Market Theocracy

2. Cat Trap

Fatigue insists.

She slept that night in a drainage ditch a mile or so up the road from the restaurant, belly full and with a pocket of strange currency. She had in mind breakfast the next morning before resuming her westward trek.

She found a worn and suspiciously dirty wool blanket in the trash outside the restaurant. An odd and lucky coincidence to be sure, but it had been and odd and lucky day.

The mile she walked did her in. She wrapped herself in the blanket, snuggled up under a rough overhang, and tried to relax.

She was exhausted, but her mind was keyed up and seemed to cycle over the strange happenings of the day. One part of her wanted to drift into the past and re-examine old horrors, the way a tongue wants to probe the grisly edges of a shattered back tooth. With an act of will, she refused to let that happen.

Instead, she dug into her pocket and removed the knife. With it came one of the strange bills. In the bright moonlight, she examined it.

At least it was a normal denomination — a five. But the similarity ended with the number. Rather than a smug and classic presidential portrait, there was a stylized dog. Quite a handsome one, in a pose of intent watchfulness. She smiled at it, because it appeared to be a mutt. She recognized the sleek head of a Doberman and the muscular chest and shoulders of a Rottweiler. Something about the haunches spoke of the grace of greyhounds, and the tail was a docked stub pointing in the unmistakable attentiveness of a spaniel.

She yawned and the bill grew indistinct before her eyes. She replaced it. Then she snapped open the knife and held it carefully, pointing away from her body.

So armed, exhausted, and in the silent light of the creeping moon, she slept.

In the dream she was being swallowed by the past, and it was a painful process.

She was bound again to the bed and she could tell by the raucous voices in the living room that this was a night her husband had decided to share with his friends. The fear and hate and disgust welled up and threatened to overwhelm her.

The suddenly she was a child again, opening the closet door. There, where it had always hung, was her father’s gun. The big gleaming cannon in the worn leather holster. She had only seen him use the gun once, when three raving drunks broke their door down. Her father had stood placidly in the center of the room until they smashed the door from its hinges and staggered in. Then he carefully and quickly shot them down. She remembered them falling like pins in a trick shot, how sudden and effective it was. They died with laughter on their tongues.

"It’s all right now, sweetheart." he had told her then. "There are bad men in the world, but daddy will protect you from them." Then he’d put on his hat and coat and took the bodies away.

She had believed that promise, in the way only small children can believe. She believed it so well that when she was feeling scared or nervous for some reason all it took was a glance at the gun in the closet to calm her.

She must never touch it.

But it came to her that she was not a child anymore, and that her father had been dead for ten years, and that she was bound and roped and raped just a blink away, and..

…and this wasn’t her father’s gun after all. It looked different now. Similar, but smaller. Meaner looking.

My gun, she realized.

She took it, unsurprised by the way it fit her hand, and stepped back across the blink. She walked quickly past her own bound and degraded form to the door. She kicked it open in a fluid motion and — aiming by instinct and rage — shot the four men she found there. She saved her husband for last, and smiled at him.

They fell like trick pins. She let out a howling laugh that…

…seemed to follow her up from sleep and meld into a yowl of pain.

Reality startled her and she reacted, stabbing out with the knife. Her jabs failed to wound the dark and empty air.

She looked at the knife in her hand. Stupid, she told herself. One night you’re going to stab yourself in the leg.

The yowl came again, and froze her. Not a part of the dream then. It came again and she shivered. It was unmistakable; an animal in pain and distress.
A few moments of that pitiful sound was enough to vanquish fear of the dark and the warm inertia of her bundled self. She got up and moved as quietly as possible towards the noise.

She found the source a few minutes later, thirty or so yards away from the ditch. There stood a solitary post that bristled angrily with strands of rusting barbed wire, just where the thin shrubbery along the roadside gave way to a flat expanse of field.

Tangled miserably in the strands was a large, grey, strikingly ugly cat. When it saw her it broke from the song of misery, as if being caught in such a way was mostly a matter of embarrassment. Both legs were caught, in a way that had them snagged and re-snagged by several strands of the wire.

Two liquid green eyes stared at her. Wasn’t me yelling lady, they seemed to say. Must have been some other cat.

A fierce knowledge glittered in those eyes. Knowledge of what she did not know, but the fact of its presence was certain.

She sighed, knowing what she had to do. The cat let her approach amiably enough, but that peace was quickly shattered.

It was a horrible few minutes, that seemed to last weeks. She had no recourse but to slice cat flesh from wire, and the cat had no recourse but to fight the crazy bitch attempting to free him. Three minutes, perhaps; a whirlwind of blood and mutual pain and mutual screaming. For every barb she freed it seemed the cat’s thrashing sank another deeper, and it retaliated fiercely with claws and — once, very memorably — teeth that somehow managed to pierce all four layers of pants and take a sizable chunk out of her left buttock.

Then, suddenly, the cat was free and bounding away, and her knife broke as she slipped and drove it against the post.

She stared at the broken blade, furious. "You stupid goddamn animal!" she screamed. She grabbed a stick and chased the offending beast, taking huge clumsy swings that the cat dodged easily. A few swings were all she could manage, and exhaustion left her out of breath, panting on her knees.

The cat was gone.

She laughed then, at the insanity of the world and herself. About scars earned for good intentions. How a little cat in a huge field could find such danger. How the simple decision to walk away could make the world so weird.

She laughed until it turned to sobbing, then sobbed until she felt better.

When she made her way back to her bed, she was unsurprised to find the cat there. He was placidly cleaning his wounds. He looked up at her. Some temper you got there lady. What took you so long getting back?

"Ok." she told it. "Fine. At least you’ll be a heat source. Goddamn animal."

But she was pleased, deep down. The road was a lonely place, and silent companionship beat out no companionship. Her bed heated up quicker with two, and the cat’s rumbling purr against her chest was an oddly comforting sensation.

The broken knife vexed her still. It had been her only weapon. Now she was reduced to hands and feet and teeth. An image of the gun from her dreams came to her, and she thought an idle thought:

Tomorrow I’ll look for my gun.

It calmed her. She slept like a rock, and the dreams that tried to come were chased away by a pair of green eyes that glittered knowingly in the dark.