Unnatural Predators

The keyhole was almost comically large, something out of a lamplight noir mystery. I thought of the night before when I had peeked through to see her at the vending machine, feeding it coins and pressing the esoteric combinations that would spit out our makeshift dinner.

I paid weekly to maintain possession of the key, though when asked where I lived I told people it was a studio apartment out of embarrassment. My luck had been bad for some time and I had been living in places likes this, places where I could hide from God, for a while. I kept the thermostat on to an even 74 despite it being a warm summer. It gave me some sense of control, like something I was taking from the man.

Until early this morning the room had been a lot warmer with the company of a girl, a woman named Sabrina. My small piece of heaven had been sitting on the toilet, smoking a cigarette, anticipating what was to come, while she ran to the courtyard vending machine. Knowing she was out there while ultimate comfort sat in a small bag on the beside table. I found that the anticipation, the moments just before something profound, were the moments that I lived for. Even now, after resolutions, her with her husband and me desperately wanting to end the devotion that left my arms marked like a flagellant, I sat and imagined Sabrina in the courtyard.

But now all that remained in the slanted room were myself, my barely fully grown and sometimes demoralizingly active cat, Bruce, and one last bag.

The stuff entered my system and immediately I felt well and tired. I used the energy I had to play with Bruce, as I did everyday, with strings and balls and little springs for him to chase across the matted and stained carpet. In my euphoria I held him and danced with him and tried to show him the natural world through the wide keyhole, the courtyard with its weeds and flowers and vending machines. He shifted his head back and forth seemingly straining to get a better view. I loved him. I think more than anything I loved his innocence, the look in his eyes that seemed at once to say he knew everything and nothing at all. But he knew what he loved and what he loved was what he knew.

The night wore on and I took the rest of the stuff. I became Salvador Dali’s muse in the bed melting, nodding back and forth as if I had the answer. In that state, I envisioned two wolves, led by Sabrina, cornering me, taking my wallet, taking my eyes, and in some abstract sense I couldn’t comprehend, trying to take my time, all of it that I had to give. I withered before them, I rotted, I looked at my arms and hands and saw the hands of my grandfather, pale and blue and dry. I rose to Bruce scratching incessantly at the door.

Knowing what was to come I felt like a man persecuted. It was my first time kicking and I knew it was a sickness that progressed by the hour. I made arrangements hastily, knowing in short order I would likely be completely indisposed. Life felt too real, light flowing violently through the crack in the curtain exposing multitudes of dust particles drifting through space aimlessly. My mind was in a hurry to show me everything that meant nothing to me. Thoughts of liars, the people in my peripheral, the mother I had seen walking her son in a stroller days prior. Would I ever have a woman in my life to mother my seed?

If only I could hold down a job, get promoted, take up a hobby, get new clothes. Need to start my car, keep the battery running. Need to run to vending machine before I lose the ability to walk. Need to know if that will even be worth it, if in the coming times I’ll even be able to hold down food. I filled Bruce’s food and water bowls haphazardly and looked at him looking at me.

For a second I thought I might hate him, hate his endless energy, hate the guilt of responsibility he represented right then.

It wasn’t hate for him though, it was hate for myself, for letting him down, letting all the others down, my seeming inability to maintain responsibilities that was natural for everyone else.

Other people and their happiness and their productivity and their drive and lasting relationships and all the other things that eluded me, all the grains of sand on the beach that it seemed people built castles out of did nothing but slip through my hands. And every time I began to build something, sometimes the start of a beautiful castle of my own I would realize too late that I was too close to the tide line and high tide would come, one day or maybe the next and tear it apart.

Chills and dizzying spells of heat were beginning to take turns tormenting me and the cold was making me sweat out a thick metallic poison that filled my nostrils. I stripped of my clothes and weakly tore the sheet off the bed. Wrapping the sheet around myself from the neck down I sat on the floor. Hours passed. My condition worsened rapidly.

Thoughts grew more confusing, I felt that me, myself, the logical part of myself that could rationalize and provide some sense of comfort was a quiet part somewhere deep in the back of my brain, like my mind was a radio stuck between two stations, one sensical and the other nothing but crackling dead air with the occasional outburst of words I couldn’t comprehend.

I laid down on the carpet at the foot of the bed, watching but not really acknowledging Bruce pacing the room, looking to the corners of each wall for some sort of stimulation. My legs and arms kicked violently and I felt my bones splitting. Finding myself bored, I could practically feel the lack of dopamine I had become so used to. Managing to get up for a moment I grabbed my battery powered radio.

Pop radio filled the room, the music that pleased the masses, music about first loves, women so beautiful that the singer would drop everything for them, that their life would be right and fulfilled with that one special person in their arms. It was music that made no sense. I flipped through stations to a Cuban station, words that meant absolutely nothing to me but for some reason found comfort in it for a moment.

I turned it off, staring at the ceiling, counting hours in my head. Now craving, a yearning like a thirst, yearning for comfort, yearning to be somewhere better than this with Sabrina, somewhere comfortable outside in our own place of peace. Bruce walked up and put his nose against mine and meowed quietly. I sensed the same boredom and longing in him.

He had always been strictly an indoor cat. Paranoia kept me from letting him explore outside. Cars, deviant humans, coyotes, even other cats. Knowing I couldn’t provide for him in the way he needed I imagined letting him out of the room, letting him explore the courtyard and build his own sand castles. The motel was out of the way while urban enough that I doubted coyotes would be nearby, cars drove through infrequently and the people seemed to keep to themselves.

In a moment of thoughtless desperation I bolted up and cracked the door, holding the sheet around my neck. Bruce followed, looking out cautiously. I whispered to him to be back before dark and watched him slowly step out, exploring, watching the dragonflies and butterflies lazily float around the sun laden courtyard.

I felt a panic, a letting go of too much at once, the end of safety. He was to be in a world he couldn’t understand, a world even most men can’t seem to understand anymore. Leaving the door cracked I watched Bruce wander as I sat huddled under the sheet, cold and sweating, my intestines reeling and aching.

Closing my eyes I rested against the doorframe. If not for the nausea, the restlessness, the fear, the yearning, I felt I could sleep for days straight… My mind showed me my mother, the one who had watched me swim out into the deep, who had tried to follow me but could only go so far before returning to land. I thought of others, old friends who weren’t my friends, women I thought I loved but hadn’t the courage to talk to, a wheel of jobs and small apartments and stale fresh starts and traveling on the path I had been told was right but felt nameless and unending, always leading to me running back to something bigger than myself. When I opened my eyes the sun was setting and Bruce was curled up next to me.

I picked him up and carried him to bed where we lied together, me shaking and sweating and occasionally throwing up in the rooms trash bin while Bruce slept and purred. Night fell and I was a sleepless and destitute mathematician, counting hours since last dose and hours remaining. I had pinned the window curtains tight to one another but when day came I saw a line of light on the carpet under the windows.

I got up nude, wrapped in my sweat soaked sheet and cracked the door for Bruce. He ran up, nuzzled against me and I rubbed his tummy, he purred and dropped in my lap for a moment before getting up and stepping into the light.

I threw up over and over again and reached new points of exhaustion. I closed my eyes begging God or Allah or Mohammed or the man Jesus or whoever might be able to see me here for restful sleep.

I drifted further and further from the warmth of the day, from Bruce in the courtyard, from the chills and aching and saw Bruce in a better place. A place natural for him, doing his ballerina walk through the desert sand among pyramids and friends like him, revered by commoners and kings and queens dressed in sumptuous silks adorned with intricate and beautiful headpieces. I saw him stalking small desert pray as he had practiced his whole life to, leaving nothing in his trace but delicate footprints in the soft sand.

And then atavistic screams…

My eyes opened wildly. I couldn’t make anything out in the darkness of the courtyard. Another high pitched scream. Hurriedly I scanned the room for sight of Bruce and felt my throat close up and shame spin in violent circles in my stomach, bashing against my organs as I realized he hadn’t come back in while I slept. With all the strength I had I ran to the courtyard, shivering, nude. Bruce was towards the end of the courtyard tangled with a raccoon.

He was hissing and screaming and I saw him back away from the animal and jump towards it again, his form brilliant under lamplight, claws extended as they were made to, mouth agape in primal anger. For a moment I saw nothing but beauty, his peerless fur reflecting the lamplight as he danced his deadly dance.

I hobbled over to them and the raccoon looked at me and ran off.

Bruce was breathing heavy through his mouth, tongue hanging out gasping for air. I smiled at him and he looked at me and nearly silently meowed. Bruce had won, he had taken on a world he couldn’t understand, a creature he was never meant to meet and won. Stepping closer I bent down to comfort him, whispering his name, telling him how proud I was, how sorry I was, how much I loved him. I rubbed his tummy as he loved so much. He cried quietly as my hand touched his stomach and I felt a sensation like warm syrup coating my hand. Bruce dropped onto his side, panting still, purring as if trying to heal himself and looking up at me, watching me realize. Even in the low light I could see the wound across his stomach making a mess on the concrete. Selfishly I grabbed him, cradling him like a baby as I had so many times before, listening to his breathing grow more and more distant.

I laid the shell of him across the cheap bedding. His blood soaked the mattress but I didn’t care. I stood looking down on him watching him make his final indelible mark on the world, even if it was just in a place like this.

I called Sabrina. When she texted that she was here I peeked through the keyhole to see the blur of her shape at the vending machine and then let her in. We walked into the cold water, past our knees, grabbing at the wet sand, squeezing it and feeling it fall through our fingers. We looked at each other and tried to smile at one another as we walked deeper, to where it was warmer and the sand was unreachable and nothing could be built.