Autobiography of Cat (Pt. 5 & 6)

It is like water everywhere. You opened my mouth and put in something that tasted bad. Now it is like water everywhere. It is gray and it no longer hurts. I cannot feel my legs or my tongue. I am in nothing but water.

There was the time when all the water was falling and the loud noises were in the sky. I was afraid, as I always am when the loud noises shake the place where I live. There was one noise that was so loud. As I hid in a dark place, the noise and the light that comes with it crackled in my fur. My fur jumped from my body and stood all around me.

I was afraid, but I heard another noise that was like so much purring. It was in the tree that is outside the place where I live. I could hear it crackle and purr. The sound was like me when I am excited, when the food is in the bowl and it hasn’t been there for a very long time. It was like me purring when you have not been coming toward me for a very long time and then you are finally coming.

I crawled out from the dark place I was hiding and I went to the place where I can see. I looked out, and in the tree outside there was a light skipping. It skipped from branch to branch, lighting up the darkness that came with the water falling. The light crackled and purred like your hand in my fur when it is cold and you rub very hard.

I was afraid of that light that skipped in the tree. It was very bright in the daytime dark and it stung my eyes. But I did not want to stop watching it. I wanted to watch it and listen to the way it purred. It was so bright and very beautiful. It was exciting. Everywhere in the tree the light skipped and made its wonderful noise.

Now there is no fire and no tree and the only thing I see is water. For as far as I can see, it is water, and the sound of it is far away, even though the water is so close. There are noises across the top of the water that are like the noises of you, your growl. The noises float across the top of the water and they remind me of something. They tell me that there was something to be done. I had a thing I wanted to do, but I can’t remember what it was.

For a while I fall asleep and I have a dream. The dream is the same as when I am awake, the water everywhere and the sound of it sloshing. I float in the water as I float in the dream. The not-dream and the dream are only different because in one there is my mother. She swims through the water. She has a fish in her mouth. She is swimming toward me. She keeps swimming in my direction, the fish wiggling in her mouth, but she does not get to me. She doesn’t get to me no matter how long she swims. She does not get tired in the water and she never gets to where she is coming. I sleep and wait for her to come, waiting for the fish.

SIX

I think I am dead. There is nothing now, not even the gray. I look and I listen and I even feel for the echo in my body, but there is nothing. I do not feel your heartbeat. I do not have your hand on my fur. I do not have anything.

There was a time when I had all the things everywhere. I had the bugs that crawled on the grass and up the sunny fence. I had the things under the stove and my heartbeat as I waited for them. I had the birds that dropped their feathers into the air when tried to catch them, making parts of them fly as they flew away. I had the noise of you growling when you were coming and had not yet come. I had the fire that purred in the tree. I had my mother with the fish and the milk and her tongue.

There is still the thing that I did not tell you. Now you are not anywhere and I will never tell you. I will not feel the heat of your middle and tell you the thing that is the button, that is it spinning, that is the white light in the holes. I will not tell you that it is the same size as your eye and that it is somehow the same as you. I still do not know what it means. I will not tell you and I will never know what it means.

But look. There is something. Now that there is nothing there is something. What is something is that the white light was nothing. It was nothing at all. It is that the button was nothing, that its purr when it spun was not the thing that it was. It was not that I liked to bat it across the floor. It was not that it was exciting. It was not that I lost it and found it many times. It was none of these things because it was nothing.

But this is the thing that is something. Out of the things that were nothing, all white light and purring, came the thing that I wanted to say. Out of your middle that is now nothing, comes the thing that is to say. From the nothing that I am now comes everything I want to say. From all that is gone I see that the thing I wanted to say has no name. And without a name I know what it is called.

I say it now, now that there is nothing to say. I say it to you and I wait for it to be gone. I wait for it to always be going. I wait for you to be here and to always be going. You are always going and you will always be gone. This I will always know. That you will be going, always going, waiting for me to be going as well.

– Read the entire story here

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Joseph Young lives in Baltimore. There he likes to make things, whether vampire books, microfiction, collages, stencils, or short videos, and he likes to work with other writers and artists, showing, curating, and organizing. He’s got a microfiction collection, Easter Rabbit (Publishing Genius, 2009), and a novel on vampires, NAME (Union Street, 2010). Visit verysmalldogs.blogspot.com for more information on projects and publications.