‘I know the story,’ Lauren says. ‘I can see your memories. Or what you think are your memories. You were in a ditch with your Mamacat …’
Yes, I say, relieved to hear something I recognise.
‘It never happened,’ Lauren says. ‘The mind is clever. It knows how to tell you something that you can accept, when life gets too hard. If a man who calls you kitten keeps you prisoner – why, your mind might tell you that you are a kitten. It might make up a story about a stormy night and how he saved you. But you weren’t born in the forest. You were born inside me.’
It was real, I say. It must be. My dead little kit sisters, the rain …
‘It’s real in a way,’ she says sadly. ‘There are dead kittens buried in the forest. Ted put them there.’
I think about the earth that clings to Ted’s boots, some nights when he comes in from the woods. The scent of bone on him. I can’t seem to get enough air, even when I open my mouth wide to breathe. Truth has weight. It leaves footprints in your mind. Lauren strokes me and murmurs until the blood stops pounding in my ears.
Why did you pretend to be in the freezer?
‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ she says. ‘I had to find a way to show you that we’re one person.’
Oh, I say, helpless. I’m your psychological issue.
‘Don’t feel bad,’ she says. ‘Things got better after you came. He began to let you out regularly, feed you. You calm him. You’re his pet. You like the freezer. You feel safe in there. And the happier you made him, the kinder he was to both of us. There is no more hot water and vinegar. He sends me to sleep and you come forward.’
I help keep us here, I say. I care for him, I let him stroke us …
‘You made sure we survived,’ Lauren says. Warmth spreads throughout my mind. ‘I’m hugging you. Can you feel it?’
Yes, I say. The feeling is just like being enclosed in loving arms. We sit for a while, holding each other.
In the living room, Ted groans.
‘He’s coming,’ she says. ‘I have to go. I’ll try and come back soon.’
She touches me gently, comforting. ‘You opened the door between us, Olivia. It will be different now.’ And then she is gone.
I used to spend all my time wishing Ted would come home. Now all I want is for him to stay away.
I feel weird because even though it is such an awful situation, I love having Lauren around. She is fun to talk to. We talk or play or just sit together. It is really nice, like having one of the kits in my litter with me again. I suppose that’s what Lauren is. She can make it feel like she’s stroking me or hugging me, though it’s just in our mind. The music stops her from using our body. It’s like being tied up but not gagged, she says, and I shudder at her matter-of-fact tone, because she sounds so young, and no one should know how those things feel.
Tonight we are curled up together on the couch in the dark house. Outside, the trees spread fingers against the moonlight. The cord is a soft black, invisible against the night. Ted is passed out, the stone-dead kind of passed out, upstairs. We whisper to each other.
‘If I still had my feet we could run away,’ Lauren says. ‘Just run.’
Can you see me? I ask. I can’t see you. I wish I could. I want to know what you look like.
Ted has made sure that there are no reflective surfaces in the house.
‘I’m glad you can’t,’ she says. ‘Too much has been done to our body. I feel you, though. You’re warm – it’s nice, like someone is sitting by my side.’
I try not to think about the body, Lauren’s body, that she says we both live in. I kind of only half believe her. I can feel my fur, my whiskers, my tail. How can that not be real?
You know, there’s another one, I say. There are three of us. He’s called Night-time.
‘I think there are more than three,’ she says. ‘I hear them sometimes, when I’m very deep down. I try not to. I don’t like it when the little ones cry.’
Deep down?
‘There are other levels. I need to show you all that.’
Fear strokes me, a dark feather. I purr anxiously to make the feeling stop.
‘Don’t you think, Olivia,’ and I can hear the wet catch in her voice, ‘that it would be better if none of us had been born?’
No, I say. I think we’re lucky to have been born. And we’re luckier still to be alive. But I don’t know what being born or being alive means any more. What am I? It seems like everything I knew is wrong. I thought I saw the LORD, once. He spoke to me. Did that happen?
‘There are no gods except Ted’s gods,’ she says. ‘The ones he makes in the forest.’ The cold feather strokes on, up my tail, down my spine.
We won’t let that happen, I say. We are going to get out of here.
‘You keep saying that,’ she snaps. For a moment she sounds like the old Lauren, shrill and unkind. Then she softens again. ‘What will you do when we’re free? I’m going to wear a skirt and pink barrettes in my hair. He never lets me.’
I want to eat real fish. (Privately, to myself, I think, I will go and find my tabby love.) What about your family? I ask Lauren. Maybe you can find them.
After a pause she says, ‘I don’t want them to see me like this. It’s better if they keep thinking I’m dead.’
But where will you live?
‘Here, I guess.’ Her voice sounds like it doesn’t matter. ‘I can manage without Ted. I want to be alone.’
Everyone needs
