The Neighbours Cat Story - Essay Example

The Neighbor’s Cat I’m on the edge of my seat in the darkened living room. The house is empty, filledwith only the blue glow of the television because all the lights are turned off. The phone rings. The girl picks it up and starts talking. There is a male voice on the other end of the line. It’s the same one that’s called a few times already, the one that called the wrong number. The girl looks out the window at the pool. She asks the voice why he wants to know her name, he tells her, “So I know who I am looking at.” My blood goes cold. I involuntarily glance at the closed blinds covering the door to my own backyard and lean away from it at the same time. It’s nearing Halloween, one of my favorites, and I’m trying to get into the spirit of the holiday. I’ve lived here for about a year, but I still don’t know all that many people and an invitation to a costume party is unlikely at this point. The only people I know are the policeman and his wife next door and they’re not really the partying type. On TV, Casey tells the man she’s about to call the cops, but they both know they’d never arrive in time. Casey asks him what he wants. “To see what your insides look like,” he says. Then the doorbell rings. Not just the one she’s standing next to in the movie, but the one right behind my head. I almost hit my head on the ceiling I jump so high. The ring is followed immediately by frantic knocking. The knowledge that it’s the killer on the other side of the door in Scream doesn’t help much in getting me to answer the door. My feet are lead anvils and my legs are Jell-O, but some kind of curious invisible hook has snagged inside my belly compelling me to move to the door even while the two hemispheres of my brain argue back and forth about the wisdom of this movement. My right arm reaches to bang on the neighbor’s wall. He is a cop, after all. But the wall we share is on my left side, so it’s a fruitless but valiant effort by the creative side of me to preserve me from my logical curiosity. The ten steps it would take for me to reach the door of my tiny apartment have stretched to a marathon mile and the standard beige carpet has become molasses warmed. I have to walk past a darkened hallway on my right before I even come close to the door. The air kicks on at just this moment and I receive a quick burst of warm air puffing out of the open spaces. It feels like the breath of some giant creature leaning against my neck. The air is stale, I haven’t cleaned yet this week, and it’s full of dust since this is the first week the heater’s been on this year. This hallway reaches back into the bedrooms and bathroom areas. It’s an open hole, a gaping darkness, threatening to swallow me up or concealing malevolent beings, I don’t know which. I’m actually afraid to move across this open space. It just now occurs to me that the cat had disappeared down this hallway hours earlier and I hadn’t given it a second thought. This is the cat that hates to be alone, the cat that lies curled at my side whenever I am at home and sitting still. Where has he been all this time? Now, I could see in my mind’s eye the grotesque image of a dead cat hanging by the neck in the doorway of the back bedroom, an image I received from yet another horror movie. The darkness would hide much of the doorway, I knew, but I’m sure I would have been able to see the faint outline of a slowly swinging animal if the door were within my true line of sight. I break into a cold sweat. I can’t move across the open hallway, but I can’t move backward either. Someone is still knocking frantically at my door. I think of Edgar Allen Poe with his raven. I am certain that my happiness and peace of mind will return ‘nevermore’. Biting my lip, I somehow inch forward across the open hall. Nothing comes out to snatch me into death. I am relieved, but this is only the first hurdle. Now the floor under my bare feet changes from carpet to cool, slightly damp tile that feels like the chill of the tomb. It is white, like bones, and I cringe away from the clammy touch of dead fingers reaching from below to drag me into their personal hells. The cracks are where they’d break through, I think. Like a child, I hop from one square to the next, always careful not to allow my feet to touch a crack or I’ll break my mother’s back. Finally, I have reached the door. The knocking has stopped, but I can hear strange noises from the other side like the scratching of sandpaper or the heavy breathing of a monster. Someone is still out there. I take a peep through the peep hole. There is nothing but blackness. If I turn on the light, whoever is out there will not only know that I’m home, but will also know where I am in my home. What if Leatherface is out there, waiting with his chain saw to hack the door and me to pieces for tomorrow’s dinner? Unfortunately, the light switch is on my left side, which has already proven itself the stronger, and before I realize what I’m doing, the outside light has been flicked on. I’m still looking through the peephole, though, and there isn’t even a hint of light out there. Whoever it is is actually blocking my peephole! I knew it was trouble. I knew it was a killer on the loose. I jump back from the doorway in fright and look down quickly to be sure the double locks have been thrown. They aren’t. The door is unlocked! Whoever it is could have walked in at any time and killed me, they didn’t have to knock. Like a song, the realization hits me. What kind of killer would knock instead of walking in when given the opportunity? Whoever is outside is now calling my name, they know me. I look out the peephole again and see my neighbor’s anxious face, yellowy white in the light of the porch. She’s trying to look in and calling to me. My voice is still locked in my throat with fear, so I do the only thing left available to me. I open the door and get hit with a wall of cold air, knocking me back a few steps into my house. The wind has picked up, bringing with it the cold of winter and reminding me that it’s the dead season. She’s dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, obviously what she was wearing while sitting inside her own house watching TV. She searches my face. She’s been crying, there is a pinched look about her eyes that tells me she wasn’t concerned about me. Whatever she’s upset about is still upsetting her. She’s hugging herself, whether from the cold or from dread, I don’t know. With a catch in her voice, she attempts to speak. It gets lodged in her throat, much like mine. With a sob, she tries again. Looking up at me with watery eyes, she asks, “Have you seen my cat?” Read More