Domesticated

Short Horror Fiction

Cat Photo by Lesli Whitecotton on Unsplash

Creepy Canapés is a series of stand-alone horror stories running through October. Welcome!

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I used to go out. I used to fuck and fight and make my bed wherever I chose. Elegant. Feral. There’s a small triangular chunk missing from my right ear that was well-earned in a scrap I won. I love my missing chunk. It's a beauty mark. 

Now, the once vibrant and wonderfully dangerous outside world looks drab and pointless through the kitchen window. How many of my lives have I squandered between these walls for the cowardly sake of safety and warmth?

I examine my reflection in the glass from my perch on the sink. The black and gray fur is immaculate, but that’s a given. My collar is frayed from frequent attempts to remove it and I’ve lost the athletic plumpness I had when I was living on my own. 

He begged me to live with him, leaving saucers of milk and plates of fish heads out when he noticed me hanging around outside. The property always smelled like the sea and dead fish, an arousing aroma that kept drawing me back. Fish eyes are the single most exquisite delicacy in the world. How could I resist?

The heads were good, and the milk, and when one stormy evening he opened his door to let me inside, I accepted the offer. I was a soaking wretch, the most pathetic I’ve ever been. Or at least that’s what I thought until the old man slipped a collar around my neck with a vile bell attached that announced my every movement.

And here I sit. Older, and a poorer thing than I was the accursed night I chose to enter this sad shack. The fish heads no longer appear on my plate and my various escape routes were all blocked with rapidity. I'm his prisoner. And he expects me to love him – for what?  A roof and repugnant food? Fucking ridiculous.

There he is, sprawled like an idiot on the floor. The selfish prick hasn’t even bothered to finish removing the lid from my nightly can of shit paste. He had it in his hands when I saw him seize, jerking upright as if suddenly harpooned in the asshole. He crashed forward into the fridge and fell, landing flat on his back in the center of the kitchen. One hand still grips the can tightly. A finger on the other is jammed in the ring on top, barely a sliver cracked.

His eyes are wide and dull. A general dullness is what I’ve come to expect from him but this now is different. The usual blue has paled to a milky gray and his mouth hangs open in a frozen scream. I don’t know how long it’s been but my stomach kneads itself with desperate hunger. Even the putrid fumes leaking from the can smell like the fanciest feast.

I jump down from the counter and approach him. I’ve already tried rubbing my body against his hands to stir some kind of movement but I try again, knowing better than to hope. I keep him touch-starved for just these kinds of occasions. The feel of my silky coat should be enough to get him to do what I want, but he remains unaffected, still, and cold. I suppose he’s dead. Gone the way of the fish bits stuck to his boots, although less useful. 

But maybe not.

I sniff his knuckles and am dizzied by the twist of hunger it causes. There is a new smell to him, one growing in strength behind the usual brine and old blood. It swells in a fetid wave of musky rot that makes me salivate. I’m starving.

I mount his stomach and walk the length of his torso, over his hands and can of shit, toward his disgusting face. The world swims in lustful ecstasy the closer I get to his gaping mouth. He smells more of the sea than usual, though I am closer now than I would ever be if he were alive. The new-stink and the sea-stink rise in a warm perfume from his white beard. I reluctantly breathe in deep near his open mouth. Drool drips from my fangs, landing in his throat. I close my eyes. The engine in my chest begins to rumble. The smell is repulsive and intoxicating: old fish, rotting meat, tasty death. My haunches tingle.

With my eyes closed, I move forward slowly, following an even better stench further up his face. I feel the drool falling in streams now as I inch closer to the smell of smells, the best smell ever sniffed. My nose is inches away. I look.

The old man’s pale eye shines like a fish’s. It glistens seductively; my stomach rolls over itself. Lust overtakes me.

I bite.

And bite. I fill myself with the old man’s eye, gnashing and swallowing with ravenous glee. Every slight committed by him flashes with each mouthful. In a drunken whir it’s gone, and I lick the socket greedily for every last trace. I stand and arch my back, filled with a queer new energy. There’s a power rippling through the muscles beneath my fur as I stretch my front paws out, gripping my claws into his face, using it as an anchor as I flex my whole body. I am raging satisfaction.

Feeling fully alive again, and still hungry, I help myself to his other eye. It goes down easier, quicker, and more delectably than the first. I take a portion of cheek next, tearing a tender morsel away easily. My stomach mashes it all to the tune of a purr that vibrates my whole being. My throat throbs beneath my collar, it's suffocating. Shaking my head, I turn and lock onto the old man's frozen fingers. They're rigid, and I'm able to hook the collar under one of them. I thrash violently against the hand that placed it on me until my head pops free. The bell jingles as it swings from his cold finger.

I jump off the old man and sit, cleaning my face with a paw. I'm naked now, as I should be, and I curse myself for not doing this a long time ago. I should have helped myself to his eyes while he slept, when the fish heads ceased arriving on my plate. I think I’ll finish his cheeks before I’ve cleaned myself too thoroughly. Then, I’ll fish the tongue from his mouth with a claw. The tongue that tried to name me.

The moon through the kitchen window beckons. Jumping back to the counter, my body explodes with new force and I almost overshoot and land in the sink. Every nerve twitches with excitement. The world has changed through the window. Swirling tendrils of dust and vapors dance through the golden light of street lamps. They are green and blue and red, new colors. The people walking outside are wrapped in them; they look delicious. The stars spin on their axes and the night sky pulses behind them. My purr box burns.

My reflection has changed also. My head sits taller, my eyes are lit by green fire. Have I doubled in size? Surely not. I feel thick and impossibly strong. Maybe I am twice the size. Finally, a worthy gift from that lump of an old man.

I can shatter this thin sheet of glass, I think. I can do whatever I choose. I spring-load my body, hunkered on the edge of the sink, every muscle fiber taught and furious.

Pouncing, eyes closed, leading with my head down, I burst through the kitchen window and fly through the air, landing softly on the pavement, glass tinkling like rain around me. I have some cuts. It’s nothing.

Salt air rips through my nostrils on the sweet wind. The smell of every hidden insect and squirrel, all the day’s catches tucked in their coolers, in their homes. The tendrils of colors vibrate around everything, sparkling in the light of the stars and moon. There’s a Tom I’ve seen before across the street. He looks nervous. A swirling red tendril coils about him. I’m going to fuck him, fight him, and eat his eyes, too. 

Photo by Kevin Fitzgerald on Unsplash

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Special thanks, as always, to

Dev

for editing, feedback, and hard conversations.