David the Cat

The next installment in the ShambElla Saga!

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David the Cat (An Interlude)

NARRATOR: You’re not really going to make me do this, are you?

AUTHOR: We are but mediums through which the story tells itself.

NARRATOR: NO, WE’RE NOT! You can choose the story! You can decide!

AUTHOR:

NARRATOR: (glowering) Dammit…

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While the other companions were focusing on their crash course in sharpshooting, David wandered off to see what he could see.

He loved his friends. Especially Ella.

But the thing he loved most about being a cat was that no one was his master.

Ella and he had a psychic link of sorts, but it was intuitive, not telepathic, so she knew not to worry about his whereabouts. If he was needed, he would feel it, and be sure to come running, barbarous names mewing and yowling forth.

Today, though, he just wanted to take in the scenery.

Inside the cat was a little boy who never got to stow shiny rocks and bottlecaps and random pieces of string in his pockets on a walk home from school; or play with sticks as if they were swords or rifles; or just wander away from the adults and all the boring seriousness of their mundane lives.

That boy didn’t die though. He just grew up too quick, hidden inside the shell of a man named David. When the man died, the spirit of the boy was lost to the ether, until Ella saved him.

There was a creek nearby, with a glimmer of the morning sun twinkling on faintly rippling waters. David trotted down to the bank and pawed at crawdads and water striders and even caught a bluegill and some minnows for a midmorning snack.

It was a cloudless day in mid-autumn and the contrast of the cooler air and the warm sun on his fur made him think of the way it felt to curl up at Ella’s side as the fire died and the night chill set in.

The world felt like a loving embrace.

His childlike wonder did not obscure the trials that lay ahead.

He didn’t need Damien to tell him they would soon walk into the very Mouth of Hell.

He felt the lurking presence of evil rumbling in his bones, for he knew it well.

And what was evil, after all, but the absence of that wonder; the abandonment of that awe at the unfolding of an ever-present mystery which would always yield something new and beautiful to a wanderer?

Even a wandering cat with the soul of a boy knew this was good, this was the curiosity that didn’t kill the cat and the satisfaction that brought it back.

Evil was what happened when we lost that wonder to the walls we built to protect it from the teeming hordes that must march in line to the beat of some far-off drum, to the call of that music specifically designed to snare them, rather than the music of each and every individual beating heart.

Hell was just such a wall which the devil built around himself, both to keep the others out and lock himself in. He loved to make them march but would never march himself.

Sometimes, as with the Angel Cult, the devil wears a mask and calls himself God.

But David didn’t need anyone to show him where his own Divine nature emerged.

Every step took him there, and he found it wherever he went.

He wouldn’t be the one to defeat the devil, but that didn’t matter for now.

All that mattered, he thought as he wandered among the last of the falling leaves and felt the lush but stunted grass tickle his paws, was that he would get her there.

For now, beauty and wonder were his to sup, like a freshly poured saucer of milk doled out by a caring hand, and he would take his fill.

After morning turned to afternoon, David wandered back and found the companions finishing up their target practice.

Colt leaned down and scratched behind his ears, and he stopped for a moment to enjoy that too. The skeleton knew just how to get the perfect spot in the perfect way.

David wondered, not for the first time, who or what this creature really was, but supposed each mystery would be revealed at the right time and in its proper light.

David mewed and curled his sinewy body around Ella’s ankle. She squatted down to pet him, looking into his eyes.

In every other respect, David looked like a normal cat. But his eyes told the story of his ethereal origin.

They were pure white, like half his fur and the dot in the center of his forehead. They did not reflect but shined with a light all their own.

Anyone who looked into them saw something inside themselves. It might be good or bad, depending on if they were good or bad. Such a gaze might warm as a fire kindled in a blazing hearth, or eat the black rot of a wicked soul, setting it ablaze with the certain knowledge of its own damnation.

More often than not, the latter simmered down and revealed the former.

Ella, however, first bestowed this gift upon David. She was the spark that lit the Hermit's Lamp.

In David's luminescent eyes was the story of their meeting, all those weeks ago at The Smiling Rock.

“I think we’re done here, David. The time has come to move on, and I suspect the real trial lies ahead,” she said.

He knew, and she knew he knew.

“Ah, the kitty returns from his short sabbatical,” Damien Daimon said, looking upon David and Ella with overflowing kindness. Then he addressed everyone. “Ya still got a Doosermon ahead, folks, but after that…” His eyes narrowed, and a small hint of the wicked smirk that followed him through untold ages played at his lips. “After that, you’ll meet my pop, and I hope you give ‘im Hell.”

The companions bid fond farewells to the Unwilling Antichrist and his crew of survivors before they set off into the woods to camp for the night.

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