The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Life Eight Watches Life Nine
by Kathleen McCluskey

   I noticed it first in the reflection of the microwave door, that cheap, warped mirror that bends everything just enough to make you question your own eyes. It was well past midnight, the house reduced to a low electrical hum and my cat sat on the counter where she knew she didn’t belong. She was too still, her body in a kind of quiet attention that made the air feel heavier. Her eyes reflected the dim light, glowing faintly in the glass. At first nothing seemed to be wrong, until I realized there were too many of the glowing orbs looking back at me.

   I leaned closer, my breath fogging the glass, waiting for the image to correct itself. But it didn’t. Two faces pressed into one body stared back at me, fused seamlessly. I might have dismissed it if one hadn’t lagged behind the other. One set of eyes blinked. The second followed a moment later, slower, reluctant, like it was remembering how. A cold weight settled in my chest as I stared, trying to force sense into something that refused it.

   When I turned around, there was only one cat on the counter.

   She flicked her tail, annoyed and left out a chirp as if I interrupted her. No distortion. No second face. Just her, small and solid. More importantly, singular. I told myself it was the glass, the hour, my own exhaustion playing tricks. 

   A few nights later, she jumped onto my bed, circling twice before settling in against my legs. The room was dim, lit only by the dull glow of my phone. For a while I barely noticed her. Then her weight shifted, and something about it felt wrong. It wasn’t the natural adjustment of a cat getting comfortable. It was uneven, like two separate pressures trying to occupy the same space.

   One side pressed firmly into me, real and warm, while the other lagged behind. Slightly delayed, as though it had to catch up. When I looked down, the shape of her head seemed broader than it should have been, stretched in a way that didn’t align with reality. For one brief, sickening moment, I saw two muzzles sharing the same spine, overlapping like a double exposure. One set of whiskers trembled with breath and the other remained perfectly still.

   Then she yawned. Only one mouth opened. The shape collapsed instantly, snapping back to normal. Something safe. But my pulse didn’t follow. My heart raced in my chest. I lay there longer than I should have in the dark staring. Waiting for it to happen again.

   After that, I started watching her. Not casually. Not the way you watch a pet. But with a quiet growing fixation. Most of the time she was herself. Quiet. Indifferent. Lazy and draped across furniture like spilled ink. But there were moments where she would freeze, her eyes widening as she stared off into space. When she moved again, there was always a delay, subtle enough to miss if you weren’t looking for it.

   I tested it once.

   I clapped my hands sharply in the quiet. She flinched immediately, her body reacting in a quick, instinctive jerk. Then a fraction of a second later, she flinched again. The same moment repeated, weaker the second time, like an echo.

   The vet told me she was perfectly healthy. He ran his hands along her spine, checked her eyes, and listened to her chest. “Strong heartbeat,” he said, offering a small, practiced smile. But I watched his fingers linger a little too long over her ribs, a pause so slight it could have been nothing. But something in his expression tightened when he pulled away. I chose not to ask. Frankly, I was too scared to hear the answer.

   It got worse after that. I began to see the second image clearly when she moved too quickly followed by a blur of something almost identical. Then not. The difference was always the eyes.

   One set was alive, tracking every movement. The other was duller, fixed, watching without reacting. Sometimes they blinked out of sync. Sometimes only one set blinked. Once, in the dead stillness of the early morning, I watched one set of eyes closed in sleep and the other wide open, unblinking.

   That was when the understanding settled in. Cats don’t live nine lives one right after another, the way we like to say. They overlap. Near the end of one life and the beginning of another, there is a span where they both exist at once, sharing the same body. One fades while the other takes hold.

   Most people never notice because the transition is quick.

   This one wasn’t.

   Tonight, she sits at the foot of my bed, her body outlined by the dim light seeping in through the window.

   There is no echo anymore.

   The lives have finally caught up.

.

Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Last Bloom
by Kathleen McCluskey

They had been told that the roses were a blessing.

That was the lie that kept the monks from running.

Brother Alard learned the truth the first night he was led beneath the abbey, down past the wine stores and the bone crypts, into the chamber where the air never moved and the candles burned low and sickly. The chest sat at the center of it, ironbound and swollen with age, its lock thick and as black as a clot of dried blood. Upon it rested the roses, pale, red-edged and heavy with dew that never dripped.

He had leaned closer then, drawn by their scent. Not floral. Metallic. Sweet and wrong.

Something inside the chest shifted. Not a thud. Not a stir. But a response to him getting close.

The Abbot struck him hard enough to split his lip. “Do not invite it in,” the old man hissed, dragging him back.”It listens.”

Years passed, the Abbot rotted in his grave yet the duty remained. The roses must be fed. That was the only command that mattered.

Blood had to be poured at the roots hidden beneath the blooms. Names spoken. Prayers muttered through clenched teeth. The offering had once been plentiful, bandits, heretics, prisoners dragged from distant wars, but time thinned everything. Villages emptied. Cells went quiet. Chains rusted in place.

Still the chest endured. Still it listened. But lately, it had begun to speak.

At first it was nothing more than a murmur, something that escaped between breaths, too faint to grasp. Then came the scratching, slow, thoughtful, tracing the inner walls as if hunting for weakness. Alard had tried to ignore it. Bury it beneath prayer, but prayer did not silence it.

Nothing did. Because it was not trying to escape. It was waiting. Testing. Tonight they gave the last sacrifice. It was all they could find.

The boy sobbed until his voice broke, until it dissolved into dry, animal sounds that echoed off the stone. Alard did not look at his face as the blade was drawn. He focused instead on the basin. On the ritual. On the containment. On the roses.

Always the roses.

When the blood touched them, they shuddered. Every petal tightened, then spread again, drinking with slow, obscene eagerness. The dew upon them thickened, darkened and ran along the thin lines of the chest like diluted wine. For a moment, just a moment the chamber felt still. Satisfied.

Then the last drop fell. Something inside the chest exhaled. A long, low sound that dragged across the wood like a breath through broken teeth. The roses did not brighten. They sagged. Alard felt it in his bones, a hollow uncertainty that sank deeper than fear. Not enough.

The other fled above, their prayers rising into the chapel in trembling waves. Alard remained, someone had to. Because someone had to see what happened when the roses finally failed.

The chamber grew heavy with a sweet, rotting scent. The petals continued to curl. To loosen. Then came the scratching. It was soft at first. A single point along the inner lid. Then another. And another. Then many.

Not frantic. Not wild. Careful. Testing.

The scratching moved with growing certainty and a low, buried growl thickened beneath it, vibrating through the stone and into Alard’s bones.

Above, the monks’ hymns faltered as more petals fell. The scratching stopped. A slow, wet breath slid from the cracks in the chest, lingering in the air as if tasting it. Tasting him, before sinking back into silence.

The last petal fell.

The chest split open with a sharp, internal crack, the iron bands bending as the lid jerked upward enough to break the seal. In that instant, the singing upstairs stopped abruptly, cut off with an unnatural finality.

Something shifted in the darkness within, turning with deliberate slowness until it faced him. The blackness deepened, then focused. Two red eyes opened, wide and unblinking. They fixed on Alard with a suffocating, ancient awareness that stripped him where he stood.

He felt the moment it found him.

His skin tightened and split. Fire belched and fractures spread as his body collapsed inward without sound, breaking apart into a fine, gray dust that spilled across the stone.

The eyes watched the dust settle.

A long, pale clawed hand slowly emerged over the top of the box. Its fingers flexed as though remembering how to touch the world again.

Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!