay. Up to my bedroom.

   I walked cautiously up to the top. I followed the unholy trail up to my bedroom door where it stopped completely. The door itself was immaculate and this seemed to feel me with dread most of all. I took my keys out of my pocket, though had a feeling I wouldn’t need them. I was right, the door had been left on the latch. I could hear a faint, slushy chewing noise from inside. What I saw as I peeked through the doorway is something that I can’t quite recall reliably. The landlord, who had apparently been called over after this whole ordeal had begun, was inside. In the fraction of a second I spent looking inside before fleeing, he looked like the only illuminated object in the room. The rest was little more than shadow, at least that’s how my mind remembers it. Whatever had him in it’s grasps was feasting upon him and I had just enough time to see his half melted face scream in horror and agony before I turned tail.

   I ran straight out of the house, straight out back to the train station and bought a ticket for the first train back to Marylebone. I rang Codemasters on the Monday morning, told them I had been offered a better job somewhere else. I didn’t wait to hear their response. Mum and Dad have finally accepted that I neither want to work there anymore or explain why.

   Today it’s Friday and this weekend we’re going back to pick up my belongings. I don’t want to go but Dad said he’d go alone if I didn’t go with him. As long as we come and go in the daylight, everything will be fine. I keep telling myself that but really I have no idea what will greet us. I said that it all started with the cat and that could still be how it all ends. See, I initially assumed the cat was consumed by whatever evil had awoke in the house but these past couple of days I’ve thought differently. What if curiosity didn’t kill the cat? I can’t remember what I saw in that dank hole I once called my bedroom, but I do remember what I heard. And it sounded a lot like that dreadful mewing.

Was it worth it?

thethemeis: Curiosity Killed the Cat

theauthoris: Deadbeat

This was an open and shut case. Every law officer in the city knew who'd done it. The problem was that she was untouchable, from all sides. Nearly every governor in the city had used her services. The mayor certainly had, that was no great secret. It seemed every mob boss had a soft spot for her, each having been tempted by unique charm at some point or other. And judging by his constant attempts to close down my investigation I wouldn't be surprised to find out that my boss has paid a visit to her penthouse. There was no hope of getting an arrest for this case, I knew that from the moment I entered the scene. But something about the whole scene just didn't sit right with me. For some reason I simply had to know why.

Before me lay the corpse of the notorious Mexican hit-man Carlos Lopez, widely known as "The Cat". He was almost barely recognisable without his characteristic wide mouth grin and gleaming eyes, but a shotgun blast to the face would do that to a guy. In the box next to his body lay the clothes in which he was found, a set of highly expensive linen pyjamas. It never seemed right to me to kill a guy in his sleep, but given the number of unaware victims this guy's dragged in to the hideout of some mobster or other I had hardly any sympathy.

The coroner had no more to tell me about the incident then I already knew. Killed instantly by a single shotgun blast to the face at around 2:30am after a brief struggle. Scratches from long fingernails, red varnish. Lipstick marks, pink. High volume of alcohol in his blood. No other narcotics. No other injuries or healing wounds. No other traces. It painted a pretty obvious picture, but how things escalated into murder was still a mystery. Any clues I wanted would have to be dragged out of people.

There was no great urgency in this case. Any hope we had of keeping this thing underground disappeared when some clumsy (or corrupt) porter dropped the body bag upon exciting the scene and let Mr. Lopez out of the bag. From then on all of the town knew enough of the details to cover any tracks. Any possible witnesses soon became quiet. The murder weapon was almost certainly long gone. If I was going to stand any chance of finding out what really happened that night I had to talk to the woman who had done it herself.

I took a while to track her down, but finally I managed to gain an audience with the woman at the centre of this whole drama. I was in some dingy motel on the edge of town with the most sought after stripper/prostitute/woman of leisure this rotten hell hole of a city had seen in years. I had to admit, even with my cynical view of these pond life I felt the need to take down myself she was strangely alluring. There was definitely something about her. It wasn't unusual for people in her profession to dismiss their background and hide their tracks, but she seemed to have absolutely no history. She was simply now know by the name she took as a stripper when she came to this town. The name which fit her so well it seemed natural to use it in general conversation.

"I'm delighted that you made the personal effort to find me detective," Curiosity purred in her always sexual sounding town. "But i'm afraid you really shouldn't have bothered. There is only one condition under which I can tell you the reasoning behind my actions that night. And it leaves you in a very similar position to The Cat."

Perhaps i'd seen too many spy films in which the villain reveals his plan only for the hero to escape and foil him later. Perhaps I hadn't fully believed she would carry out her threat. Or perhaps i'd just grown so damn sick of this rotting city and all the crooked characters within it that I was prepared to go. I was prepared to leave them behind just to know why someone who seemed, despite her sordid nature, above the evilness in this place, would drop herself down to the level of all the other scum. Perhaps then i'd have little else to go on for. Either way she revealed the entire scene to me and all its predictable and disappointing twist and turns. And then she put a bullet in my head.

Was it worth it?

Is anything?

Mexico

thethemeis: Curiosity Killed the Cat

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   'Here, that's great, lad,' mumbled Derek, barely audible over his grandson's babbling. His eyes remained inches away from the blue glow of his computer screen. He was Googling donkey shows.

   Derek's grandson Harry was reciting the fourth division table out loud, making sure his grandfather could hear every result. Although Derek's hearing was starting to buckle under the pressure of passing time, he never let on to the kids that it wasn't bad enough yet that he couldn't hear the television unassisted because then he couldn't pretend not to have heard them when they asked a question he didn't want to answer or brought up a subject he didn't care to discuss. He was happy for Harry to read the table out to him, as long as he didn't start reading what was on the computer screen.

   'Charlton nil, Crystal Palace three,' Harry practically shouted across the room. He accented certain syllables in a way that Derek had heard many teenagers do in recent years, putting on some accent he was never brought up with just to fit in with friends that Derek can never imagine himself choosing when he was Harry’s age. Harry was fifteen, an age at which boys are normally loth to spend time alone with their grandfathers; but since the death of Ethyl, Derek’s wife, Harry’s mum has never been the same. She spends one half of her time staring into space, and the other half crying and yelling incomprehensible curses at Harry without reason. Grief has turned her into a wreck, a shell of the mother she once was; and as such, Harry avoids her like the plague.

   ‘Chelsea two, Bromley three,’ he shouts, typing a text message into his phone.

   Ethyl’s death was three years ago now, and although Derek still grieved for her, he had dealt with it in a far different way than his daughter. At first, he had sunk so far back into his shell that he feared even leaving the house. He would lock himself in his bedroom and hardly explore the house at all. When the mail came, he would throw it straight in the bin, fearing that it might hold more bad news he wasn’t ready for. Danger lurked around every corner, in every cupboard, in the face of every stranger that wandered past in the street. He read books, he wrote short poems about the pain he was feeling, and he lost two stones in those months.

   Then he found a present that his daughter and her son had bought him the Christmas before Ethyl died. Still boxed, never even looked at for longer than a few minutes, it was a laptop computer that Derek had no idea how to use and no idea what to use for. He unwrapped it that day, and invited his grandson round to teach him what to do with it. He’d heard somewhere that you could send letters to people on the other side of the world for free, in seconds, using one of these; and he wanted to learn how to do that, and then more.

   Over the weeks that followed, Derek gradually discovered the Internet. Having become a terrified skeleton following the death of his wife, he fattened up again into a chubby explorer, emerging from his shell and surfing everywhere from the Amazon to Expedia, from Adult Friend Finder to Flickr. He found out about karate and yoga, LCD screens and time travel, cats and literature, religion and India and hacking and boilers and Canada and wars and pregnancy and everything else that exists in the bottomless pit of the blogosphere. Even stuck inside his house, he was freed by the world inside his computer screen.

   And after it dragged him out of his shell, the Internet dragged him out of his house. He arranged French lessons for himself, cookery classes, a writing club, a skydiving trip, and holidays to every European city you or I could name off the top of our heads. He learned to play guitar (although not that well), he bought a games console that he never even played, and he went to plays he never even knew had been written. He even fucked a prostitute, a lovely young lady who it turned out had been in the year above his own daughter at the very same school. And now, the same Internet that had brought him all those new experiences had Derek discovering his favourite new topics yet: donkey shows and Tijuana.

   Derek had always heard that curiosity killed the cat. But for him, curiosity killed the pussy. The terrified wretch he had become was slaughtered mercilessly by his newfound thirst for knowledge.

   ‘Grimsby four, Man United one,’ mumbled Harry.

   ‘YES!’ Ejaculated Derek, at the top of his rusted lungs. Harry jumped out of his skin, and Derek couldn’t stop coughing until his laughter broke through as the more powerful convulsion.

   ‘Is you alright, granddad?’

   Derek looked up from his laptop screen. Still chuckling and coughing and spluttering and guffawing, he met Harry’s eye across the room that hadn’t been tidied or vacuumed for the last three months, what with Derek spending so little time in it; and he said, ‘Yes, son. I just like Grimsby, that’s all.’

   But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t a love of Grimsby at all. It was the amazing price that Derek had just got for a return flight to Tijuana, Mexico.