The Last House on Needless Street Read online

  I must have dozed off because I start when a voice speaks to me. At first I think it’s the LORD and I sit up quickly. Yes?

  ‘We must investigate trauma,’ the voice says. ‘Get to its roots. Revisit it, in order to purge it.’

  I yawn. This ted is on TV sometimes and he is very boring. I don’t like his eyes. Round, like little blue peepholes. I always feel like I can smell him when he’s on, which makes my tail tingle. He reeks of dust and sour milk. But how could that be? You can’t smell teds on the TV!

  Daytime TV is so bad. I think this is a public access channel or something. I wish I could change it.

  I think I should have my own TV show, and actually it would be really fun. I would call it CATching up with Olivia, and I would describe everything I ate that day. I would talk all about my love and her tiger eyes and her smooth stride. I would also investigate the type and quality of naps there are, because there are so many different kinds. Short and deep – I call that kind ‘the wishing well’. The very light doze, kind of half under, which can go on for hours – I call those ‘skateboards’. The sort you have in front of the TV when a good show is playing (NOT this show) and you kind of take in the plot but are also asleep – those are called ‘whisperers’. When you are being stroked to sleep and the rumble of your purr blends with the deep voice of the earth … I don’t have a name for those ones yet. But they’re so good.

  Anyway I think it would be good to share my experience and all the valuable thoughts I have. Kind of like I’m doing now, but in a visual medium, because I am very camera-friendly.

  Ted

  I miss Lauren so much. Now the first shock is over, I know that of course she cannot be the Murderer. Not that she wouldn’t do it, but she couldn’t. She can’t go outside. How would she have got the traps? Laid them, without me knowing? No, it cannot be Lauren. She wrote her name on the list to upset me. She likes to do that.

  She has to stay away for now, until I figure out what to do with her.

  By the time bug-man day comes around again, I have lost pounds and pounds. I am shaky but I can walk down the street without staggering. That’s good. I have questions.

  I start talking almost before he has closed the door.

  ‘I’ve started watching this new TV show,’ I say. ‘It’s really good.’

  The bug man clears his throat. He pushes his glasses fussily up his nose. They are square with thick black frames, probably expensive. I wonder what his life is like, if he ever gets sick of hearing people talk about themselves all day.

  ‘As I’ve said before, if you want to spend our time talking about what you watched on television – it’s your hour. But—’

  ‘This show is about a girl,’ I say, ‘a teenager, who has these, well, these tendencies. What I mean is, she’s violent. She likes to hurt people and animals. She has a mother who loves her a lot, and the mother is always trying to protect her and stop her from killing. One day the mother injures her so that she can’t walk any more. I mean, it’s an accident, the mother doesn’t mean to do it, but the girl hates her for it. She thinks her mother did it on purpose. Which is very unfair, in my opinion. Anyway the girl has to live at home because of her disability. And she keeps trying to kill her mother. The mother spends her life trying to cover up her daughter’s violence, and protect her while hiding her true nature.’

  ‘Sounds complicated,’ the bug man says.

  ‘I was wondering – if this was happening in real life, could the mother do anything to make her daughter better? To stop her from being violent? Also, is it hereditary? I mean, did the mother make her angry? Or did it come from within?’

  ‘Nature or nurture? These are big questions. I think I need to know a little more about the situation,’ the bug man says. He’s watching me intently, now, with his round cricket eyes. I can almost see the antennae waving above his head.

  ‘Well, I don’t know anything else. The show only just started, OK?’

  ‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Do you think it would help, at this point, to talk about your daughter?’

  ‘No!’

  He looks at me. His round eyes seem flat now, like bad coins. ‘There’s a monster inside each of us,’ he says. ‘If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you.’

  He looks like a completely different person, suddenly. A poisonous beetle, not a safe little bug. I can’t breathe properly. How does he know? I’ve been so careful.

  ‘I’m not as stupid as you think I am,’ he says quietly. ‘You depersonalise your daughter.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Thinking of her as a person is overwhelming, so you deal with her feelings by attributing them to the cat.’

  ‘If you can’t help me, just say that.’ I am shouting, I realise. I take a deep breath. The bug man is looking at me steadily, head on one side.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘That was very rude. I’m in a bad mood. That stupid TV show has upset me.’

  ‘This is a safe place in which you can express your anger,’ he says. ‘Let’s continue.’ He looks small and safe like always. I must have imagined the other thing. It’s just the bug man.

  The bug man carries on talking about trauma and memory, and all his usual stuff but I’m not listening. I keep trying to tell him I don’t have any trauma but he won’t listen. I’ve learned to tune him out at times like this.

  I wish I had not shown him my temper. I got distracted and I didn’t get the answers I needed. Lauren has worn me too thin. It’s hard, living with someone who’s trying to kill you.

  The flyers are ragged on the telephone poles, tanned with weather. The Chihuahua lady’s face is growing ghostly. I pass her house without looking. I’m afraid that it might look back at me. I hold tight to my little brown paper bag from the bug man.

  Olivia

  The windows show full dark, no stars or moon. Ted is still out. How long has it been? Two days? Three? I think it’s kind of irresponsible.

  In the kitchen, living things stir sluggish in my bowl. Well, I can’t eat that. I lick some water from the dripping faucet. Something scuttles in the walls. I am so hungry.

  There is something I can do, of course, to get food … I sigh. I don’t like to let him in unless I have to. I’m a peaceful cat. I like patches of sunlight and sometimes stroking and the good feeling of sharpening my claws on the bannisters. I’m Ted’s kitten and I try to make him happy because the lord told me to, and that’s what you do in a relationship, isn’t it? I don’t enjoy killing. But I’m so hungry.

  I close my eyes, and feel him right away. He’s always waiting, curled up in an inky pile in the back of my mind.

  Is it my time, now? he asks.

  Yes, I say, reluctant. It’s your time.

  I’m Ted’s kitten, but I have my other nature. I can let that side take control, for a while. Maybe we all have a wild and secret self somewhere. Mine is called Night-time.

  He gets up in one fluid movement. He’s black, like me, but without the white stripe down his chest. It’s hard to tell, because he’s part of me, but I think he’s larger, too. The size of a bobcat, maybe. It makes sense. He’s a memory of what we once were. He’s a killer.

  Now I tell him, Hunt.

  A pink tongue strokes Night-time’s sharp white teeth. He comes out of the dark with his graceful stride.

  I come to, retching. I’m in the bathroom, for some reason. The door is open and I can see the skylight over the hall. It’s still pitch black outside, not yet pink in the east.

  There’s a pile of bloody bones before me on the tiles. They’re picked clean. I’m full of night meat. I wonder what kind of animal it was. Maybe that mouse who’s always singing in the kitchen walls. Or it could be a squirrel. There’s a nest in the attic. Sometimes I hear them chittering, and running across the beams. I think they’re squirrels, but they could be ghosts. I don’t go into the attic. There are no windows there and I only like rooms with windows. Nighttime doesn’t care about things like that.

 
Thinking about the ghosts upsets me and makes me feel weird. The mess before me doesn’t look like mouse remains any more. It looks like the bones of a small human hand.

  Something crawls across the ceiling above. It sounds way too heavy to be a squirrel. I race downstairs as fast as I can and I put myself into my nice warm crate.

  Ted doesn’t know about Night-time – I mean, he can’t tell the difference between us. I obviously can’t explain it to him, there’s a language barrier. And what would I say? Night-time is part of me; we are two natures that share a body. I guess it’s a cat thing.

  The night stretches ahead, and I am still hungry.

  Is it my time, again?

  It is your time.

  Night-time comes forth once more, and his stride is full of joy.

  Ted

  The blonde woman said yes. I’m surprised. You’d think she’d be more careful. But people are trusting, I guess. We wrote each other all night. It’s so good to meet someone who loves the ocean as much as I do, she writes. I might not have been completely honest about that but I’ll explain when we meet.

  But when and where do we meet? What do I wear? Will she actually show up? The questions come and suddenly everything is terrible. I look down at my clothes. My shirt is really old. It’s from the auto shop where I used to work. The burgundy colour has faded almost to pink, the cotton is soft and thin as paper in places. And of course, it has my name across the pocket. This is handy in case I forget, ha, ha. But I don’t think a woman would like it. My jeans are grey with age except where they are spattered with dark splashes of something, ketchup, I guess. There are holes in both knees but it doesn’t look cool. Everything is so faded. I want to be colourful, like my nice bright orange rug.

  The woman is making me feel terrible, with her blue eyes and blonde hair. How can she put me through this? Why did she pick me to talk to, to meet? I can already imagine her expression when she sees me. She’ll probably just turn around and leave.

  Mommy and Daddy watch from inside their silver frame. It’s heavy sterling silver. I’ve been putting this off but I think it’s time. I take the photograph of Mommy and Daddy out carefully. I give it a kiss and then I roll it up and tuck it safely into the depths of the music box. The little ballerina lies broken and dead in her musical coffin.

  I learned how to pawn things after Mommy went. Silver spoons; Daddy’s pocket watch, which he got from his daddy. They are all gone, now. There are bare patches, empty places all over the house. The picture frame is the last thing.

  The shop is dark on the warm dusty street. The man there gives me the money for the frame. It is much less than I need. But it will have to do. I like places where people don’t ask questions. The bills feel good in my hand. I try not to think of Mommy’s fading face, staring into the dark of the music box.

  I walk west until I see a store with clothes in the window, and I go in. There is a lot of stuff here. Rods, flies, bait boxes, rubber boots, guns, bullets, flashlights, portable stoves, tents, water purifiers, yellow pants, green pants, red pants, blue shirts, check shirts, T-shirts, reflective jackets, big shoes, little shoes, brown boots, black boots … I have only taken a quick look. My heart is going too fast. There’s too much. I can’t choose.

  The man behind the counter wears a brown check shirt with brown jeans and a green coat thing but without sleeves. He has a beard like me, maybe even looks a little like me, so that’s what gives me the idea.

  ‘Can I buy those clothes?’ I point.

  ‘What?’

  I am a patient person so I repeat myself.

  He says, ‘The ones I’m wearing? It’s your lucky day, we have all this in stock. I guess I wear them well, huh?’

  I don’t like his clothes particularly. But so long as I don’t have to go on a date with my name on my shirt like a kindergartener, fine.

  ‘I’ll take the ones you’re wearing,’ I say. ‘If you just go take them off.’

  His neck goes thick and his pupils go small. Mammals all look the same when they’re angry. ‘Listen, buddy—’

  ‘Kidding,’ I say quickly. ‘Gotcha, buddy. Um, do you sell dresses? Like, maybe in different colours? Maybe blue?’

  ‘We sell outdoor gear,’ he says, giving me a long hard look. I have messed up bad, it seems. He fetches clothes from the rails in silence. I don’t wait to try them on; I throw the dollars on the counter and go.

  I get to the place early and take a seat at the bar. On either side of me are big guys who drive for a living, wearing trucker hats or leather. In my new clothes I look like one of them, which is why I picked this place. It’s good to blend in.

  The bar is just off the highway, with long benches out back. They do barbecue. I thought it would be good because it’s been so hot lately. They put lights in the trees and it’s pretty. Women like stuff like that. But I see quickly that it is the wrong place to meet her. It’s raining tonight – a hot miserable thunderstorm. Everyone has been forced inside. And without the benches, the warm evening, the lights in the trees, this place looks very different. It’s quiet apart from the occasional belch. There’s no music, the fluorescents overhead are aching bright, casting glare on the aluminium tables which are littered with empty glasses and beer cans. The linoleum floor is slick with the tracks of muddy boots. I thought it was, you know, atmospheric, but now I see that it’s not nice.

  I order a boilermaker. There’s a mirror behind the bar, which is another reason I chose this place and this particular seat. I can see the door perfectly.

  She comes in, fresh with rain. I recognise her straight away. She looks just like her picture. Butter-yellow hair, kind blue eyes. She looks around and I see the place even more clearly, through her eyes. She’s the only woman in here. There’s a smell too, I hadn’t noticed before. Kind of like a hamster cage that needs changing – or a mouse cage, perhaps. (No. Don’t think of that.)

  She goes to an aluminium table and sits. So she’s optimistic or maybe desperate. I wondered if she’d leave straight away, when she saw that the guy with the white smile from the stock photo wasn’t waiting for her. (I don’t use my own picture; I learned that lesson quickly. I found mine on the website of some accounting firm. The man is pretending to sign a document, but also looking at the camera and smiling with big white teeth.) She orders something from the tired waitress. Club soda. Optimistic with common sense. Her hair falls, hiding her face in a creamy swing of blonde. And she’s wearing a blue dress. Sometimes they come in jeans or check shirts, which isn’t what I want. But this woman has done the right thing. It doesn’t float, exactly, the dress, it’s not organza, but made of some thicker fabric like corduroy or denim and she’s wearing boots not sandals. But it’s close enough.

  I set it up carefully as we exchanged messages. I talked about that album by that woman, that singer – it’s called Blue. It was my favourite album, I told her. And I loved the colour, because it was the colour of my daughter’s eyes. When the talk got warmer between us I told her it was also because it was the colour of her own eyes. Like a calm, kind sea, I wrote. I was just telling the truth, they are nice eyes. She liked it, of course.

  ‘Why don’t we come dressed in blue when we meet?’ I wrote then. ‘So we can recognise each other.’ She thought it was a great idea.

  My flannel shirt is brown and yellow. I’ve got a green cap on. Even my jeans are brown. My new clothes are itchy but at least they don’t have my name on! I couldn’t stand the idea of her doing what the first one did – come in, take one look at me and walk out again. So I’m cheating. I feel bad about it. But I’ll explain when I go over there, in just a second. Just like I’ll explain that what I really need is a friend, not a date. I’ll apologise and we’ll laugh about it. Or maybe we won’t. My head pounds with the stress of it all.

  She looks at her phone. She thinks I’m not coming. Or rather that the man with the white teeth isn’t coming. But she waits because it hasn’t been twenty minutes yet, and you always give a late person twenty minute
s, that’s universal. And because hope is always the last thing to die. Or maybe she’s just warming up before heading back out into the driving rain. She sips the club soda with a grimace. Not her usual drink. I order another boilermaker. Nearly time to go over there, I tell myself. I just need this one last drink, for courage.

  After thirty-five minutes exactly she gets up. Her eyes are small with disappointment. I feel awful, having made her so sad. I mean to get up and stop her but somehow it doesn’t happen. I watch in the mirror as she winds a blue silky thing around her neck. It’s too narrow for a scarf, more like a ribbon or a necktie. She puts a five-dollar bill down on the table and goes. Her movements are decisive and she walks fast. She heads out into the vertical spears of rain.

  The moment the door closes behind her, it’s as if I’m released. I throw my drink down my throat, put my jacket on and follow. I’m so sorry I left her alone like that, let my nerves get the better of me. I want to make it right. I hurry, slipping on the wet linoleum. I mustn’t let her get away. I can explain and she’ll understand, I’m sure she will. Her eyes are so kind, so blue. I imagine the food I will cook for her. I’ll make her my chocolate chicken curry. Not everyone appreciates it but I bet she will.

  I run out into the storm.

  It’s still late afternoon but the cloud casts shadow over everything so it looks like dusk. Rain hits the puddles like bullets. The lot is filled with trucks and vans and I can’t see her anywhere. Then I do, at the far end of the lot, sitting in the warm-lit bubble of her small car. Her face is wet with rain, or she’s crying. She still has her driver’s side door open, as if even now she hasn’t quite decided to leave. She adjusts the blue thing around her neck, fumbles in her purse and finds Kleenex. She dries her face, and blows her nose. I am very moved by her poise and her courage. She stood up to life by coming out to meet me – life knocked her down, of course, because I didn’t show up – but look at her. She’s drying her face, about to pick herself up again. That’s the kind of person Olivia or Lauren could rely on. Those are the qualities I’m looking for in a friend. Someone who would be there for them, if I disappeared.