It's that time of the week again - FREEBIE FRIDAY is here, and time for another sample from NO MONSTERS ALLOWED. This time we're taking a sneak peek into 'Old Bones' by Shannon Quinn, a fantastic example of human horror quirkily delivered from the perspective of a cat. Roger is a great protagonist for this, that perhaps sees more than the people around him do, which is part of what makes this story so fascinating. So, without, further ado...
OLD BONES
By Shannon Quinn
Roger
promised to visit his girl as long as he didn’t have to wear the
bonnet. He has to draw the line somewhere. He hears her small steps,
her breath coming in excited gasps. He sees her tangled brown curls
in the distance. She is tripping along behind her mother.
Roger
waits on the front stoop, soaking the last of the summer heat from
the cement steps.
The
girl’s eyes find him, “Hello Kitty Cat!” She is slapping him
repeatedly on the head. Roger assumes she believes she is petting
him. Her mother is fumbling with a set of keys,
“I
said be gentle with that thing. You probably shouldn’t even be
touching it, it could have rabies or fleas.” She mashes a key into
the lock and opens the door. The girl holds Roger up, gripping him
under his front legs so that he dangles inelegantly.
“He’s
coming to my party.” She bolts upstairs with Roger held out in
front of her, swinging like a pendulum.
Mr.
Eisman hears the mother’s clattering heels on the stairs above him…
heels attached to feet attached to curved lean legs. He purses his
mouth. He knows he mustn’t let those kinds of thoughts into his
head. He must stop all of his thinking and be still.
Early
this morning he’d run into the mother as she was leaving for work.
Her pulpy red mouth chewed out words asking him to look in on the
girl during the evening, “unless it would be too much trouble.”
His tongue had retreated and plugged the back of his throat like a
garden slug. He’d had to nod yes instead of speak. Speaking to
women who weren’t girls was highly unpleasant. Women were loud and
their words were far too slippery.
Upstairs,
Roger, a plastic frog, a mangy stuffed rabbit and the girl are all
sitting in a circle. Roger is wearing a yellow bonnet trimmed with
lace. His girl is pouring tea and keeping up an animated one-sided
conversation. In the light of day there is no hint of the night
terrors.
Yesterday
evening Roger climbed up the fire escape and slipped in through her
window. He had felt her whimpers right through the ceiling and deep
into his bones. The terrors whispered his name as sure as they
trapped her in her sleep. She sees a dark roiling sky, flooded with
the milky colour of cataracts… the girl wonders to herself, who
stole all of the colour… just as thundering grey emaciated bodies
hurtle themselves toward her, eyes rolled back into their heads.
Roger pushed himself up against her chest, purred loudly and patted
at her face with his paw.
She
flailed awake, throwing Roger off of the bed. She sat upright and
still for a moment before she carefully pulled back the sheets she
had peed in, bundled them up and hid them in the back of her closet.
Then she curled up on the floor with a blanket. From under the bed
Roger watched to make sure she slid back through the folds of sleep,
not getting snared in roiling skies.
Roger
is twenty. Twenty is old for a cat. Twenty is old to be wearing a
bonnet. His girl is so young. Special. She sees what the others
cannot: the shadows in the night, the extraordinary brightness of
day, the weight of air, the thought of a breeze. One blink of her
tiny eyelids freezes time and the second blink frees it.
He
hopes he’ll be gone when it happens, when she sloughs off her
childhood as all of them must. Her soul, snuggling against the
infinite, will be tugged ever so slightly away. Everything will be
set in motion, too quickly and without warning. It might be at recess
or while hiding in a closet or sitting beside a stranger on a bus. No
one can ever predict the exact moment that childhood evaporates.
Roger has seen it so often, this time he’d rather be gone when it
happens.
He
excuses himself from the tea party. It’s past his naptime. He
gingerly navigates his way down the fire escape. Once inside the
apartment he can see Mr. Eisman behind his curtained partition that
he uses as a bedroom wall. The shop is a dark place. The lamplight
coming from beside Mr. Eisman’s cot elongates a ghoulish skeletal
frame against the wall. It’s his naptime also.
Extract
copyright © Shannon Quinn 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment