Twinkle’s eyes flew into mine, bright green, emerald eyes trapped me. In a moment, sparks elevated my heart, and I believed the stars were closer than heaven. The cat inspired a smile and grateful tears. He loved me as much as his food.
My boyfriend, now ex, told me I had to get rid of Twinkle. I popped another crisp potato into my gluttonous mouth. My stomach turned. Without my cat, I wouldn’t be able to cope. That’s when he gave me the choice between him and the cat.
The cat stayed. Controlling boyfriend was ditch dirt.
My hand glided over Twinkle’s white body. His muscles rippled under a coat of thick fur. He meowed a few times then laid at my feet. His purrs came in and out. He sneezed, and I found myself loving every minute of it, made more love in the cold world.
While Jack scored a ten in looks, my ex didn’t have a heart or a love for the living, for true grace and beauty. For him, the world crumpled with paper with that his fountain of worth. When I dated him, his obsession with the mediocre mountains held more importance than my feelings.
“Babe, you know I love you,” he said before he left forever, before I went postal dream girl on his sorry ass.
“No you don’t.” By then, I’d known better. Love doesn’t seek to control. It wants to find a place to bloom, not cower under and away from the light. If Nature were that way, there’d be no life. She expects more out of her children, all working together, all pushing towards survival of the fittest, to Nature’s carved gems.
“Honey, I told you. She’s just a friend.” We stared at the lightning storm coming over the ocean. Wild waves whipped the world. The air smelt of salt and something else, of pouring blood.
“A friend? A friend you spend all night with then come to me for comfort.”
“You’re my main attraction,” Jack tried. His eyes turned soft, and I noticed his dilated eyes.
“Are you on drugs?” I asked.
“Babe, no, what gave you that impression.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Babe, wait!” He cried out. In the memory, I turned and ran from the large window seemingly holding the sea. The heavens cried tears. However, by that time, I was past fear into insanity one gets over a lover. My muscles strained going up the ramp to my apartment. Jack was close before. Now he was a world away.
When I got home, I slammed the door.
Twinkle immediately came to me, her fluffy tail going back and forth. A look of concern crossed his small and loving mind.
“Not you,” I said back. “I chose you.”
And then end of my first life passed.
I turned back to reality. The couch smelled bad, so I pulled out a can of febreeze and sprayed the whole apartment, the hole in the wall where I lived. Gangs passed by, not wanting to deal with the crazies or brainwashed university students. Their morals kept them in brotherly love.
I lived in a poor place, but my parents were rich, cut me off. I’d taken Twinkle and did all I could to feed her, to make sure her water bowl was filled.
Fuck my parents, I thought. Their grinning, white teeth reminded me of shark’s teeth. I didn’t fit into their world of parties and luxury.
I worked in an office filing all day and cleaned the hospital at night.
Twinkled rubbed my legs. I pet him again and again before he lost patience. He went to his food bowl and chomped off the good stuff. For his treats, I ate noodles, hotdogs and eggs, a big difference from when I lived at home with sushi and steak enough to feed forty homeless people.
The promise of extreme excess bothered me. The world was filled with hungry people, of babies without milk and mothers without the proper nutrition to save their children from diseases in the third world, the kind the first world had fifty brands of medicine. White bottles, green bottles, blue bottles, all wasted and discarded.
A knock came to the door. The rain stopped, and I saw the sun rip through the clouds onto the world.
I moved my rear and walked to the thin, wooden door.
It was Jack.
“What do you want?”
“Babe, I can’t live without you.”
“It’s been a week.”
“I know, babe, can you forgive me?”
It seemed like a waste of time. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
“I’m sorry. I can’t take you back. You don’t want me for anything but a quick lay, and you aren’t any good anyway.” I shut the door in his face, latched the cheap lock and rolled my eyes.
Jack taped on the window. “Are you going to leave me here alone and broken hearted?” He roared, entitled.
I pulled the drapes over the window and got my mace. Twinkle gave me a brutal look. Someone was invading her calm house. Her tail moved, and she sat on her butt slowly. He was there for me.
Jack threw a rock at the window. It crashed through. A bloody hand came through. Twinkle acted aggressively, hissing and asking me with angry eyes if he should kill Jack. Of course, I would have let her had I not been further surprised to the point of The Twilight Zone.
Twinkle stood on all fours and let out a huge meow and then a roar. He inflated to over ten times his size and jumped through the window, staining his coat with Jack’s blood.
Am I the one who’s on drugs? I asked myself, not believing the information shooting into my eyes.
Twinkle leapt back and jumped back into my arms like a kitten. He’d shrunk and looked directly into my eyes before saying, “Thanks for the food. I must be on my way. I’m a very busy warlock. I have places to haunt and spells to inflict. Your parents now live in a trailer by a small pond that swells with pride sometimes.”
