Curiosity Killed the Cat

The first thing that hit her was the air. Hot and sticky, she drank it down, like warm honey filling her screaming lungs. Her mother’s laughter wrapped around her like a blanket, and she let her mask fall to the ground unceremoniously. It was a rare sound to hear, and she welcomed it as a promise that she was safe, it was safe to breathe.

The second thing, and this was even more unusual, was the tree. She had heard about them, how they grew from tiny seeds and then raced each other towards the sky, bursting with colours and fruits and leaves that sometimes even changed colours. She could never understand why people wanted to get rid of them, and now, she understood even less.

They stood amongst the rubble of what once was a shopping complex, where her mother said people went to spend money, they didn’t have on things they didn’t need. Now the crumbling remains were only kept company by vines struggling through cracked concrete and the occasional rat or cockroach, smug that this was now their domain.

Jordan, her mother and father, and her big brother Casey had all taken off their masks now, although the loss of this barrier didn’t lead to any exclamations, despite the silence they’d walked in for nearly two weeks. They all stood now, in reverence, gazing up at the tree, whose roots had fought with perseverance to splinter and spread through the debris. Her mother said that trees helped clean the air so we could breathe it without masks. In a world where 75% of the air was so toxic it could kill you, Jordan knew that this one tree was not enough to clean all the air in the clean air pocket they’d spent the last two weeks trying to find, but she knew that this tree, lonely yet triumphant, meant that they had made it.

Light cascaded down above, the ceiling of the structure no match for time or neglect, bathing the family and the tree in dappled sunlight. Still, no one spoke. They had become so accustomed to silence, to their loved one’s voices being replaced with the wheezing sounds of ventilated breathing. Even when it was their rotation, one hour in a clean air pocket for their one meal a day, it often took much convincing for Jordan to be brave enough to take her mask off, and even then, she held her breath until her lungs forced her to swallow what she hoped would not be poison. As clean air pockets became scarcer, man-made filtration systems no match for the air’s insistent demand that this place was no longer inhabitable for us, Jordan’s parents worried that soon there would be no clean air at all. How would they survive, she wondered?

The third miracle for the day was the one Jordan was most ecstatic about. It caught her attention as it darted behind a fallen pillar. At first, she thought she’d imagined it, dizzy on the high of unrestricted breathing. But when she diverted her gaze once again away from the tree that her family now walked towards, she saw it again. Unmistakably, a tail. It waved ever so slightly, unpretentiously, as if it hadn’t noticed them or if it had, it didn’t care. Jordan abandoned the tree; it was so resilient she knew it was not going anywhere any time soon. One small foot after the other, she advanced towards the pillar; holding her breath came more naturally than the alternative. She expected the tail to taunt her, to possibly make her run, or to disappear as if it really had been all in her imagination. But that is not what happened. The tail itself did, momentarily, disappear behind the pillar, quickly to be replaced by a face that was both inquisitive and indifferent all the same time.

The cat was akin to an old man, frail and grey, his best days long behind him, yet with an aura of sophistication and self-importance. Jordan knew what cats were, but she had not seen one before. The cat, who perhaps had not seen a little girl before nor had the privilege of seeing pictures of them in books, darted towards her, unafraid and curious. Jordan sank to the ground and waited, her heart feeling like it might explode as it reached her and gingerly sniffed her hands, clasped in her lap so as not to frighten it. It was the most alive she had ever felt, even though ironically, she still had not taken a breath. The cat sprawled out in front of her, stretching in the sun as if making a mockery of the seriousness of the events that had led the family to the tree in the decrepit concrete jungle. Jordan knew that this cat was here, right now, because she was meant to find it. They were meant to find each other. It was nice to have a friend for the end of the world. It was right then she decided to give this cat the one thing she had to give- a necklace she had found on the long way to the clean air pocket boundary. It was a locket, silver, in the shape of a heart, its splendour now tarnished but to Jordan, no less special. Tenderly, she dangled the locket out to her new friend, who at first didn’t seem to notice, but after a moment it pawed at the swinging chain in the instinctual way that cats do. Now it was Jordan’s turn to laugh, a sound also not often heard. A sound that also caused her mother and father to turn and see what could possibly have captured their daughter’s attention more than the marvel in front of them.

She had not heard her father come up behind her, had not heard him pick up the rock. All she had heard was her own scream, as rare as laughter but certainly a different sound. Her father swung the rock without hesitation, bashing her new friend over the head and leaving it a lifeless form on the dusty ground. Its eyes dulled as the ground around its head turned a muddy red and her small hand shook, still outstretched and speckled with bright red blood, as warm and sticky as the air. Her father didn’t need to explain again to her the scarcity of food. She’d been foolish to even entertain the idea, she knew what they must do. Yet in that moment, she forgot about the tree and the fact that she could breathe. Her chest felt so constricted that she thought she might explode, and tears jumped without being asked to spill down her cheeks, contradicting the story she told herself, a story of strength and indifference that no nine-year-old should ever have to craft. What was the point of fighting to breathe, if we had so little respect for others right to do the same?

She left the locket where the cat had died, she didn’t want it anymore. Then she stood, incapable of breaking her silence. Maybe she’d stay this way forever, condemned to sit in silence until eventually the world won its war.