First post / Mini Cookie story
So here it is. I have made one. I also need to update the damn look of my blog, but ugh. I always feel too tired, which is why I never came back here in the first place. But now that I am back, I need to do something useful with this space. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
This space is going to be for stories and writings and such, and not just my ramblings, but I figured a first post wouldn’t hurt. Maybe something small? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
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Preparation
A rat raced across the stump of the near-crumbling brownstone in the old neighborhood. It zigzagged, hopped off the graying stairs, and down onto the sidewalk, where tiny brown leaves struggled through the cracks caked with the dirt and grit of the city. The mouse scurried off into the foliage of a large potted plant, left half-withered by owners too lazy to keep it watered.
A squeak, pained like a throat cut in the darkness, emanated from between the leaves before Cookie trotted into the open, the rat trapped in her teeth. She leaped down onto the warm concrete, tightened her jaw on the rat’s neck, and snapped it in two. With the hunt won, the Calico dropped its victim onto the ground and batted at the limp body splayed out at odd angles.
This was a mild sort of training for Cookie. She was no cat, but a girl trapped in an alien body, waiting in the wings for her true chance at revenge. With no way of recovering her old form just yet, Cookie had been reduced to a cat chasing rats--a cat chasing demons. Since Melfaria, or Melfie as her mentor preferred to be called, refused to train Cookie on the schedule of her choice, the small Calico took to training up her own physical skills on off days.
The cat stared down at the broken rat, pupils mere slits in a sea of blue, and gave a low, rolling purr as she closed her eyes. When they opened again, the rat was nowhere in sight. If her focus was on point, the rat would be found when Mellie decided to take to her bed as a refuge from the summer heat, lying on her comforter as a desk fan blew warm wind in her face. If the woman turned the wrong away, she would discover a present from her new friend, and a higher octave in her throat.
It wasn’t that Cookie hated or resented Mellie, she just needed to resolve the atrocities committed against her by the family who stole Thibault’s life. She would never see her younger brother again, or hear any of his sarcastic banter about how ‘kids these days need more intellectual hobbies’ or whip-smart anecdotes about the musings of the great black philosophers fighting for equality during their grandfather’s time in this great country. Never hear his quizzical rantings of a mathematical quandary left unsolved, or the curiosities of a boy fiddling with his violin in an attempt to clarify the staccato of fast-paced triplets in a solo piece. They would never again spend long nights discussing the great debaters or playing flute and violin duets or sifting through thick books to uncover the rhyme and rhythm of proofs meant to validate the the logic of problematic equations.
Their parents raised a beautiful preteen black kid--deft of mind and sure of heart. No matter how bright his mind, Thibault still took comfort in his older sister’s arm slung around his shoulder after a round of bullying on the schoolyard. She consoled him and dressed the purplish-blue wounds on his black skin every time, then chased after his agitators like a cat hunting rats. And regardless of how quick he took to a subject, her brother always encouraged them both towards greatness. Cookie buried herself beneath so many books she could be her own depository of knowledge, but he pulled her towards a multitude of hobbies and interested. They grew into each novel hobby with enthusiasm, and shared them with each other like secrets scribbled in diaries.
No, all the books, all the bows and strings, all the love and language she held dear were trapped behind a wall of incendiary memories. They were trapped in a room, in a house, on a street where monsters dwelt; out of sight, out of mind. They were trapped beneath a pile of dirt in their parent’s backyard, where a shattered body lay with a decapitated head--a boy turned into an orange Tabby turned into a dead brother.
Cookie searched the perimeter for another mouse, requiring a respite from the anger that churned and sloshed inside her little belly. She would wipe out the entire damn lot of them, the little Calico decided. She would wipe them clean off this planet, reclaim her rightful human form, and join the final battle against an unseen foe yet unexplained at this time.
Something bigger than even her picturesque revenge was coming. Other families, similar in their wickedness, were feeding a creature long forgotten and drained of strength for the continuance of humanity. It was all the information they offered--all they would tell. If this creature regained power, their world would be ravaged and reformed around its will, at the sake of those who couldn’t possibly hope to protect themselves. Others were gathering, Waywards they called themselves, forming a single-minded unit to wage an assault. Cookie was still far too weak to assist, and whined at Mellie every day for further training to rectify her weakness. Still, the woman refused her schedule. ‘All in good time’, she would say over a cup of tea, her thick brows knitted together on her brown face.
A rustling in another potted plant caught the cat’s attention. Cookie stalked up to the clay pot and climbed into the long, limp leaves of an aloe plant. Another day, another rat. She would sharpen her claws on the flesh of these small, city pests, sharpen her mental abilities for displacement, and then sharpen her teeth on the necks of every Butcher clan member she found. What would happen after that, she could not yet say. But the little cat planned to be ready for it, for the sake of her parents still living and the those who couldn’t defend themselves. She would not bury them in the yard besides her brother.
Cookie couldn’t bear to bury anyone else.
Copyright 2017 infernalle