Foregone

It was the cat. That damn cat. If only he could find that damn cat again, maybe he could make some sense of all of this. Then again, none of it made any sense to begin with, did it? All that he knew was the cat was the key. The cat knew the way. He should have known, why had he been so foolish and not seen the signs? The writing was there on the wall as plain as day if he had only had the eyes to read it. Just follow the damn cat. So simple, an imbecile could have figured it out, why hadn’t he? He had to go back. Back to where he had first seen the cat. 

He had been on his daily route home from work, a typical grey day in his drab life, when he had first seen the pathetic creature. He worked at an unfulfilling job in a boring, lifeless city and had to walk the nine blocks between the square chunk of concrete where his office was located and the other equally unappealing steel structure where he lived. The commute itself was also generally miserable in nature, and he had to pass by a lot more vacant and boarded up buildings on his walk than he felt that any respectable city should consider reasonable. As he had walked down the street, with his head down and generally doing his best to ignore the squalor and depression closing in around him like a slowly increasing pressure, he saw the cat for the first time. 

 At the time, he hadn’t thought much about it, just another sad looking stray, meowing at him from the alleyway between two run-down and abandoned retail store fronts. The mangy thing looked as if it hadn’t eaten in several days, and probably had all sorts of fleas and other parasites calling its emaciated body home. He ignored it, as he did most things while on his daily walk, better to shut out the harsh outside world and retreat inside oneself when one's reality was as bad as his was. There was something about the thing that struck him as odd, even at the time, or else he wouldn’t have remembered it now. The cat’s eyes seemed like they were.... pleading with him. Begging him to understand in some way the mystical secrets of the universe that the cat knew but couldn’t relate to the man in a way that he could possibly comprehend. 

He was being silly. It was just a cat. Another wretched occupant of a terrible world in which they were all just barely able to survive in. Not that much different than himself, he had thought glumly as he glared at the cat. He had continued home that night and forgotten all about the strange feeling that he had almost allowed himself to feel when he had looked into the cats' eyes. Until he had gone to sleep that night, and dreamed for the first time in as long as he could remember. He only vaguely remembered what the dream itself was about, other than it had left him with a general feeling of well-being when he awoke. And that the cat had been in it. 

He had noticed the feline several more times on his daily trudge back and forth between work and home for the next few weeks, and every time he felt a small measure of peace and contentment enter him, despite there being nothing special about the cat, and no real reason that anything at all in his sad life should bring him anything but misery. Finally, on one particularly grey and gloomy morning on his way to work, the man noticed the cat in the alleyway and for the first time, he stopped and raised his head to examine the animal. It truly was a wretched thing, skinny and bedraggled, but there seemed to be an intelligence behind the thing's green eyes that the man just couldn’t quite fully understand. He had spoken to the cat then, asking it what it wanted from him, but the cat just gazed at him with those eyes before suddenly getting to its feet and walking a few steps into the alley, where it stopped and looked back at him pointedly. Another step, another look over its shoulder at him. 

He thought now about the surreal nature of that moment, how he had felt ridiculous even as he had turned and begun to follow the cat slowly into the alley. Why had he done that, he still didn’t know. He had haltingly followed the little creature for several steps past the point where the small amount of morning light ceased to penetrate the inky darkness beyond. He had muttered something to himself about this being crazy, it was just a stupid stray cat, and he was going to be late for work if he didn’t get back on his way. 

Just as he began to turn back, he saw something from the corner of his eye a little way further down the dark corridor of the alley. A faint glow coming from a doorway, set into the side of the building that seemed to beckon to him. It looked extremely out of place, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on why he felt that way, only that the warm glow from beyond the door felt inviting and filled him with a pleasant feeling that he couldn’t remember feeling for a very long time, if ever. He had walked over to the door then, the cat and his job forgotten and all the little stresses and worries that normally plagued his everyday life seeming to drip away like the last raindrops of a spring shower. 

He had reached out then and put his hand on the door, feeling the warmth from the other side radiating through it and into his body, bringing with it a feeling of contentment that had almost broken him from the sheer weight of the understanding that a man could feel that way. All of his life he had felt empty and hollow, with no joy or sense of fulfillment from anything for as far back as he could remember, and now, just with the realization that there was another, better way to live made him want to burst into tears on the spot and weep for all of the years he had spent thinking otherwise. He had tried to gather himself for what seemed like a very long time, standing in the dark alley with his hand on the handle of the door. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew somehow that all that he had to do to change his entire life's path for the better was to just throw it all away and step through that door. He could walk away from all the ugly grey misery of his world and escape to a new place, a better place. A place where he could live the rest of his days without worry, without the constant weight of this bleak world crushing down on him and slowly pulverizing his spirit. All he had to do was to walk away from it all, and step through the softly glowing door. 

He had balked, of course. He had shaken his head as if to clear out the hazy cobwebs of indecision, and he had slowly let his hand fall away from the doors handle to rest at his side. This was stupid, he had told himself. He couldn’t just go around opening doors to places where he didn’t belong, what if the building owner was in there and had him arrested for trespassing? Or worse, some vagrant hiding out and just waiting for an unsuspecting fool to come waltzing in just to be immediately assaulted? No, this made no sense, what had he even been doing there? Now he was late for work as well, he suddenly realized as he shook off the warmth of the door and turned to walk hurriedly back to the street and his interrupted commute. 

As he had reached the mouth of the alley and was about to turn down the now busy street towards work, already thinking about what pathetic excuse he would give to his boss about being late this time, he had heard the cat meow forlornly. It was a sound that was filled with sadness, and it was enough to make him turn and give the creature one last look, but it was not quite enough to make him slow his pace. He had raced the rest of the way to the office that morning, and received his reprimand for being tardy, but it had all gone by in a foggy haze that he had a hard time remembering. 

All that day he had thought about the door. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else, and his performance noticeably suffered throughout the day. He couldn’t get that feeling out of his head, but it was quickly being replaced by a feeling of immense loss. Why hadn’t he just taken a peek to see what was through the door? Surely it was something beautiful, something magical for him to have felt that undeniable feeling of satisfaction and joy that he had never felt in his life, simply by touching the handle. Was it some sort of portal or gateway to another realm? A mystical land where everything was the opposite of this horrid place that he once again found himself? How he longed to feel that way again, even for a moment, anything had to be better than this place, why hadn’t he taken the chance and just stepped through, consequences be damned? 

He resolved then that he would do it, he would go back to the door, and he would cast all doubt aside and throw all caution to the wind and he would go through that damn door and see what miracles lay in wait for him on the other side. He didn’t care if he never returned to this world, there was nothing here for him except for the thought that he had made a huge mistake that had begun to nag him. How he hated it here, what possible reason could he have to stay anyway? He had been so conditioned by his dismal existence that he had chosen to return to it rather than take the seemingly obvious choice to escape it. What a fool that he had been, he thought now to himself glumly. 

He had gone back to the alleyway after work and had seen no sign of the cat. He had stepped cautiously into the passage between the two buildings and moved hesitantly past the point where the shadows consumed the last of the waning sunlight that filtered in from the street. There was no feeling of warmth now, and he could see no glow from the door up ahead, in fact, he couldn’t even make out the door in the gloom. As he stepped further into the alley, a sinking feeling of dread had crept up the back of his spine as he realized that the door was no longer there. He knew it had been right in this very spot that very morning, and now it was gone. Not gone like someone had removed the door itself from the frame and bricked over the hole, no, it was as if it had never been there at all. He searched in futility up and down the length of the wall, but there was no sign that anything that he had witnessed that morning had even been real, and there certainly was and had never been any door at all. 

The weight and stress of his life had gone from miserable to almost unbearable from that point on. To know that there was somewhere else, a better place where he could have been happy and fulfilled, and to know that he had lost his chance to escape this tortured reality was far worse than when he had never known at all. He had to get that feeling back, it called to him and filled his dreams and waking thoughts at all times of day or night. He had gone over it in his mind repeatedly, all he had to do was to find the door again and this time he would not hesitate. He would accept whatever fate awaited him beyond the door, if he could only find it again. He had to find it again, he had to escape this life but how could he? He had lost his one chance at true happiness, and he knew it deep down, even as he spent hours prowling the streets in search of the door, or the cat that could lead him back to it. Perhaps it moved around to new locations from time to time, and all he needed to do was to be in the right place at the right time again, but what were the odds? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t optimistic. 

He had taken to following every stray cat that he came across then, although he never found the same animal with the intelligent, burning green eyes. The cat. That damn cat was the answer, it had to be. Where had it gone, and why had it appeared to him at all if it was only going to vanish and leave him stranded here in this personal hell that he called his life? If only he had chosen differently that morning, if he had only taken the chance. He would find that cat again and follow it until it led him back to the door, if it took the rest of his life, he would find that damn cat again. 

As he trudged morosely through the dirty grey streets of the city, searching here and there for just a glimpse of the lost opportunity that the door had become to him, a pair of green eyes watched him from high on a fourth story fire escape. The cat meowed sadly to itself as it watched the man search in vain for something that by virtue of its very definition, was something that he could never find again. The cat then worked its way back down the side of the building to street level, and with one final pitying glance back toward the man, it turned and strode off in the other direction.