by Sarah Coll

Tom Malins was sick. Yes, very sick, he must be. On account of being unable to leave the basement of his mother’s house, the community center had taken to leaving bags of groceries just inside the storm door. This week, they forgot the tuna, so the cat would die. Tom sat in his wooden chair and twisted his hands into knots, watching the cat dart from one end of the basement to the other. A flake of blue paint drifted from the ceiling to Tom’s balding head. The cat must be hungry. It became Tom’s when Tom’s mother died. He never touched it. He hated it. He used to dream about it, that monster pouncing on him in his bed, its skin stretching until it grew to the length of a grown man, howling as it ripped Tom’s chest open. 

Tom’s mother would throw herself into a frightful rage if the cat died. She loved its wiry, patchy fur and its mangled ear torn half-off in a cat fight. She loved its cruel, beady eyes. She used to cradle it like a baby in her old red-checkered armchair and hum lullabies. She would whisper to it while Tom read Bible stories aloud each night. Tom could hear her whispering now, and he cast a furtive glance across the room to the hole in the wall. It was circular, rough around the edges, with flaking plaster. Tom could tell his mother disapproved of him letting the cat starve. He could tell by the way her pupil shrank and hardened into the gray iris, lashes sweeping over bloodshot white as her lid narrowed. Tom’s mother was always watching over him, always peering through that hole in the wall to make sure he did the right thing. 

Recoiling under her gaze, Tom retreated to the kitchenette to put away the groceries. The drain on the green tile floor was caked with mold. The old decaf coffee grounds in Tom’s mother’s percolator emitted an acrid stench. The cat followed Tom, shoulders hunched. Its claws clicked against the tiles. It paced in front of the mini fridge and whined for food. The community center had packed Tom a little box of miniature chocolate cakes, compensation for the lack of tuna. Tom wasn’t hungry; he felt very sick. The cat must have realized, by now, that there would be no tuna. It gave Tom a reproachful stare. Tom squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could. The cat clicked across the basement floor. Tom heard it scratch at the wall.

He opened his eyes. The cat stood upright on its haunches, shredding the floral wallpaper just below the hole where Tom’s mother’s eye swiveled and blinked. Panic stabbed Tom’s chest. Like a madman, he dove across the room, knocking over his mother’s armchair. He landed face-down on the cold tiles. He whimpered like a wounded animal. The cat scratched harder. His mother would never forgive Tom for ruining the wallpaper like that. Wild, hungry cries filled the basement as if ringing in the apocalypse. Tom thought miserably, if only the community center had brought tuna.  

But when Tom crawled across the floor to pin the cat down, it wasn’t scratching the walls. It wasn’t crying or gnashing its teeth. It was curled on its side against the wooden baseboard. Dead. 

Tom knelt beside it. The clawing and screaming still thundered in his ears, and Tom knew now that it came from the other side of the wall. He raised his head and met his mother’s gaze through the hole in the plaster. He had never been so close to her. Her eye, he realized, was more blue than gray, the color of a faded t-shirt.

“It’s dead,” he said.

Tom’s mother’s eye glistened with all the rage of a vengeful god. Tom looked down at the dead cat and then up at his mother. The cat was small and limp. He crept closer and pressed his own eye against the hole. He dragged his nails across the wall and, from his throat, let out a low, guttural howl. It was too dark in the hole to see properly, but he imagined his mother’s eye alight with deranged glee, pupil the size of a dime, blue like the chipped paint on the ceiling.