The Cat and The Owl's Curse

This was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives. Cat and Owl’s Skull had known each other for so long that Owl’s Skull was now a Skull. It was because of an old promise to Cat turned curse that Owl had come back to haunt life.

THE PROMISE – Cat and Owl were lying in bed where the best promises soon to turn into curses are made. Her eyes were big and green while she lied underneath Owl. She did not like to be stared at even though his eyes could not stop staring at her. She used to pull a thousand faces in instant as if she wanted to escape, but there was no where she wanted to be but there under Owl. Her claws had left red marks on his back. He felt as if some of them were bleeding, but this thought was at the very back of his mind. He was too intent for such details.

“What,” she said. Cat had the habit of showing her tongue when she knew she was being naughty, like lying there underneath Owl, who was not her boyfriend because her boyfriend was elsewhere. “What is it”, she said, her tongue sibilant between her teeth.

“Nothing, what’s wrong with just looking at you?”

“I don’t like it,” Cat said.

“But I do,” Owl said. “It’s your fault for being so cute.”

No no, she shook her head. No. “I am going to kill you one day.”

“And I will come back to haunt you.”

“No,” she said with a giggle that sounded like the mirth of a thousand children in heaven.

“You won’t get rid of me so easily,” Owl said with his steady stare, his r’s so soft because he had grown up too lazy to vibrate his r’s, so soft that it was almost not there, so soft she was happy of that absence when he spoke.

“You sure?”

“Promise,” said Owl.

They kissed and they sealed that promise in the only way promises can turn into curses. There are worse ways to offer eternal love. But love is not eternal.

SOMEONE DIES – They drifted apart. Cat kept her boyfriend that was not Owl for a long time even though she loved Owl, because Cat was Cat: she didn’t follow either reason or heart. Owl died somehow one day. He was doing Owl stuff, reading books and forgetting about the World, trying to be nice to people in the meantime hoping they would not take too much of his life. Owl liked his own space because it was the only place he could be full. People drained him of energies. If he spent too long with Others he used to become moody and antsy. It was as if he had an intolerance to people.

Anyway, he was there reading and forgetting about the World when the World remembered about him and was annoyed at having been forgotten. It took hold of Owl’s heart and squeezed. And then squeezed some more. Owl had a very weak heart because his dad had a very weak heart and maybe his dad before him. His dad’s heart had given up a long time before Owl’s heart did the same. Owl knew it was coming, because death comes after death, but he had hoped he would still see Cat one more time before it happened. We always hand our hopes to the future, never to today. So it happened that Owl died of a heart attack. It was not even an interesting death.

SOMEONE COMES BACK – So Owl died and then he came back soon after because of that stupid curse sealed on a wet bed. He actually came back to the memory of that day, the promise, her touch. The feelings, always the feelings. He cursed himself for that promise because now he knew he would not be free of that promise and, at the same time, that he would never live with Cat again. This thought drained him so much that he came back reduced to his bones, as if love had consumed him, he came back as Owl’s Skull.

And so he haunted the one and only. Cat said she loved him but time after time she escaped him, because she loved to be chased and Owl, all things considered, loved the chase. She loved his Skullface, as if it was still his face. She liked to treat him with anger, and raise her voice, and be moody in a corner. She liked when he joked about it, then started to tickle her, taste the ground, trying to approach her soul. And when their souls met, he was happy that he had come back from the dead.

But he was only a haunting and hauntings cannot be with the living. So Owl’s Skull used to pine after Cat when she took lovers, lovers she took only because they were alive and living things were supposed to be with living things. Owl’s Skull suffered for not being alive, but then remembered that his life with Cat had not been any different when he was alive and she was alive.

THE DAY ARRIVES - But then that day arrived, the day that was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives. Cat had finally had enough of her life without Owl’s Skull. Cat was dying. She had bought a house by herself because she knew she would not have been there on her own. She invited Skull in because hauntings cannot enter new homes unless they have been invited. Cat told him that she wanted to be with him until the day she too died, and the day after that too, so they would be the happiest dead Cat and Owl that they could have ever possibly been. It was indeed supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.

But Owl’s Skull was a curse and he would be a curse forever bound to that promise he had made to Cat so long ago. And curses can only haunt the living. When Cat died he would not haunt her anymore and he would be lost amongst the living until his love, without an object, would slowly dissipate and with it, his afterlife. The day Cat died she would just die because only curses survive. Cat didn’t know though, only curses know that there is no afterlife. So Owl’s Skull said nothing and smiled at Cat’s love. This was indeed the happiest day of their lives, but that was all it was. Because happiness lasts the time of a curse. By then it was too late.