Tales from the Cooinda Cycle: Memory Nine

I still don’t know how exactly we got on to the topic, but The Old Man talking about his various jobs as a young man was actually interesting. It was one of the better days in the cafe, not too busy, and so far nothing overly odd had taken place.

I made the mistake of getting comfortable, for I was not prepared for what was to come…

He was sipping away at what I think was now the third free coffee I’d made him this morning. I forget because he was here earlier, and I made him at least one, and had a chat with him while I had a coffee too. That conversation seemed to be about fishing, or at least initially.

“Do you like to fish?” I asked, trying to ask questions in the present tense as we were told.

“Oh yeah… I went yesterday,” he said, taking a bite of the free chocolate wafer I gave him.

What?

Each day he would be at a different stage of his life, and it was always pot-luck as to whether it was good or bad, or even if he stayed there for long. I guess today was a good one.

“Yep, good hunting out that way,” he continued.

Out what way? Now we’re hunting?

“Oh yeah, you hunt a lot?”

Suddenly he was up, grabbing hold of his walker for dear life and moving down the corridor, saying something to someone I imagine wasn’t actually there.

I’ll be damned, there was someone down there, a cleaner had just come out of one of the rooms and placed a large black bin bag on the ground.

“You can’t keep them in that,” The Old Man said. “That’s a person!”

Okay… that’s new. One thing about this nightmare, it always finds new ways to torment.

That was maybe forty-five minutes ago, now he was back, ordering his newest first coffee of the day, but this time he was joined by The Young Girl. She was sitting with him and trying to get him to do a jigsaw puzzle.

I was using the time to clean the tables, and benches of the cafe, as well as make myself another coffee. Enjoying the small time while he was occupied and there were no other customers.

I wasn’t paying great attention to their conversation, but I know the last time I caught anything, she was asking him about his old job. Last time I talked to him about that, he said he worked in a shipyard, now it seemed he was in some type of office, there was no way to know for sure.

I was just pouring my milk into the cup of coffee to complete my flat white, then it happened…

“...You’ve been cat-shagging, outchya get!”

What?

It took a few moments to process what I had heard.

I looked at The Young Girl, and held her gaze as she tried not to laugh.

“What was that, sorry?” I quickly asked, praying he hadn’t moved on in his thoughts yet.

“What’s that?” he said.

Oh God…

“Who said that? The thing about cats?” I asked, I wanted, no, needed, to know.

“Oh that,” he laughed. “That’s what our boss would say to us if we weren’t working hard enough.”

“He’d pull us aside and tell us, ‘we’re here to work, not shag cats.’ So we knew we were in trouble.”

“Oh, okay, that’s… interesting. Never heard that expression before.” I said.

“Yep, ‘You’ve been cat-shagging, outchya get’ He’d say.”

The Young Girl was shaking with laughter, I was hurriedly trying to get my phone out to record if he said it again.

Of course, then… nothing. He talked about work and other things, asked why a puzzle was in front of him,

“It’s the Puzzle we’re doing,” said The Young Girl.

“What's that?”

“The puzzle, did you want to finish it?”

“No thanks, I need to get going soon, I need to drive home,” he said.

Oh boy.

I sat with my coffee and we all seemed to enjoy the silence for a time.

“You’ve been cat-shagging, outchya get,” he said with zero prompting.

BINGO!

I picked up my phone and stopped the recording.

What a day, I thought. Almost worth being in this nightmare just for the new message alert.