Best Girl by E. Scott Manning

The summer came on hot and strong, with the smells of backed-up garbage disposals and unwashed carpets replacing the spring smells of damp and mould.

Everything was stifling, far too hot and far too humid. The summer heat brought out another smell, one that had been underlying the city all winter, all but unidentifiable but slowly strengthening: something hot and musky, hinting of carrion and ammonia.

It seeped into the city, a spreading stain, and soaked into the apartment buildings and hi-rises. It found it's way into the suburban homes across the river, and hints of the strange smell found their ways even into the industrial complexes that hunched over the empty rail roads and destitute.

Everywhere the muggy heat and the subtle smell of moistened rot. It was like living between the jaws of some great and slavering beast.

Despite the surrounding smells of the city and of the apartments, (a complex medley of boiled cabbages and cat urine), they found the old woman fairly quickly. The manager had opened the door with a shaking hand, his key skittering and leaving marks on the metal of the doorknob.

The stench of the woman's death assaulted the people in the hallway harshly, and in more detail than the thin apartment walls had hinted at.

The manager retched in the back of his throat, swallowing fiercely to keep from vomiting, his mouth open and gagging as he sought to turn off his nose's ability to reason.

A pragmatic part of him, the part that been manager of various slums and apartments in the past twenty years, tried to estimate the cost of cleaning chemicals that it would take for maintenance to get rid of the smells and stains. The manager's face had already begun to grimace from the unconscious accounting when something, suddenly and horribly, moved in the darkness of the old woman's flat.

The manager froze for the barest moment of hesitation and shock, and then without the slightest warning to those around him, he slammed the front door shut and staggered away from it.

The police stood behind him, looking both bored and disgusted. The manager looked at them with frightened eyes. They hadn't seen it, he thought, they hadn't seen the... the things: the slithering movements just inside the old woman's apartment, making their ways darkly towards the open door, a multitude of wicked eyes gleaming and winking...

The manager stumbled further away from the door, unconvinced and fearful; disbelieving that the knob did not turn and that the door was not flung out to bang against the wall, even as the horrible things crawled out towards them, darkness flowing from its toothy maw...

"Pretty bad, huh?" one of the officers asked him, looking not at all sympathetic. "Shame about the carpets."

The officers brushed passed the manager, and he felt his knees weaken as he slumped against the peeling plaster wall opposite. He covered his mouth with his hands as the officers pushed the door back open, and stepped into the darkened flat.

All around him, other onlookers also covered their mouths and noses. Unlike him however, they did not shut their eyes against the tears of fear that threatened to over take the manager, but rather, they peered eagerly around each other, whispering in gleeful tones, "Oh, isn't it just awful?"

The first officer flicked the light switch, and started as dozens of wide-eyed cats stared at him with brilliant eyes. Somewhere in the room, a large tom cat hissed, his growl petering out into a sustained note of displeasure.

"Shit!" The other officer flinched and stepped back from the seething mass of felines. His abrupt motion sent a signal through the cats, and suddenly they were everywhere, running and darting, hissing and growling, a scrambled mass of chaos and claws.

The manager let out a little moan at the policeman's startled cry. With his eyes shut and his mouth covered, he was aware only of a sensation of something terrible clawing its way passed him, spitting and hissing, and the sudden flood of warmth that trickled down his legs, and into his shoes.

Later, the manager would lay down to sleep, but find himself unable to. The memory of the days events would end, not with a flood of cats from a tenant who had never signed a pet policy agreement, but rather, with the door slamming open, and something terrible, something dark and primal, rising from the old woman's flat, and engulfing them all in a tide of sewage and maleficence.

In a coroner's office, somewhere in the city, a conversation will take place: "Dear God, what the hell happened?!"

A policeman will reply, a gallows rictus on his face, "Seems she was the local cat lady. Had dozens of tabbies all over her apartment."

There will be a gagging sound, a strange sound to hear from someone who handles the dead in all of their various forms, every day, five days a week, and fifty weeks a year.

"But at least," the policeman will continue, the humourless grin shaper, "We know it wasn't the rats what got to her!"

Animal control will, of course, have been sent for, but by the time they'll reached the shadowed apartments the swarms of moggies and tabbies will have slipped through the broken panes in the old woman's apartment windows, and will have gone to where ever it is cats go to, when they are not to be found.

Sometimes in the evenings, thunder can be heard somewhere outside of the city; a crashing wave that pushes the heat before it.

It is hot in the city, hot in the evening, and even surcease from the sun brings no respite. Fans drone loudly, hiccuping with ill repair and causing their owners to turn their attention away from busted television sets, if only momentarily.

Above the stammering ceiling and box fans, the cats from the old woman's apartment gather. With swishes of irate tails, they blink slowly at each other, formulating and planning.

Sometimes cats are up to no good.

Night in the city, and killers walk among the brick-faced buildings. Dropping lightly from roof top to balcony, moving sinuously along railings and creeping down flights of stairs, the killers move softly.

There is a man that the cats know of, an old gentleman who lives nearby in a flat filled with antiquities and memories of a time better forgotten. He is elderly and rarely leaves his rooms. With shaking hands he pours cream into saucers, and lures the soft footed killers into his company, if only for a little while, to stave off the loneliness that creeps around the edges of his life.

He croons to them, a mixed-up mumble, an inelegant jumble. His words are meaningless to the small felines, but they watch him with sharp slit eyes none the less.

He turns to make tea, and there is a knocking at the window, slight and unheard of except by the clawed killers. They slink into shadows, and hiss silently as a man crawls in from the outside. He is tall and rangy, nothing abnormally so; you wouldn't look twice at him if you'd met him on the street.

But the cats know, and they recognize him by more than by sight alone. They hiss again, louder, so that the elderly gentleman hears them, turns to them, seeking to consolidate his erstwhile companions.

The elderly man is surprised by the sight of another man in his flat. Surprised, and when the cudgel hits him, he is still surprised as he falls to the floor of his kitchen. Surprised, but not dead.

He watches with stunned eyes as the young man paces before him. There is something curious about how he moves, as if caged and restless. He nears the fallen elderly man, and with a sudden and savage motion, jerks the old man's shirt forward, ripping at starched old fabric, and tearing loose buttons. There is something hungry in his eyes, and as he bends down towards the old man's throat, the old man opens his mouth to scream, but there are no sounds, no words.

With a savage bite, the young man rips into his victim's throat. A soft breathy gurgle escapes the terrified old man, and his eyes flutter closed, but refuse to stay shut. He is afraid to die, even as his heart pounds heartbreakingly hard in his chest, and even as his muscles spasm and refuse to do his bidding, he is afraid to die, afraid to close his eyes from this terrible thing that is happening to him.

The young man looks up, victorious. There is a wealth of blood dripping from his mouth, drizzling from his chin. He looks carefully at the old man, seeking something in the other's eyes. Submission, knowledge, acquiescence; there is the look in a dying thing that he wants to see, something he wants to master and contain. The faint reflection is there in the old man's eyes, dim yet growing stronger even as blood seeps from his throat. The next bite perhaps, the next bite will be the killing bite.

As he ducks his head to bite again, there is another sound that is growing around him. A garbage disposal, left on by accident, or perhaps triggered by the old man's fall. A grating, growling sound, rising in crescendo. The young man hesitates, and becomes aware that the hairs on his neck and arms have begun to stand straight up, and that his skin is pimpled with fright-bumps.

Arrayed about him, each one judge, jury, and executioner, the cats steal from their hiding places in the flat, whiskers and ears flattened back, claws sticking and pulling up pile from the carpet. Glowing eyes, judgemental, knowing eyes. They stalked forward.

They had been too late to save the old woman, but this time they had been waiting, they had been patient, and they had been prepared. The younger man dropped his hands away from the old man, and the old man, so afraid to die, watches it all with horrified eyes.

After all, it was the law of the jungle, and sometimes, cats do bad things.

Later the old man will leave a trail of blood behind him, tracing a path to the old rotary phone. He will gasp into the receiver, and later when the policemen come, they will not believe their eyes.

Later, when the old man makes his tea, his hands will tremble and shake as he pauses over the saucer. His hands will tremble and shake, but he will still pour the cream into saucers.

-end-
Copyright 2009 E. Scott Manning - please don't steal, I worked hard on these, typos and all!