Eyeballs

 

Eyeballs

 

I had a cat. I fed it what the vet told me to feed it. But it always cocked its head at me when I would nosh some kind of flesh, with ravenous laser beams aimed at my meal. Mrrow.

 

I always had this nagging apprehension that my cat would scratch the hell out of my eyeballs blinding me while I slept if I let it sleep in the same room. Not intentionally of course, just stretching in the way that an animal does. An animal does what feels good without thought to the consequences. I don’t know how people are comfortable letting their cat sleep with them. Therefore, I always closed the door to my bedroom with my cat outside when I slept. Locked it as well. If some cats can use the toilet maybe they can manipulate door handles as well. They never told me if the cats flushed afterwards…

 

Met a woman once at this park playing out of tune chords. She had the hygiene of Kurt Kobain. She stretched out like a feline awakening from a nap after her strums. I was feeling frisky, so I brought her to my apartment and petted her until she purred. An animal does what feels good without thought to the consequences. That was when I had my second son. His mother didn’t stay long after. Prowled the dusk and howled at the twilight cycles. The cat didn’t come back the very next day. I just figured she was a goner.

 

I didn’t mind things were easier just the four of us.

 

One summer, my sons were staying with their grandmother in Dog Walk (Kentucky). It was just me and the purring slit-eyed predator.

 

He was hungry that day. I was screwing in a lightbulb, up on a shaky step stool. He galloped into its side feigning clumsiness, but it knew the intentional malevolence. I smashed my thin skull against the side of the coffee table and that was all she wrote.

 

They found a man with two empty slots in his skull. The open door creaked sneakily.

 

How was this story transcribed? History is written by the victor.