Bad Mona

Aaron taped another flyer to another telephone pole. It had a photo of a black Bombay cat with green eyes and a pink collar and read “Missing Cat. Very sweet and affectionate. Her name is Ramona but she doesn’t always respond to it. $200 reward for her safe return.” His phone number was attached in little tear away slips cut into the bottom. He sighed and surveyed the rest of the signs attached to this telephone pole and all the others he’d attached signs to. Missing children. More missing cats. So far there were five kids that had disappeared from his neighborhood in the past month and an unknown number of cats. It was a small, poor neighborhood on the outskirts of a small, forgotten town, and people were on edge. The local newspaper speculated that a serial killer or child predator of some kind had been stalking the area. Parents were told to keep an eye on their kids and only let them play inside after dark. They also speculated that the killer might enjoy kidnapping and torturing cats. It was a pretty common trait as serial killers go. In a place where people were already naturally suspicious of their neighbors this did not add anything good to the already unpleasant atmosphere of fear and paranoia that seemed to grip the entire town.

A month earlier, Aaron had received an order for half an ounce of the psilocybin mushrooms he’d been growing in the spare room of the house he and his roommates rented. He weighed out the mushrooms for the delivery, bagged them up and headed out, leaving the rest of his stash on the counter as he had done many times before. His roommate Paul woke up that morning hungover from the night before as usual and in a bad mood. He went to the dingy little kitchen to grab some Pedialyte from the fridge to try and hydrate a bit before heading to work. As he chugged it, he noticed the big bag of dried mushrooms on the counter and next to it the small bag of pill pocket cat treats. In a flash of divine comedic inspiration, Paul had the genius idea of taking a small handful of the pill pocket treats and stuffing them with a few grams of Aaron’s mushrooms. He’d return to find his cat Ramona tripping her tiny face off. It would be hilarious! Paul grabbed the treats and stuffed roughly fifteen or so of them with as many caps as he could fit, called the cat and placed them in her bowl. He got dressed in his fast food uniform, smoked a joint and put National Geographic on the TV so the poor kitty would have some entertainment while she was tripping balls alone in the house. He called the cat and she casually wandered out into the kitchen. When she saw her bowl full of treats her eyes went wide and she began to chow down as if the world was going to end. Paul laughed to himself, wished he’d be home to see the results of his handiwork and headed out to his day of taking orders, wiping stainless steel, mopping, grilling, and doing dishes for little pay and zero respect. He wasn’t stressed about work today though because he was thinking of the look on Aaron’s face when he returned home to find his cat thinking she was in outer space.

Ramona finished gorging herself on treats, which tasted good, even with the funny, earthy flavor she wasn’t used to mixed in. Satisfied, she wandered to the living room, and hopped up on the couch for a nap. National Geographic playing loudly in the background. A moment later, she started feeling a little woozy. Her stomach twisted and turned. She had eaten too many treats and now she was paying for it. She felt increasingly nauseous, and was about to head for Aaron’s bedroom toward the dark closet and the litter box when something caught her eye. On the big, flat screen she rarely paid attention to, she noticed something that interested her intensely. A group of big yellow cats, bigger than any she’d ever seen, were crouching in tall grass. A human voice said “The lion is the apex predator of the african savannah. Here, we see a pride that has evolved a particularly specialized hunting technique for prey that even hungry lions usually pass on. This pride, based in Kruger National Park in South Africa, has developed a strategy for hunting the mighty elephant.” Ramona’s pupils were the size of dinner plates even though the room was amply lit. She stared wide-eyed and unblinking as the lions slowly, methodically encircled the giant grey beast with the long nose and long, pointy, curved teeth protruding from its mouth. The elephant seemed to be relaxed, and when the first lion sprung from the brush onto the elephant’s back, Ramona jumped three feet into the air. She was fascinated. Then another lion attacked, and another until there were no less than seven lions attached to the elephant’s back, legs, and haunches. The beast reared up, trumpeting in pain, but the lions held on. It thrashed desperately at them but couldn’t reach with its trunk or tusks. Finally, an even bigger lion with a huge tuft of hair around it’s head grabbed the beast by its long nose and pulled in the opposite direction of the other lions. After a few minutes, the elephant collapsed and the pride moved in for the kill. Ramona couldn’t believe what she’d been watching! She felt an intense connection to the lions on the screen. It had never occurred to her that if cats worked together, they could bring down prey much greater in size than themselves. She had long ago grown tired of waiting for Aaron to crack open cans of cold, grey, borderline flavorless mystery meat for her a couple times a day. She was tired of having to beg and harass him to feed her, and then getting yelled at for simply being hungry. She wanted the taste of live prey and the thrill of the hunt. She had never seen elephants anywhere in her neighborhood, but there was plenty of smaller game around if you weren’t picky. She knew what she must do.

Ramona jumped up on the counter, took the bag of mushrooms in her teeth and made her way to the window. She was able to force the screen open just enough to squeeze herself and the pound of dried penis envy mushrooms she was dragging through. When she hit the ground outside, she looked back up. She’d miss Aaron, but she also knew he’d never truly understand her, and that if she were to stay she’d always be a prisoner. Seeing those lions in action awakened something primal deep within her, and she knew she could never go back to the way things were. She picked up her bag of mushrooms and slinked off into the nearby woods to begin her new life.

Trevor was walking home after school. He had heard about the other kids from his school that had gone missing, and wished that his mother would meet him at the bus stop and walk him home. And she might have, had she not been passed out on the couch in the trailer surrounded by empty Wild Turkey bottles since noon. He continued on, walking home alone. Trevor was the only one to get off at this stop. None of the other kids on his bus lived in the trailer park, which was on the outskirts of a town that was already on the outskirts of any place respectable people wanted to be. The only thing nearby was a mostly-abandoned strip mall, with a closed-down cell phone store / vape shop, a pest control company that had gone out of business and the worst pizza place in town. Across from the strip mall were woods and a quarter mile down the road was the Shady Acres Mobile Home Park that Trevor, his mom and all the people who didn’t have their shit together enough to afford one of the crappy apartments nearby called home. As he passed the strip mall, Trevor had the uneasy feeling that he was being watched. Somewhere from the overgrown planters in front of the empty storefronts or maybe from the scrub brush woods across the street, Trevor could feel eyes on him. He kept walking, thinking he’d never been more eager to see his mom’s crappy, depressing little trailer. Suddenly he heard a low rumbling. Up ahead, a faded, rusty brown Ford conversion van turned the corner from the dirt road leading past the strip mall. As it rumbled past him, too slow for comfort, Trevor looked at the windows but could only see dark tint on the driver’s side and curtains blocking the view into the back. The van stopped for a moment, idling in the middle of the street. Trevor stared at it, but the doors and windows remained closed. The van just sat there in the middle of the road. After an excruciating few seconds went by, the van began moving again. A shudder went up the boy’s spine as it passed him, but as it headed on down the road towards town, he breathed a sigh of relief. Trevor continued on home, feeling a bit silly for getting so worked up. That’s when he noticed a cat. A grey cat, with faint, light stripes almost like a tiny tiger that had been put in the laundry a few hundred times. Trevor felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but at this point he knew better than to be afraid and continued toward home. Besides, it was just a dumb cat anyway.

As he walked, he noticed the grey cat was following him. He thought that maybe it was a stray looking for a handout. Unfortunately for this kitty, Trevor often didn’t have enough to eat himself and didn’t have anything on him he could spare. Still, if it kept following him, maybe he would find some old baloney in the fridge he could give it. That was before he noticed the other cats emerging from the broken glass door of the former pest control office. Four more cats, one dark grey, one white and brown, one spotted like a jungle cat and one that reminded him of a creamsicle crept out of the broken glass, and trotted in Trevor’s direction. They were all following him and watching him intently. Trevor began to feel increasingly nervous. He’d never seen this many stray cats before, and he’d never had them pay any real attention to him. When he looked ahead, he noticed that several more cats had emerged from the bushes on the side of the road and were headed in his direction at a steady pace. The striped grey cat was only a few yards away, and was clearly following him, with the others that had come out of the pest control office beginning to form a semicircle that was slowly enclosing him. He could tell that something was very wrong when they all started meowing. The grey one behind him would meow, and the others ahead and the ones forming the semicircle meowed in response and moved in closer. They kept meowing, and Trevor sensed that it was some type of call and response. They were coordinating something. Executing a plan. He could feel adrenaline start to pump through his veins as he realized what was happening and he was going to have to make a run for it. As the cats formed around him, meowing louder and louder, they cut off his usual route home to the trailer park. The only path forward was either directly through the cats, which seemed to multiply in number every time he looked up, or to cut through the woods and come into the trailer park through the back way. The meowing grew incessant until it became a cacophony. More and more cats joined the circle. Trevor’s eyes widened as the cats moved in and closed the gaps. He stopped. Looked left into the woods, and right into the ever-tightening circle of cats forming around him. Just before they got into pouncing range, Trevor took off his backpack, raised it over his head and threw it down with as much force as he could, scattering several of the cats forming the circle in different directions. Before they could regroup, Trevor turned to his left, crossed the narrow road and sprinted into the woods as fast as his legs could carry him.

Trevor stopped in a clearing in the trees about fifty yards from the road, where the trees were too thick to see out. He took a moment to catch his breath. He stood there panting, glad to have avoided the cats and desperately wanting to be home. As he gathered his thoughts, gasping for breath and wondering how he’d get his backpack back, he realized he was not alone. Up above him in the trees, he sensed movement. He took a moment to adjust and realized that he could see eyes. Dozens of yellow, green and blue eyes, all staring down at him. He was only a short walk through the woods to the trailer park, but had a cold moment of realization that he might not make it. As he stood there watching, a black cat with green eyes and a pink collar crept out onto the thin branches high above his head. He thought about running back toward the road where at least a passerby might see him and be able to come to his aid and call for help. As he stood there weighing his options, the black cat readied herself in position just above him, scrunching down, loading her legs up like springs and digging her back claws into the branches. When he turned back toward the road, she pounced, landing on his back and digging her claws into his ribs and shoulders with all her strength.

Trevor let out a terrified scream as he felt what seemed like dozens of tiny razor blades rip into his flesh. He reached back, desperately pawing at the tiny creature that had attached itself to him when he saw more flashes of movement on the ground around him and in the trees above him. He could feel tiny claws dig into the skin of his legs and thighs. Before he could react, he was on the ground, wailing, clawing desperately at the blur of fur and claws swarming all over him. The last thing he felt was a pair of tiny fangs sinking into his larynx, crushing down with unbelievable force, muffling his ability to scream.

As he taped his final flyer and prepared to head home, Aaron thought he could hear the sound of someone screaming in the distance, but in a moment, it stopped. He missed Ramona and wondered if he’d ever see her again. As he turned to head home, he saw a grey, striped cat emerge from the bushes nearby. He stared at it as it sat down in his path, and it stared right back at him and meowed softly.