Short Story Wednesday
Premeditated Cat, The End
Dear Readers,
Welcome to or welcome back to my Substack serialized stories. I’m so happy to say that I have wrapped up this one. If you want to see what led up to The End, here are Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 which tell the first of the tale. I look forward to your comments as always! Ready? Let’s go.
Summer stretched into fall, and fall into winter. Clark grew meaner when the snow came, and Mom withdrew into a cocoon so thick that Nikki feared even spring wouldn’t release her.
One afternoon, as she climbed the steps to her house, she heard the voice she hated. She opened the front door and peeked inside. Her stepfather stood, cornering her mother next to the TV. Her hand was at her mouth, and when she saw Nikki she turned away.
He’d hit her again.
He barely noticed Nikki, but her mother signaled behind her back. Go to your room. She always gave the same signal when Clark was on a rant. Even though Nikki wanted to help, wanted to grab something heavy and hurl it at his ugly face, she knew he would only hurt her, and then turn on her mother again. They’d both learned not to confront him--to let his rage run its course.
Nikki backed away, the familiar hatred and fear stirring inside her. As always, she locked herself in her room and then leaned her forehead against the door, listening and gulping deep breaths of air. How much longer could she and her mom live like this?
When Clark stopped yelling, she released Panther from his hiding place in the closet. Her cat greeted her with a long stretch and a meow. One way to block out Clark and the scene in the living room was to draw, so sprawled on her stomach across her bed, she sketched abstract shapes until his voice faded.
Panther leaped next to her, rubbing his sleek, black body against her.
“Sit still, Panther, and I’ll draw your picture.” She picked up her pencil. “You’ve got a touch of gray in that coat of yours and some tinges of red.”
Panther nudged her hand.
“See how much better I am seeing the details after those summer art classes? My art teacher, Mr. Cigam, said I can be a grrrreat artist.” She rubbed Panther’s chin until he rolled onto his side and then curled up on her bed.
She sketched his body, paying attention to more than his furry coat, just the way Mr. Cigam had taught her. She studied where his leg muscles attached at his hips, where the ribs connected to his backbone, the hinge of his jaw.
Nikki remembered her teacher’s words clearly. Your talent will be of great help to you and your greatest burden.
“He was so weird,” she said to Panther. “But I learned a lot.”
Panther began to purr.
“Now, don’t move, okay?” Nikki made careful strokes to create Panther’s sleek coat. She added highlights so his shoulders rounded and his eyes gleamed. She became lost in the details of his fur and the angle of his head. She held her pencil over the drawing. Only one or two strokes and Panther would be complete.
Trust me. Leave a bit unfinished until the right moment.
She signed at the memory of Mr. Cigam’s curious caution and threw the pencil onto the bed. It was frustrating, leaving her pictures undone like this. Last week Nikki got her first D in art because, as Mrs. Jenner said, she was tired of Nikki’s attitude.
“Finish that picture or suffer the consequences, young lady,” Nikki mimicked her teacher, shifting her head from side to side. “Damn it, Cigam. What did you do to me?”
Still, she feared what might happen if she didn’t do as he’d warned. Whenever she was close to completing a picture, that picture threatened to spring to life. Once, a rattlesnake almost moved on the paper as she placed her pencil on the incomplete diamond pattern. A week before that, she was sure the spider twitched when she considered adding the last spindly leg. She couldn’t risk finishing any of her work, despite Mrs. Jenner’s threats.
A loud pounding on her door brought her to her feet. Panther shot up from the bed, growling, fur puffed out in alarm.
“Unlock it,” her stepfather yelled.
Nikki froze.
“Either open this door, or I’m kicking it in.”
He’d follow through with his threat. He’d done it before, so she flipped the latch and jumped back as the door burst open.
“Off your butt and get out here. Your mom’s sick, so you’ve...Where’d that cat come from?”
“It... I’m taking care of it for a friend. Just overnight.” Nikki grabbed Panther and held him close.
Clark’s voice turned meaner. “I told you to get rid of that. Do it!”
“He’s—”
But Clark was already on his way out. The door to her parents’ room opened and then closed, shuddering the wall. She listened to their muffled voices and waited by her bed as their door reopened and Clark’s voice boomed down the hall.
“Stay in there for all I care!” The wall shook again as the door slammed shut, and then Clark stomped past her room. “Nikki!” he yelled.
Nikki tucked Panther into the closet before leaving to face her stepfather.
“Fix dinner,” he yelled. “Get going.”
She slid away from him and ducked into the kitchen. Quickly she searched the refrigerator for whatever her mom had stashed for dinner. When she found the frozen pizza, she started breathing again. He loved pizza. She even found a half-pack of chocolate chip cookies, another of his favorites. Maybe she’d be able to bribe him into calming down.
Her mom managed to come to the table after Nikki went to her, and the three of them ate in silence. Nikki glanced at the bruise that was already blue along her mother’s jaw. It would be black and tinged with yellow soon, and she would concoct another, “I fell down the front step” story for the office.
When her stepfather pushed away from the table and stood, he came to Nikki’s chair and gripped her shoulder. “Where’d you hide that cat?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. I put him outside.”
He stared into her eyes, not believing her. “Like last time, right?”
“No. Really. I did.”
He gave her shoulder a hard shove. “We’ll see.”
She held her breath as he stomped down the hall to her room. He’d find Panther trapped in the closet and hurt him. She had to stop him. She looked at her mother, but the strong woman she used to know wasn’t there anymore. Nikki was on her own.
A crash came from her bedroom. Then something slid across the floor. Her stepfather was searching her room. She didn’t have much time before he’d yank the closet door open, grab Panther and…
Nikki pulled out the junk drawer. From the jumble of pens and pencils, she picked up a #2 with a dull point and a yellow Magic Marker.
“What are you doing?” Mom asked.
“Drawing something.” Nikki grabbed the blank to-do list pad that was lying on the counter. She sketched so fast her hand became a blur. Still, she made the strokes, the ones she remembered from her drawing of Panther—only this time she made the head larger with cupped ears, flicked back and wary. She drew the jaw so it gaped open with two incisors curving from under the lips, a row of jagged teeth rose up from below. With each stroke, she imagined the underpinnings just as Mr. Cigar had taught her—long front leg bones, the muscles stretched from one ligament to the other. This animal was a powerful machine, well-designed for its purpose. Next, she added the hind legs and the tail.
From her room came the slam of a cabinet door.
Quickly she blended and smoothed the dark lines with her finger.
Clark’s heavy footsteps crossed her room.
Her picture was almost complete. Almost. And when it was would this do what she needed it to do?
“It has to.” She exhaled the words as she added spiky whiskers at each side of the nose, and then, with the yellow marker, filled in the eyes that stared unblinking from the paper. “I’ll be right back,” she said to her mom who had cradled her head on the table and didn’t look up.
She hurried down the hall and entered her room just as her stepfather yanked her closet door open and grabbed Panther by his neck. Panther twisted in his grip and sank his teeth into Clark’s arm. He yelled in pain and let go. The cat darted between his legs and out the door.
With three quick strokes, she completed a picture for the first time since Mr. Cigam’s art class. Then, tossing it onto the floor, she slammed the door and fled.
***
The police couldn’t explain the rapidly decomposing body of the panther. No zoos had reported a missing cat. No circuses had been in town. They couldn’t explain the partially gnawed body of the man either. He’d been recently killed, that was certain, but by an animal that looked to be long dead?
Nikki held her cat tightly as her mother told them what she knew, which wasn’t much. When the police asked Nikki the same question, she drew close to her mother’s side and gripped her hand. “Like Mom, I heard screams, but I was too scared to go into my room.”
“And you didn’t see a”--the officer read from his notes as if he needed to make sure he’d written the report correctly--“big black cat?”
“Not a real big one,” she said, petting Panther’s head.
The End
So there it is—a little bit of realistic mayhem and some magic. I like mixing up the real and the fantastic, and I did it in my book, Rattlesnake. It’s in an 8-book giveaway, so if you like that kind of mixing, why not enter to win some books that do it?
The winner will be notified by e-mail on February 5, 2025.
I was not expecting a full-size panther. Interesting twist there!
I did not see that coming!!