The Nymph's Digits

If you could just imagine a kind of sudden expansion?

Like if you pulled the cord on an inflatable dinghy. And suddenly a man was in my lap. A full grown man.

Weirdly, Lucifer arrived in a suit. A nice suit.

It just got weirder from there.

Because he was in my lap and he... Expanded so fast? He absolutely upset the table, the coffee, the toast, everything.

After I became acquainted with the distinctly unusual turn of events there was a serious pause.

A LONG PAUSE.

We stared at each other confusedly. In shock.

Then the chair collapsed.

My chairs are garbage. My friends call them the “fat shaming chairs.”

Subsequently my cat… my person? Reacted as you'd expect.

Have you ever seen a gangly six-foot-two man in a suit try to frantically scramble up the curtains to his favourite hidey-hole? I have.

If it weren't so disastrous it would have been funny.

Down came curtains, catman, and -of all things- a tray of beads.

The sound, the mess, the destruction was biblical. Not to mention the yowling of the catman who...

“Can he even talk?” I wondered.

After that, there was silence. I think Lucifer was stunned because he just lay there.

"What the FUCK is happening???"

“Ah. So cat people CAN talk.” I thought wryly.

I added this to my little mental journal of things to note about recently transformed cat people.

Then I thought "I'm being surprisingly cool about this... Is that normal? Should I see a therapist?”

Still sitting in the remains of my chair I crawled over to where he lay.

I was still at a loss for words.

"What...?"

"Fuck you." said the man in the suit, with conviction.

I sat back. Look at the ceiling. There was jam from earlier. It fell on my face. A satisfying plop.

“That does it.” I thought

Something was fucking with me and this was precisely where the buck stopped.

Standing carefully, (because: beads) I said: "stay there".

Then, with purpose I strode to the kitchen where I nearly met my maker because again: beads. There I found the salt.

“Close your eyes” I said to Lucy, throwing a generous handful of salt at him.

A brief pause. Then Lucifer seemed to shimmer and the sun went out for an instant.

Then everything was suddenly normal. Well… There was still a catman in my dining room.

People in the old days threw salt behind them. That works sometimes, but in my experience if you know where the trouble is you should address it directly.

I imagine you're probably thinking it would take a great deal of magic to put the sun out. And you're right. It totally would. Assuming you're doing it for everyone.

That taken care of, I knelt down to eye level with Lucifer.

"Lucy, can you understand me?"

He gave me a very familiar contemptuous look.

"You sound fucking stupid."

Cat person journal entry no. 2: cats like the word fuck.

Again, at a loss for words I just looked at him for a second.

"Do you want to be a cat again?"

"DO yOu waNT TO bE a cAT aGAiN?" He echoed mockingly without hesitation.

I'd just like to pause and note here that it would be wrong to assume that all cats (given a shot at being human) are assholes.

I know it's sort of what we expect when we think of talking cats or people, but I've met plenty of cats who were sweet and tender and nurturing. My cat, like some people, just happened to be an asshole.

Then I said: “Get up Lucy. We're going to find Emiley.”

Emiley.

I had a hunch it had to be Emiley. As I said before, I'm not really a witch, but in my time with her I had picked up a few things.

Honestly, until the jam had fallen on my face I was prepared to believe that my cat exploding was possibly just one of those unbelievably strange things that happens on an otherwise quiet Wednesday morning.

Not the jam. I know... you're probably thinking: “Spontaneous cat person? Fine. But, jam from above was the kicker??”

I know it seems strange, but in an infinite universe cats DO sometimes just turn into people. The jam hitting me in the face, however, was too on the nose. Pardon the pun. Too... maliciously smug.

So of course Emiley.

Strangely, although Lucifer’s suit was immaculate he had no shirt or tie.

I didn't check but I wasn't optimistic about his underwear. Gross.

We exited my apartment and hobbled to the corner where I got out my phone and called a car.

As we got in I said: “The park, please”

In the car I was relieved to see Lucifer turn back into a cat!

Then into a man again. There seemed no rhyme or reason to it.

Later the confused driver announced: “We're here."

I pulled Lucifer out of the tangle of suits and paid the driver. I slammed the door and pretended not to hear him yelling. Maybe about the magic cat man’s abandoned suits?

Next, I pulled out my umbrella, set Lucy on the sidewalk and took a necklace out of my bag.

The pendant was a raging bull. Made of iron, I think. It was heavy. The detail was remarkable given its size. It was so lifelike.

Lucifer, now a cat, looked up at me fiddling with the necklace and said: "The fuck are you doing?"

I shushed him and opened the umbrella. Turning it upside down I dropped the necklace inside. Then I closed the umbrella. The necklace was Emiley’s. After our argument I found it caught between two floorboards.

With the necklace enclosed in the umbrella I started dowsing.

The park was absolutely massive. Big enough to hide things which most people would rather not know about. Here be dragons.

This was a problem given that I was trying to find Emiley with what amounted to a metal detector.

After a while I felt as though we were getting closer.

This assumption of mine was reinforced by a strange sound. Not screaming. More like an “eep!”. The sound of someone who might have been struggling to breathe.

I cast about amongst the trees and to my horror I saw where the sound had come from. It sprouted from the tree like a branch: Emiley’s arm.

“Emiley!” I shouted, horrified.

I ran to the tree and clasped at the hand.

“Emiley? Are you all right??”

A little sound (less frantic than before) emanated from inside the tree. There was another sound, too. A woody, thrumming humming.

Lucifer hissed at the trunk. “I mean at least she can breathe, right?”

Trying to take in the situation and make a plan. I didn’t know enough about murder trees to fix this.

“That’s Songwood. She’ll be dead in a couple of hours.” Lucifer observed somewhat indifferently.

I thought of buying a chainsaw. I doubted it could cut the bark of a tree so obviously made for killing.

I was overwhelmed, but I did not cry.

Okay. I cried a little.

Lucifer cut in amidst my sobs. “So are you just gonna let her die then?”

I was kind of taken aback. “I don’t know how to fix this!” I said angrily.

My cat shook his head despairingly “You need a key. Can’t you see that?”

“What key? Where?”

“I have an idea. If you’ll stop… doing that I’ll find you one… alright?”

Emiley made a happy sound from the tree. If I didn’t know better I’d swear there was a note of tenderness amidst Lucifer’s terseness.

“Come on.” he said, turning his back to the tree that was slowly growing around my friend. “We need to see The Nymphs.”

“The Nymphs” was one of the park’s most loved and famous sculptures. A hundred Nymphs had been sculpted from marble and scattered throughout the park. About fifty were gathered around a fountain at the center of things. They were stunning. Ancient.

Ultimately, when Lucifer had said “we need to see the Nymphs” this wasn’t what I had had in mind.

Now the two of us were hiding. Huddled together in the bushes next to the fountain and the Nymphs.

Lucifer’s plan was that we should catch the statues moving. It was a game they loved to play. If you caught them they’d tell you a secret. The nymphs would know.

We tried to hide in the bushes, but between his tail and my ticklish nose we couldn’t manage.

We decided to change tactics. Lucifer approached a statue menacingly.

“Y'know, my friend Emiley has a giant chisel. And a hammer. It’s in her bag.”

I didn’t, but I humoured him by rummaging purposefully around in my bag.

Something iron clinked against one of my tiny bottles.

Suddenly, like a ripple from a pond, every statue turned to face us.

In harsh rasping voices they chorused:

“Hammer, chisel, fire and sword

Take not action untoward

The wind may take us till we’re dust

But let your hammer sit and rust.”

Their last words echoed spookily through the clearing.

Lucifer was paralyzed. A cat caught in a corner. Fearful and tense.

“We need to leave.” he said.

Now, I hadn’t blinked or looked away, but once again everything had changed. The nymphs had returned to their original positions. It was like I’d dreamt or hallucinated the whole thing.

“We need.” Said Lucifer “TO GO.”

I wasn’t giving up that easily.

I stooped to pick up a pebble. Looking at the statues. This could have gone better.

I toyed with the pebble in my pocket.

“I can still fix it.”

“I’m buying a chainsaw” said Lucy.

“That was my idea. What, you’re gonna hold it with your tiny paws? Would a saw even work?”

He bristled, but conceded my point.

We ran back to Emiley’s tree.

She made a noise. I guess to let us know she was still breathing.

As we arrived Lucifer changed again. This time he caught himself easily and kept running.

I pulled the pebble out of my pocket, fumbling it.

“The pebble! I dropped it!”

Lucifer’s eyes were sharp in the dimming light. “Here! Is that a nymph’s finger? Why do you have that?”

At guess I would say it had belonged to a nymph before an accident had knocked it off.

I picked up the finger and jammed it into a space in the tree bark.

The tree’s bark was softer than it looked. It stuck to my hand for a second. Then it began swallowing the fingertip I had given it.

Emiley started to scream. I might have screamed a little too. I wasn’t sure if the tree would crush the finger.

Then the fingertip cracked. It was loud. Louder than it should have been. Almost like a gunshot.

It echoed in the forest. Then came a rumbling. Like a ton of boulders being dumped out of a truck.

Then came the Nymphs. All 150 of them.

The nymphs engulfed the tree. Bark flying. I feared for Emiley.

The nymphs were an actual force of nature. Tearing with their hands, hacking and biting. Completely terrifying. I understood now why Lucifer had been so scared.

Then, almost as fast as they’d come, the Nymphs were gone.

On the ground Emiley lay, motionless.

She was bruised and there were small cuts all over her small body. Her white sundress was mostly intact. She was breathing at least. Her shoulder length yellowy white hair was wavy and slick with sweat.

I hugged her close to me. Kissing her neck, saying her name. Crying.

She opened her eyes, smiled at me. Faintly she said: “It worked!”

Through my tears I smiled. “It did, love.”

Her eyes began to close again. “You came. My princess.”