This is a short story I wrote for the Prism Open Mic. Enjoy!

Captive

Eighteen years ago, Philbert Ramirez found his pet wandering the empty streets one quiet suburban morning. One look and he knew she had been sent for him, that she was meant for him. She was so beautiful, so innocent. He snatched her up and brought her home to his barren wife. When she was young, he loved her as a father. As she grew, he loved her even more.

Mr. Underfoot was always quite rude in the mornings. Years of captivity and mental abuse had caused his eyes to turn cold. At night, that shard that floated across his jet black pupil, as he stared up from her bedside while she drifted to sleep, often threw Mary Kristofferson into fitful, slightly erotic nightmares of asphyxiation. In the morning she’d sneeze herself awake, her nostrils and mouth full of fine calico hair.

Mrs. Kristofferson had never know a companion quite like Mr. Underfoot. There had been years when she’d kept many pets close at hand. Some nights her bed would be so crowded with warm bodies that she could find no purchase for her own tired head. In old age Mrs. Kristofferson had become a simple woman, trading finely polished mahogany and heavy velvet curtains for her former feline menagerie.

A well-kept haven is still a silent one without companionship. So when the breeder presented her with Mr. Underfoot, explaining how his caramel, chocolate, and white sugar coating made him an anomaly amongst his sex, she knew she had to possess him. The breeder called him chimera.



”He is the result of overly zealous genes,” she said “too complete genetically, two distinctly separate fertilized embryos merged together. In felines this manifests itself in their coat. He is essentially a man trapped in a woman’s body, infertile and impotent.” Mrs. Kristofferson had always heard the word meant impossible dream.

Mrs. Kristofferson took him home. Adaptation is essential to survival. Mr. Underfoot quickly adapted to her routine, though he often missed the out of doors, the hunt. There wasn’t a rat or mouse to be had in this house. Occasionally, depression would set in and he would spend whole days just sleeping. For the most part, he just went along with her game. He would follow her around the house, purr when she pet him, eat the food she put in front of him. His greatest joy came from the odd moth or wasp that would slip past her fly swatter, and her 800 watt vacuum cleaner, and her citronella spray. He would hunt those things for hours. Tease them in and then let out some slack. When they finally came to rest between his jaws, he savored their undomesticated flavor as he slowly ground their crispy limbs between his teeth and licked his lips clean of wing dust. He did love Mrs. Kristofferson, but who’s to say that’s not because she was the only thing around for him to love.

Their favorite pastime was to spy on the neighbors, Mrs. Kristofferson always in her bathrobe and Mr. Underfoot well-fed and sedated. They would perch in front of her kitchen window together, right over the sink. It offered a generous view of her east facing neighbors backyard to the left and a smidgen of street and front sidewalk to the right. From there they could sit in relative privacy and discern a good deal of the neighborhood events. Mrs. Kristofferson would lean over her kitchen sink, one hand stroking Mr. Underfoot’s long hairy back as the other peeled open her immaculate white blinds.


”What’s he building in there?” she would croak as she glared into the east facing neighbors backyard.

“What are all of those tents, and ropes, and tarps for? That fence must be six feet tall. You wouldn’t like to live there, now would you, Mr. Underfoot?” Mr. Underfoot would arch his back and nuzzle her hand in response.
She’d always been a talkative woman. She would spend hours on the phone with the neighborhood gals checking off each morsel of collected rumor like to do list tasks, rattling them off like candy wrapper jokes. After she got Mr. Underfoot she never wanted to meet up for coffee, or go for walks. She found she preferred her easy chair and a lap full of fur. Once in awhile the ladies would come to her. She’d convince them to pick up a carton of milk or bread on the way. Eventually, she discovered grocery home delivery and one day realized she hadn’t left the house in nearly three weeks.

At night, her previously oven warm hands ran cold over Mr. Underfoot’s exposed belly. Maybe that is why one crisp October morning her conscience played a subconscious role in her actions. Mrs. Kristofferson did something she’d never done before, not ever in her solitary life as a cat lady. She left the door ajar. When she went out to get the Sunday paper, Mr. Underfoot slipped right out from under her foot. Before she could bend her stiff back to snatch him, he dashed under a prickly bush, his tri-colored tail twitching freedom.

As night fell, there was not a single scratch or mew at her door. She mustered her nerves and unbolted the lock. Safe beneath two wool scarves, a stocking cap, a ski mask, a pair of fingerless gloves and an old man’s trench coat she took to the neighborhood streets, armed with a bag of Meow Mix and pockets full of catnip.


“Mr. Underfoot,” she whispered at her wilted azaleas.


“Mr. Underfoot,” she walked along the neighbors fence.


“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she pleaded with the darkness beneath her back deck.


“Mr. Underfoot!” she shook Meow Mix up at the night sky.


It was then that she heard those deep exhausted sobs for the first time. She recognized the tone and, confused, reached for her own cheek. When her fingers came back dry, she quickly spread the cat food around her yard and ran back inside.

The next morning, over coffee and toast, Mrs. Kristofferson scratched out a dozen missing cat flyers in black sharpie. After she washed her dishes and peered through the blinds, as was her morning routine, she left the house to post her flyers around the neighborhood. She worked until every telephone pole and coffee shop and billboard advertised her cause. By the time she headed home, dusk had already started to creep in. Her house was bigger than when she’d left it.

She lay down for bed and, before falling asleep, peered over the edge. No, they were not there. Mr. Underfoot’s frightfully empty eyes no longer stared up at her from the floor.

The next day, she could do nothing but wait. The whole day she felt utterly incapable, believing it was only a matter of hours before he returned. Everything felt too intense to approach, every bit of her too sensitive to touch. Eventually, she reached a certain numbness, a sweet euphoria, a complete clarity of mind, one that she imagined prayer would bring if she could have believed it when all she did was sit on her knees. She’d been here before, and there was always that same voice telling her the same thing. It is gone. Nothing matters. You are alone.

When she awoke to her mouth furless and dry, Mrs. Kristofferson knew it was time. She got up, and for the first time in years, left her robe where it hung on the bedpost.

The sound of her knuckles against the first wooden front door made her bones stiffen up and her mouth turn dry. She was just about to leave when her neighbor to the west opened up. A young man appeared in the door in boxers and a tee-shirt.

“Yep.”

Chatty Mrs. Kristofferson couldn’t peel apart her lips.

“Can I help you?” He shivered in his door frame.

She held up a black sharpie flyer.

“Saw that. . .” he said.

Mrs. Kristofferson let out a little yip.

“. . .on a telephone pole.”

“Oh.” A deep sigh was all she could manage.

“Sorry.” He took the flyer and rushed back inside away from the cold.

Mrs. Kristofferson methodically worked her way to the end of the block, knocking at every door as she went and saving the east facing neighbors for last. From out front the house looked much more welcoming then the backyard view from her kitchen window. Mrs. Kristofferson started up the walkway. The house was dark inside, the windows were hung with sheer lace curtains. As she admired them, she noticed they moved. Someone peeled apart the immaculate white curtains and peered out.

“Disgusting,” Mrs. Kristofferson ironically said to herself.

A woman with dark tired eyes answered the door before she could even knock.

“Hello.” Mrs. Kristofferson said.

“My husband isn’t home.”

“Well that’s ok.”

“You should go, now.”

“Well I just have a question.” The woman started to shut the door. Mrs. Kristofferson put out her foot to stop it.

“My cat got out, I think he’s in your back yard.” She managed between clenched teeth.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s not there.”

“I mean, cats will go anywhere you know and he’s been gone now for two days. Do you mind if I just take a look?” The door slammed in her face.

That night she dreamt Mr. Underfoot had dug a hole and slipped beneath the east neighbor’s chain-link, corrugated plastic fence., then, with all the guile of a heedless feline, marched right in under those tents. He sniffed his way through the pitch black, nuzzled every sharp corner, and seductively ran his furry side right up against something warm and smooth in the dark. A man, with hands the size of butcher knives reached down out of blackness. He took Mr. Underfoot and spread him open across his work bench, warmed his cold fingertips on feline flesh, painted the wood red, and munched kitty entrails for lunch.

The muffled sound of mewling jolted her awake. She sat up in bed, her hands entwined in cold damp sheets. Her ears strained. Her eyes opened wide. Then she heard it again, those deep exhausted sobs. Her shoulders shook with longing, her fingertips still came up dry.

Early the next morning, before coffee and toast, Mrs. Kristofferson knocked on the door of the neighbors to the east a second time. At first no one answered. She knocked again, and waited almost two minutes, then pressed her face to the glass and tried to peer inside. It was too dark to see anything. She craned her neck around one side of the house. No one there. Then the other side of the house. No one there either. So she puffed up her chest and headed towards the backyard.

“My husbands not home!” The woman had her hands on Mrs. Kristofferson’s shoulder. She shuddered and tried to place the last time she’d been touched.

“I . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . I thought I heard my cat.”

“I told you he’s not back there.”

“Could I just have a look. He hides, he only comes to me.”

“No.”

The rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon, Mrs. Kristofferson planted herself on a stool in front of her kitchen window with her favorite novel, shades wide open. The cover and title page were both missing.  Mostly she just flipped through it and read her favorite passages. Which was a good thing, because at one point she caught a mother who had just pushed a stroller up the sidewalk into her window frame picking one of her roses. The woman jumped when Mrs. Kristofferson rapped a finger on the glass and scowled down at her. Later, she watched silently as a group of teenagers skipped school to steal into one of their own homes while no one was around.

It wasn’t until almost three pm when she was deeply immersed in a passage involving ripped panty hose that Philbert Ramirez came home. It was his eyes looking in that made her lift hers from the page. She trembled like a caged animal, and quickly pulled down the shades.

That night, Mrs. Kristofferson pulled Carharts and rain boots from her closet, slung a fully loaded tool belt around her squishy hips, grabbed the bag of Meow Mix and filled her pockets with catnip. She crept out her own back door and sat on her knees before the fence.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she whispered as she reached into the tool belt.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” One link at a time snapped apart beneath her garden sheers.

“Mr. Underfoot. I know you’re in there.” She pried open a cat sized hole in the bottom of the fence.

“You must be hungry by now.” She shook the Meow Mix.

“Meow,” and Mr. Underfoot scuttled right out. Mrs. Kristofferson grabbed him and held him to her chest, kissed his neck, and stuffed her mouth with his fur. When she looked up, a sudden fright caused her to dig her nails into his back. Mr. Underfoot hissed and clawed his way out of her grasp and ran back under the fence.

Two identical blonde girls stood over her, their hair glowing in the streetlight, their fingers wrapped in the chain link fence. One of the girls bent to pick him up.

“He’s mine,” Mrs. Kristofferson said.

“We know,” the younger girl said.

“Why didn’t you bring him back to me?”

“We couldn’t,” the older one said.

“Mommy wanted to keep him.”

“She said he wasn’t in there!”

“Not her,” the older one said.

“What do you mean not her? Who’s your Mommy then?”

The two girls pointed towards the tents. Mrs. Kristofferson had never really noticed how expansive they were, how these tents covered the whole backyard, how not a single blade of grass was visible beneath them.

“Please,” she stretched her hands through the whole in the fence. The two girls giggled and ducked back under the tents.

“Come back!” Mrs. Kristofferson shouted. She shoved her arms through the hole up to her shoulders, wriggled as if she could force her way through.

“Bring him back here!”

She grabbed her garden sheers and ripped the hole bigger until she was able to lie flat on her belly and wriggle through.

It was dark and musty under the tents. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her face. She felt her way along the tarp, searching for an opening, found one and then came up against another wall of tent and had to search again, with only her fingertips to guide her. She could hear them, giggling and chattering, so she headed toward the sounds, then towards a light that seemed to be coming from the center of the yard. The walls of the tent grew thinner as the light grew warmer and soon she pushed her way through the last wall.

The space was tiny. Clothing and dishes lay all around. There were two dressers, drawers open and spilling their contents onto the floor. The girls sat on the floor cross-legged, with Mr. Underfoot between them. In the back of the tent there was a twin-sized bed, hidden behind the two dressers. There was a woman sitting on the bed, watching the girls, her blond hair ratted and falling over her shoulders, her ankle chained to the bed post.

“That’s my cat,” Mrs. Kristofferson said to the woman. “He snuck in under here. I came to get him.” The woman said nothing. “I’m taking him now.” Mrs. Kristofferson moved toward the two girls. “I’ll be taking him home now.” As she reached for Mr. Underfoot and took him into her arms, the other three looked up. Mrs. Kristofferson turned on her heels and came eyeballs to barrel sockets with the mean end of a shotgun. Philbert Ramirez’s shot gun.

“I. . I. . .this is my cat. I just came for my cat.”

He cocked his gun. Mr. Underfoot dug his claws into her shoulder. Mrs. Kristofferson held on to his wriggling body with all her strength.

“I didn’t do anything. I won’t tell anyone. I just need my cat.”

He narrowed his eyes down the length of the barrel.

“Please. I’m sorry he climbed your fence. He’s mine.”

“Get out.” Philbert gestured toward the exit with the shotgun.

Mrs. Kristofferson didn’t hesitate, she didn’t look back, not at the girls or at the woman on the bed. She left. Mr. Underfoot under her arm, and felt her way back through the tents without any trouble at all.

It wasn’t until four weeks later that Mrs. Kristofferson read about the woman in the paper. They said her name was Laycee. The morning she disappeared, her bus had come a few minutes early. They stood in front of their house, Laycee on her brand new bicycle free of training wheels, and her father’s hands around her waist to keep her from falling. She brushed off her father’s embarrassingly public embrace and ran to catch the bus. Filbert intercepted, threw her in the back seat of his car, and drove off, Laycee’s father chasing them all the way down the block on that brand new bike.