Denial of Devils

The opening notes of Some Velvet Morning tinkled in from a source that sounded far away. The black cat padded down the long dingy bar and silently leaped to the sliding feet of his owner. There was something strange about the cat even before he uttered a word. And I didn’t remember the cat being at the play, no one mentioned it, and they invariably would have. But then again, I didn’t remember walking into the bar either. Or why we had chosen it. The cat’s golden eyes were round and shining. Saucers that made him look like more of a cartoon come to life than any animal I’d seen previous. A Louis Wain figure. 

The cat licked his paw and kept his gaze on me. Mik danced in a circle around the creaking floor, touching his shock silver hair. It was a duet. It didn’t matter, he would have danced to anything. And he would have wanted to dance alone. 

His foolishness, the careless way he flung his arms around and then stood with them akimbo. It frightened me. Something was wrong, it was so dark and empty for a Saturday night. His ears were really sticking out, red and hot from all the dancing. There was so much smoke, but no cigarettes in sight. Through the smoke I could see the posters on the wall. All different paintings of Saint Sebastian. 

I would have liked very much for Mik to put an arrow through any part of me. That hot inner pulsing that cannot be explained. It can only be understood by both parties, usually prompted by casual touch. 

Only hours before on the stage I found his antics incredibly charming. Everything about him had oozed his pure charisma. The type of thing only a totally ugly man can possess. Everyone agreed with me, even Anna Stepp, who delights in giving negative critiques. She had set her little antiquated notebook down and sang his praises in the rapidity of her claps. Mik was full of wit, so full that there wasn’t room for anything else. I liked him immediately and immensely.

Earlier in the night he strutted across the little broken stage, but I couldn’t recall the name of the play. Something by Mamet. I did remember touching his hand, which was only for a moment.

That dirty little pulse I felt inside myself watching him, I explained it with the notion that he had depth. A kind of vague inner torment that only floated to the surface publicly while he was in character. He was probably quite sanguine when not in front of other people. In the dark recesses of the basement apartment he rented for pennies, I imagined that he often wept. 

He wasn’t weeping now. He was grinning and the bartender was passing him more tiny drinks. The cocktails were gray, like an aviation, but they tasted like something else. Like drinking liquid smoke. It burned very much. He set mine down next to me and gave me a wink. It was the first time I noticed that in a certain light, his gray green eyes had a serious hint of yellow. It could have been all the smoke and the liquor.  

I sipped, and when Mik turned around I put the remainder of the glass onto the sticky table. The cat jumped up. While he was on the floor, he looked so large, the size of a toddler, and I couldn’t imagine him fitting. He’d knock over the glass surely. But then, no he was actually quite small close up sitting next to the smoking liquid. His tail brushed my arm and flicked my face. 

He drank all the rest before I could stop him. And when he finished, that’s when he began to laugh. 

The cat sounded like Mik except an octave deeper. He choked a little at the end, I’m guessing from the smoke in the cocktail. And I am unsure how much gin a cat can theoretically drink before gagging. The song was ending and giving way to something else, which Mik did not seem interested in dancing to. 

“We’ll take another of those, unless you think it’s a bad idea.” 

The cat’s yellow eyes looked me over. It was he who gave the orders. The bartender got to work. 

The lights flickered when a clap of thunder erupted outside. We don’t get real storms here, especially in the spring.

“What in the David Lynch?” 

I joked to the cat, as if I still expected some happy, easy to explain outcome. He looked back at me for a moment. I watched his pupils dilating as he watched the crackling weather outside through the window. A small square thing carved into the charcoal colored wall. 

The new song repeated itself. Mik went back to dancing. I can’t tell you what it was. It was all horns with no words or other accompaniments. 

In the window, the face of a woman appeared. But was she a woman, or a painting? The colors were running down her face and it wasn’t clear if she was wearing makeup. She didn’t look it, I mean, she didn’t look made up. She was quite ugly if I’m being honest. Thick jowls, and a deep indent in her chin. 

It made me nervous, and she was staring at us. The cat was staring at her, and he became agitated and excited. 

“She’s here, she’s here!” 

He became a total animal again and pawed at the window. Little cries erupting as his claws hit the glass. But as she stood there with the rain pouring down and the colors leaving her face, her face was losing it’s shape. It lost it more and more until nothing was left but a small peach shaped orb, presumably what used to be her chin. 

“Oh, how I wish to be out there! I don’t care a lick if I get wet!” 

The cat cried. He jumped from the table and onto the little makeshift dance floor on which his master was still dancing. He stood up on his hind legs and clutched onto Mik’s legs, preventing the dance from continuing. 

Mik, to his credit, seemed very patient and stopped his movements. He scooped the cat up, who was progressively seeming smaller and smaller. 

“There, there Mothy, we have a new one now. Don’t worry about that one. Look what’s inside now.” 

The cat used his crumpled paws to wipe his all too large eyes and gazed at me. And then he began crying again. And while his voice was still low, it was in the style of a child’s complaints which did not match the voice’s mature tone.

 I was not the same as his other mistress, I was darker and fatter and I had a terrible knack for cracking a smile. His old mistress never smiled, and he did not understand why, oh, why Mik had ever chosen me to capture. I didn’t even believe in hell! I'd ruin them!

Mik laughed and dropped the cat to the floor. 

It was the first time in the whole scene Mik truly acknowledged me. He sat across from me and slid another little gray cocktail over. I hadn’t seen the bartender make it. And upon second glance, I realized that the bartender was no longer present. And the little cocktails while before had only been smoking, were now sparkling with flames. Mik feigned blowing out a candle. 

“Blow, and I will keep you here.” 

I didn’t blow the fire out. It was growing. The fire on top of Mik’s drink was too. 

“What happens if I don’t blow it out?” 

I asked, sure of what his answer would be. 

“You return to the above. For a little while. But sooner or later you’ll end up here with Moth and I. This sort of place is what you deserve.” 

Joke was on him and his stupid little cat. The cat at this point was face down on the floor pounding all four of his limbs into the floor. A tantrum very unbecoming to animal, child, or grown man. 

The song had stopped and given in to inevitable silence. 

“Blow on the drink, and a sheet of paper will appear.” 

Still I was stoic. He leaned across the table and he did the strangest thing. He turned my head to the side and he slid his tongue, the whole length of it, into my ear. I’ve never felt anything like it before or since. It was deadly cold and numbing.

Where it came from, my resilience, I don’t know. I am not a religious person, and I have no ability to restrain myself from base passions in most circumstances. 

But despite my sex, and my lack of religious faith, I was not shaken. He ought to melt like his mistress and I wished he were outside now. I told him as much. 

“You’d like to wake up then?” 

I nodded. Unable to speak, not because I didn’t want to. But something was stuck, and my grip was being lost. I tried to touch the table and couldn’t raise my arms. Mik reached his arm across the table as if to steady me. It was then I realized that his hands had been replaced by black, sooty hooves. 

The cat cried and and cried and I closed my eyes like it might do something. 

___________________________________________

When you wake up in grime, it is a terrible feeling. Like falling asleep without brushing your teeth or washing your face, but so much worse. The woman in the next stall flushed the toilet. Little flecks of water managed to make their way through the wide gap and onto my face. I perked up, hoping no one would notice I had been asleep in this large stall. And when I emerged, I was horrified to realize, no one had. 

Anna Stepp was at the sink washing her hands. But she had entered the bathroom a moment before I had, I remembered that. 

She smiled at me sideways in the mirror and then was disgusted and surprised to see I didn’t pause to wash my own. 

In the lobby of the theater, Mik was being fawned over by the rest of them. He was a short man comparatively speaking. And he looked at me and the gold was still there in his eyes. I felt that little pulse, but I had been warned enough. I walked straight out of the theater and down the sidewalk. 

On my twenty minute walk back home, I saw many things. I saw a clear sky, I saw many stars, and I saw a little black cat rolling around on someone’s front porch.

Despite my waking nightmare, I can’t help but still be incurably fond of cats. And this one was friendly as roly poly cats often display themselves to be. 

When he padded to me from his master’s porch I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were a shade of yellow too. He might have been a little devil to be sure. But because I don’t believe in such things, this notion did not prevent me from giving him the most wholehearted pets.