The Cat in the Windowsill

I would first like to clarify that I do not want to write this. My therapist ordered it. They said, “Revisit the wounds until they stop bleeding.” I take the aripiprazole, and I think that should be enough. But no. Now I need to drift through memory like a bilious fog, everything putrid and painful. Still, some things carve their way through the haze with cruel clarity. The first is the earliest memory I have of my life. My stepfather.

He was a hulking man, swollen with muscle and fat. His body was better suited for breaking things than for building them. Work enraged him. Every nail hammered and every hour of sweat seemed to mock him. If he had his way, he would have rotted in a chair, drowning in drink, a swollen parasite living off the labor of myself and my mother. Yet, he preached that a man must labor, must provide, must be passionate. That lie was the only skin he wore, stretched thin over the violence underneath.

His appearance unsettled me in ways I could not name as a child. He had hair that was dark, wild, and greasy. Eyes that were a piercing, unnatural blue that paralyzed me. He had a wide nose and a coarse face that was covered in stubble that grew like mold over scarred and pitted skin. If I looked at him too long, it made me feel like I was prey. Even now, his face drifts into my mind, not as a memory, but as a presence that refuses to die.

I suppose the best place to start is here. It was night. The sun had abandoned the world, and with it, all warmth. It was cold. I was beneath the bed again, pressed into the dust and hidden beneath a blanket of shadow. The television sat in the corner and hummed faintly, its pale light trembling against the walls. Orcas glided across the screen, massive, patient, black and white giants moving through water. I stared at them, clung to them, and refused to look away.

The voices in the living room, which was directly across my room, twisted into snarls. What began as words broke into howls, animalistic and desperate. My grandfather and stepfather collided like starved wolves; my mother bumbled and sobbed between them. Then came a crack. The metallic scream of steel meeting bone. The sound was final. It shook the house, rang in my ears.

The room turned red and blue. The colors bled through the curtains unnaturally. They throbbed and turned the flowers on the wall into roses and violets. My tears poured hot onto the cold floor and soaked the wood beneath my cheek. I learned something that night. As the whales swam together on the screen. An orca mother never abandons her calf. She circles, protects, and kills for her young. I envied them.

After that night, my grandfather cast us out of his house. He had smacked a bat across my stepfather’s skull, leaving him with a concussion, though it was not nearly enough damage to silence him. I do not remember the car ride. I do not remember boxes or bags. Only the sudden truth that we had made it to Florida, deep in its swampy belly. We lived inside a sagging mobile home where the walls reeked of mildew. The air itself pressed down on you, heavy and unclean. That place was my home, though it felt like something waited to consume me slowly.

In that place, we had no one, not friends nor family. There were, however, the animals. Two cats. Two dogs. We had my dog Chewie, a small beagle who was clumsy and filled with love, my only buddy. He was fat for a beagle, primarily because he was mostly inside and I sneaked him peanut butter whenever I got the chance. Though I’d get yelled at for wasting food, it didn’t bother me. It was worth it to see Chewie do his happy little peanut butter dance.

The other dog was Bubba, a scarred pit-bull mutt dragged home by my stepfather, a prize he paraded like it was a weapon.

My stepfather used to always say, “If someone tries to steal something from us, Bubba will get a mouthful of ass.”

I’m certain that was his sole motive, although eventually, it appeared my stepfather grew fond of him. I was the one who tended to him most of the time. Bubba’s dull brown eyes would always watch me with a hunger that made my skin crawl. Feeding him had been one of my many chores, and he used to leap at me with such force. It felt like malice wrapped in play. He was too large to have inside the house, so we wrapped a chain around his neck and tied him down to a post outside. That meant he was always dirty, of course; that didn’t bother me. Dirt covered the entire house, and fleas filled it. If you were to put your hand down on the carpet, you would see and feel them jump up the length of your arm, and they would desperately gnaw at you.

Because Bubba intimidated me, I clung to Chewie and the cats, mostly. Smokey, yellowish-brown fur, roamed through the wilderness. He would only come inside to eat and was the elder of the two cats. He had a sort of wisdom and calmness about him. And then there was Randa, frail, forever stunted, a cat that never seemed to grow. My parents would not let her outside, so she perched on a windowsill most of the time. Smokey made me yearn for escape. I found comfort in Randa.

It was clear, even then, at five or six years old, that the animals mattered more than I ever would. They received petting, feeding, and adoration with a tenderness that was never shown to me. They gave me food, clothes, enough to stay alive, as if tending to those basic needs were proof that my parents were good people. Of course, the feeling was mutual. I adored our animals more than I ever would my parents.

I remember a night now. It’s the best example of what affection looked like to me, and how quickly it turned sour. They cut the power. Boredom overtook us. I had a wrestling match with my step-father. His weight crushed me; his strength was absolute. I was wiry and wild, desperate, and in my giddiness, I struck his nose by accident. I apologized instantly; I trembled, but it was too late.

His hand clawed the back of my head, his fat fingers intertwined with my filthy hair, and he yanked back hard. I screamed as clumps tore free from my scalp; hot pain seared into my skull. He bent my neck back until I thought it might snap and forced me to look at him. His eyes burned, his breath stank and lingered in my nose. He never brushed his teeth and only had black stubs to eat food with. He spat curses and promises of death at me. “If you ever touch me like that again, I will fucking beat you stupid.” A statement I will never forget.

My mother sat frozen; her face was pale, her hands useless in her lap. That was all she ever did. Watch.

Now, with that context, with that understanding of what my childhood was, I feel the memories crawling back. Details I had buried. I feel now that the next place to evaluate what had happened to them is here.

I was around the age of ten or eleven, maybe, and rode on the school bus.Thankfully, there was one that actually would come out to where I lived. I idly scratched at the thick layer of yellow plaque that coated my teeth. No one sat next to me. I was a strange, emaciated child who stank of rat piss and mold. I read a book. It’s what I would spend most of my time doing. Education and reading served as an escape. Teachers treated me kindly there. So naturally, I was decent at school, not because I was smart, but because I was desperate for attention. Soon the bus arrived at my stop, and I got off and walked back home. It was about half a mile or so.

It was humid, and the sun boiled me alive. My sweat caused my ragged clothes to stick to my body. I walked up to our trailer. Though we had no air conditioning, anything was better than being under the open sun. The trailer squatted low to the earth, a husk which sagged, made of cheap aluminum and wood. Its side was sun-bleached, streaked with rust and the white paint that curled and peeled away. The windows were small and clouded, panes of glass that caught no light, only reflecting a dull gray. My stepfather broke one window during a fit and roughly patched it with a plank of compressed wood. The front steps were warped boards, soft with rot, where nails jutted out like crooked teeth waiting to catch flesh.

The yard was a little more than a patch of dirt and dead grass, speckled with bald spots that turned to thick mud after every rain. Stray weeds grew high; they curled around scraps of metal and the husks of broken equipment… like our lawnmower. We had no driveway, and in the yard sat a carcass of an old van sunken into the ground; its tires were flat, its hood yawned open. My stepfather had been meaning to repair these things.

Even the air around the place seemed heavy. The mosquitoes bred thick in the standing water by the rusted-out trash cans, and the smell of mildew and wet earth clung to everything.

I carefully walked up the steps that led to the porch. Metal screening enclosed the porch, although deep gashes in many parts allowed mosquitoes and flies to float in and out. I rushed to the porch and approached the front door. I often tried to be quiet; I didn’t want to get assigned a chore as soon as I opened it. Thankfully, my stepfather hated stomping and often would shoot my feet with a BB gun he had if I did so. I learned how to walk silently quick.

Unfortunately, however, the door didn’t sit right. You always had to give it a good yank. This meant that my parents knew when I was home. But I would often rush to my room and hide behind my curtains. My stepfather ripped my door out of the wall after he found out I was playing with my toys despite being grounded. My mother, thankfully, somehow convinced him to at least put curtains up. But before I could do that, my mother gave me a humble greeting, almost a whisper.

“Hi sweetie.” She stood to the right of me in the kitchen; her hands were wet with gore as she twisted the heads off shrimp. Her eyes never moved from the sink. “Your dad is asleep, but he wants you to empty the cooler when I’m finished.”

I turned my head left. My stepfather sat in the green chair, shirtless, his belly rising and falling with each snore. The chair was ancient, its stuffing gushing out of seams, the cushion sagged in the middle. We had found it out in the trash on the roadside and dragged it in as if it were treasure. Over time, it would bend beneath his weight, until the springs screamed anytime he took a seat.

“Okay, I’ll get that done for Ja-” I had caught myself. I had almost said his name. That was the worst rule to break. I do not consider him my father. And I could not use his real name or refer to him as stepfather. If someone spoke it, they would summon a belt, or anything he could get his hands on. He was simply Dad.

“Thanks, honey,” my mother murmured. Her voice was soft and careful. I looked back at her and wondered if this would be our only exchange for the day. It usually was.

I left for my room, pulled back the curtain, and sank into my mattress. Dirt, which I could never keep out, stained its surface. Outside, the sugar-sand roads drifted grit into every corner of our house. I had no sheets for the mattress. And I only had a sleeping bag that was split open and torn, with the insulation visible. A single yellow pillow showed sweat stains. I sat up from the bed and opened my schoolbag, and started working on my homework.

After what had been an amount of time I can’t recall, the sound of my stepfather’s snoring stopped.

A silence lingered. Then I heard his voice; it was slightly muffled through the thin walls. He asked my mother if I was home. She answered yes. The chair moaned. His footsteps stomped down the hall, each one heavier than the last.

“Hey boy.” The curtain snapped aside. His face appeared red from sleep. “Did your mama tell you I need you to empty the shrimpin’ cooler?”

I nodded.

“You do it yet?”

I shook my head, my eyes having lurched back to my homework.

“That’s all right. Get it done after your homework.”

The curtain had fallen shut. His slippered feet clacked back to the chair, where he would inevitably drift off again into half-sleep. That was the rhythm. He would be calm, almost gentle, then he turned on me without warning. He always found a reason. If not forgetting a chore, then doing it too slowly, or simply existing. The BB stings, the shoves, the slurs. It had happened until that tree.

When I had finished my work, I stepped into the hall. The chair loomed, and though his body sat back in it, his stare tingled my nerves.

“You gonna help us devein the shrimp after yer done with the cooler?” He asked impatiently.

I froze at the door, hand on the tarnished brass knob. My eyes darted toward him, then away. “I wanted to walk Chewie. Can I?”

The chubby dog lifted his head from the couch; his tail thumped at the sound of his name.

“You and that damn dog.” He exhaled. “Fine. But be back by five. We’re having shrimp again, if you couldn’t figure that out.”

I nodded, jiggled the door open, and stepped into the heat.

The cooler sat at the bottom of the porch stairs. It was a massive thing, green and tan, big enough to hold days’ worth of shrimp. See, sometimes we couldn’t afford food. So shrimping and food banks is how we got by. My stepfather hauled an illegal harvest back from the gazebo by the river at dawn, filled to the brim. My mother would take me to the local church, and we’d come back with a couple of bags’ worth of food.

I stared at the cooler; I knew what waited inside. The heads my mother had torn from the bodies an hour ago had baked under the sun. The heat had sealed the lid shut with pressure. I gripped the handle, rolled it to the tall weeds behind the house, and pried it open.

The lid cracked with a pop, followed by a blast of thick and putrid steam. It clung to me and the inside of my nose. I gagged.

Inside, the shrimp had broiled into a grey-pink slurry, black eyes ballooned and floated about, the shells had dissolved to pulp. The stench suffocated me. Flies surged about in a frenzy, their bodies buzzed against my face, some stuck to the sweat on my skin before they pulled free.

I flipped the cooler onto its side. The slop poured in a wretched tide; it struck my ankles and soaked my shoes. It coated me and left a sticky residue. The ground sipped it slowly, and the flies swarmed to feast upon what remained. I dragged the cooler to the side of the house and blasted it with the hose. The water only spread the stench; thin rivers of pink streaked into the dirt.

The chore was done. I could leave now, for a little while, until the sun set and the house reclaimed me.

I hosed off my shoes until the water ran clear. They were my only pair, and if they smelled like liquid shrimp, there would have been no saving them. Inside, I filled my dented canteen from the faucet, clipped it shut, and grabbed Chewie’s leash. He came bounding; panting excitedly, his tail thrashing back and forth. Usually my parents would just let him out and roam the yard if I wasn’t home. So, I’m sure he waited all day for this.

We slipped out of the house before anyone even thought to stop me. No one ever really did, anyway. My parents would rarely keep track of where I was. They wouldn’t care, as long as I didn’t get caught skulking around the wrong yard. Though I usually ignored that rule. The idea of private property made little sense to me. The wilds did not belong to people. And the woods had no notion of fence lines.

The neighborhood seemed dead in the heat; trailers lined up in various states of decay. Our own sat farthest back; it was half hidden behind shrubs and palms. The only way someone could tell there were people back there would be a thin trail of sugar sand. Toward the front lived the retirees; their trailers were newer, their lawns were trimmed and lush. They painted their porches in bright pastels. Many of them had beachy decor, like anchors or wooden whales. Between us was a dirt road that led out to the county pavement, and from there, a mile’s walk to where my world ended in trees.

I walked that way on the paved road; the asphalt was an unfamiliar firmness under my feet. Occasionally, there would be a car which would drive by, and we’d have to walk onto the wildly overgrown median. Chewie lumbered beside me and would catch sand spurs in the pads of his paws. Each time he limped, I crouched and plucked the dry barbs. He grunted, patient, as if he knew this was our ritual. A mile later the road stopped; it came to a dead end, swallowed by pine and palmetto.

I unclipped Chewie. He didn’t really need a leash. He always knew to follow me. The ground softened as I crossed into shade, and the squelch of damp soil beneath my shoes felt as if I had stepped into a new world.

Sunlight fractured into beams through the canopy, dust and gnats gently flew about as though I had entered a dusty cathedral. I leapt from fallen logs and balanced on stumps; I had pretended I was a knight. The creek wound like a shimmering ribbon, and I followed the bends. I would stop to toss sticks for Chewie, or I would crouch low and watch baby alligators and their parents float like forgotten dinosaurs, their heads peeking just above the surface. The trees bent and whispered above me, their crooked spines tangled together like guardians. There, I could breathe. There, I could embrace the world for what it truly was: magic. It was my secret, one that gentrification would never reach because those with the power to move others considered it grotesque.

But the woods only felt safe until you looked too long at their shaded edges.

Back, beyond the trees from which I had entered those woods, was a single home. Mrs. Bennett’s. She had owned the last house at the edge of those woods. She had caught me in her patch of woods property last year. Since she hadn’t fenced it off, I thought it’d be fine to look. She stumbled out of her back door, hair like spiderwebs and eyes clouded, screaming words that were indiscernible. Her voice cracked and broke, and though I couldn’t understand her, I knew she wanted me gone. That memory clings to me still.

I walked deeper into those woods, Chewie’s nails ticking against roots behind me. My mind would eventually trail back to the thought of home. I had explored for sometime, and the sun lowered. But I knew when I stepped back onto the pavement, the air would sour again. The freedom would vanish. The house, and my parents waited. I continued to follow the creek. I took a moment and gave Chewie some water; he had panted pretty heavily.

When I fanned Chewie with a palm frond and relaxed in the calming shade of the pines, the old man’s beard gently swayed in the slight breeze; I took one last swig of water and saw something peculiar. The sun had gone down quite a bit, and the sky turned red and dark. In front of me, however, was a firefly! I loved fireflies, but I found it odd that there was only one. Chewie looked at it without blinking. I got up and tried to catch it so Chewie and I could get a closer look at it. It was quick, and so I had chased it.

The firefly led me farther than I had ever meant to go. Its glow bobbed gently through the branches, slow enough that I could follow, but dexterous enough that I missed my attempts to catch it. I laughed and Chewie bayed at me; I figured he was laughing too. Soon he stopped and picked at his paw; he must have stepped on another sand spur. I turned to help him, but realized I’d lose the firefly if I helped him. I had seen him pry them out before, so I figured he’d be able to catch up. Eagerly, I kept chasing the bobble of a bug and joyfully yelled for Chewie to follow.

Then, without warning, the trees fell away, and the air grew still.

A pond had sat in front of me, silent and perfectly smooth. Duck moss had covered the edges of the pond, unscathed. The world had stopped breathing. Suddenly there was no breeze; long strands of old man’s beard hung low from the crooked trees that surrounded me. The last spears of daylight plunged through the trees and slightly illuminated something that sat in the middle of the pond. I felt both drawn forward and rooted in place; my skin prickled.

A tree stood in the center of the pond. Well, it was more of a stump. The top part of the tree was missing, though it would have been the largest I’d ever seen. It was jagged and scarred by burns, black and toothy pikes. It seemed to be only dead wood, gray and skeletal, but then I saw it. Something moved in the center of the stump. It was a lump, a growth. The term for them is burls. The burl stirred. It moved as if there were something inside it.

Chewie had caught up to me and stood beside me. It seemed to move in response to us. I leaned in closer, unsure if it was a trick of the light. But what I saw, I don’t know. There were veins of something soft and red; it threaded through its trunk, pulsing faintly beneath the bark like muscles buried in bark. Where the few branches split, pale growths curled in shapes almost like hands, dripping with beads of moisture.

I stared; I wasn’t able to look away. The tree was monstrous. It was alive in a way I had never seen before; not plant, nor animal, not quite either. The longer I gazed, the more detail I soaked in. I knew, however, that it watched me. The burl split open with a slow and wet tear, and revealed a blood-shot eye.

The firefly hovered above the water one last time, its glow fluttering over the pond. Then it blinked out, leaving me alone in the dim light with the sound of the malformed stump gurgling and squelching.

Its silhouette seemed to sway.

Was it swaying or… breathing? I couldn’t tell. Then the trunk shuddered as if something inside awoke and pushed outward, the tendons and bone rearranging beneath the pale bark. A loud buzzing erupted from the trunk, as if dozens of bees flew in unison. Suddenly, a stream of yellow light tore through the hollow of the tree, like a chest being split open. It vomited forth a stream of bioluminescence that arched into the sky and then fell back toward the pond in a slow luminous rain, each droplet thinned into a soft yellow glow until the whole pond was lit. The smell was horrendous. It was pungent and wet, like old resin or syrup mixed with iron and decayed flesh. It made my mouth fill with a hot layer of metallic saliva.

When the light revealed what truly sat in front of me, I became still. My muscles were tense from anxiety. It breathed like… an animal? It shuddered quickly as if it were taking panicked or excited breaths. Its bark peeled and rolled off like dead skin, and seams opened where a dark red sap bled like coagulated blood. The bulbous, bloodshot eye swelled from what I could only assume was pain. Its veins lined the pupil with ugly, bulging, bloody rivers. It stared into me without blinking. My chest hammered so loudly I thought the sound would rupture the stillness of the water. My legs locked, and the world narrowed to that eye and its slow, obscene stare.

Chewie caught up and erupted into a barking fit. His body low and fur high, his nails dug into the moss. His yaps broke my trance like a stone lobbed through a window. I ran. Though the fireflies did not scatter. They lifted like a phosphorus cloud rimmed with light and came after me. They moved with purpose. Concentrated embers settled over my shoulders, face, and open mouth and eyes. When they landed, the sensation was not gentle. It felt like a thousand pins pressing into my skin. They crawled, slow and patient, almost as if they were mapping me. Trying to understand the shape of my small and sickly frame.

While trying to cover my ears and nose, I flailed, and my palms slapped my arms. I tore at my shirt, trying to get out those who had found their way underneath. I could do nothing but scream.

“Stop! Please!”

In an instant, the swarm calmed. They obeyed my frantic yelp. They let lose my body and hung in the air like dozens of stringed lights, all focused on me. One landed on my wrist. I held it close to my face. Its thorax rose and fell, just like any firefly’s. Its compound eyes, however, were large, bloodshot, fleshy and red. It felt as if it stared at me with intelligence.

They knew. How could they know? What were these things that were far too aware?

Chewie came crashing through the brush, his ears flopping. He skidded to a stop at my feet, barking furiously at the firefly that still clung to my wrist. I hushed him. He whimpered and quieted, tail tucked low and anxious.

“Can you… can you understand me?” I whispered. My voice sounded small. The firefly did not move. Its glow pulsed gently, as if breathing with me, and its bloodshot eyes remained fixed on mine. From the wet ground, I got up. I spoke to it, nonsense at first, anything to keep me from being assaulted again. I told it half-formed thoughts. And then questions. Something in me felt certain it wanted me to keep making noise.

I walked; the woods unfurled around me in the swarm’s light. It followed and hung back, its glow bright enough to show every root and stone, every curl of mist above the stream. They reminded me of lanterns. Occasionally, I’d glance back and find the swarm fixated on me. I got goosebumps, yet I could not help but marvel at them. I walked through a dream that night. One, which would soon become a nightmare.

I eventually stepped onto the paved road as the trees thinned. The firefly on my wrist stayed with me, its glow steady and warm. The rest lingered at the edge of the forest and pulsed in unison. For a moment the shades of light made me dizzy, but filled me with giddy awe, like when you look up at fireworks for too long. Then, all at once, they went dark, like the flip of a light switch. My eyes were so unadjusted that I couldn’t see anything. When my eyes finally readjusted, silence and shadow had swallowed the forest.

I stood in the darkness, gently clutching the one firefly that remained. Its glow seemed to calm now, not nearly as bright as before. It was now just a small dot painted against the dark. I held it close, as though it were a secret treasure plucked from some forbidden place. I hurried toward home. Maybe my mother would know what it was, or rather what made it so different.

I walked along the paved road; the night swallowed the edges of the world and painted strokes of shadows that made me jump when they crossed my path. Time had unfolded strangely around whatever I had seen. I had left at three and now it had to have been somewhere between eight and nine. I don’t think I could have been out that long. After some time, I had made it back to my neighborhood.

The porch light on my house burned my eyes; it was so bright compared to the darkness that I had just traversed.

My legs shook when I stepped into the yard. The porch light shone solely on the doorway. They were waiting. My stomach turned over and over, rehearsing excuses that wouldn’t make a difference. Chewie stayed by my side. I observed the tiny firefly. I turned my gaze towards the window. A chill pooled in my chest as I stared at the curtain and the dim light beyond it.

I moved as quietly as I could. I got a better look through the window. The hallway light was on, the exact light that had sat in front of my room. I convinced myself that they were asleep. I moved into the kitchen and my hands trembled.

I found a glass and let the firefly crawl inside. Its light bobbed against the glass like a star. I stretched plastic wrap over the rim and poked a few tiny holes with a fork. I tried to make the holes big enough for air and small enough so it could not escape. If the insect had survived until morning, maybe I would have a reason that sounded true. Maybe that would help.

Ronda sat on the windowsill where she always did. She looked thinner than she did yesterday, as if she were folding herself into less room so no one would notice. I ran the back of my hand across her head. Her purr was a brittle sound. Petting her steadied me for a moment.

I slid into the pajamas I wore every night, even though they were tight from growing out of them. My bed was lumpy and promised no sleep, full of tiny fleas that would gnaw at me. I crawled in, and I left my legs exposed because it was too hot to fully wrap myself in my worn sleeping bag. I put it across my torso, acting as some sort of flimsy wall. It made me feel as if I had something between me and the rest of the world.

I put the glass on the bedside table. Behind the thin curtain, I could hear the house groaning, or was it muffled conversation? It could have been anything. Despite trying to count my heartbeats to fall asleep, it was no use. I opened my eyes now and then and looked towards the firefly, which slowly blinked beneath the plastic wrap. I told myself lies to get through the night and held my hand over my chest until my nerves stopped, because lying had always helped me survive each day.

Chewie clumsily jumped onto the bed and curled up at my feet. As I lay there, waiting for sleep to drape over me, something walked in and moved the curtain. It was Ronda. She so rarely moved from the windowsill. She leaped onto my bed, and her thin body curled against my calf, warm and tiny. For a moment between Chewie’s snores and Ronda’s small breaths, I felt comfort.

During the night I must have fallen asleep, though it did not feel like sleep so much as my body simply giving out. When I woke, it was to the sound of footsteps. Heavy footsteps that struck the hallway floor. They came fast and uneven, each step landing harder than the last. My eyes flew open, my vision swimming in a haze of dim shadows and lucid shapes. My head felt thick from poor sleep, and my heart had already pounded before I fully understood why.

Then I heard him breathing in the hallway.

The sound crawled under my skin. It was thick with anger. I stared at the curtain that hung where my bedroom door used to be, my entire body frozen. Against the thin cloth, his shadow rose, and the light from the hallway shifted. The shape of him stretched across the fabric until it looked monstrous, a swollen outline that blotted out nearly all the light behind it. The curtain trembled faintly from his movement on the other side.

His hand appeared first.

His fingers pressed into the cloth, stretching it outward before slowly curling around the edge. He peeled the curtain back, and the hallway light spilled into the room behind him, but most of it vanished into the bulk of his body.

“Boy,” he said.

His voice was low and raw, dragged up through a throat that sounded scraped and dry.

“You better be fuckin’ dead and somebody dropped your body off in that bed. Or I’m about to kill you myself.”

I lay there, unable to move. My chest barely rose with each breath. His voice carried a strange mixture of exhaustion and rage, the kind that seemed ready to spill over at the slightest excuse. He stepped closer, and the smell of him reached me. It was stale, thick with musk. It made my stomach turn.

“You worried the shit outta your mom,” he muttered. “And not only that, you didn’t listen to me.”

I had no choice but to sit up. My arms trembled as I pushed myself upright. Words rushed toward my mouth because I knew I had to speak before he decided I had waited too long.

“I’m sorry,” I began.

He moved before I could finish.

In an instant, he crossed the space between us. His hands came down on my shoulders with crushing force, his thick fingers digging into the bone and muscle so hard that pain shot straight through my body. He leaned down over me and slammed me backward against the wooden headrest. The crack of my skull against the wood rang through my ears and burst white sparks across my vision.

“So you are alive,” he snarled, his face inches from mine. “WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY?”

“I’m sorry,” I cried. The words tumbled out of me without control. I could feel tears pushing into my eyes. It would not matter anyway if I cried. If anything, it made him angrier.

Chewie burst into frantic barking beside the bed, scrambling forward with desperate little yelps as he tried to wedge himself between us. His paws skidded across the mattress and he snapped helplessly toward his arm.

He shoved him away without even looking. Chewie slid across the bed and hit the wall with a startled cry.

“I’ll show you fucking sorry,” he said. His voice dropped lower and became colder. “You stupid little shit.”

His hand grabbed the front of my shirt and yanked me forward so violently that my feet left the mattress. For a moment, his face was what I saw as I hung in the air. Then he hurled me across the room.

With brutal force, the floor slammed into me. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs, and for several seconds I could not inhale. The world tilted and spun around me while a deep ringing filled my ears. My cheek burned where it struck the ground, and warmth began spreading slowly across my face.

Through the blur, I saw him turn back toward the bed.

Then he stopped.

There was a small light on the bedside table.

He picked up the jar slowly and held it close to his face. The dim yellow glow from inside illuminated his features from below, throwing his scars and stubble into sharp shadows. The firefly drifted lazily inside the glass, its light pulsing faintly against his fingers.

He turned his head toward me.

“What is this?”

My head throbbed as I struggled onto one elbow. The room still swayed around me and my thoughts felt scattered.

“That’s why I was late,” I said weakly. “It was incredible. I wanted to ask Mom what kind of—”

The blow came before I had finished speaking.

My vision exploded sideways. Something struck the side of my head with crushing force, and the room spun violently out of place. I felt a dull crack. I could barely make it out, but I saw the firefly on the ground. And then I saw Ronda pounce on it and eat it. I saw glittering shards of glass surrounding her. I couldn’t hear anything, just muffles.

When I woke up, I was back in my bed. The ceiling hung above me. I lay still, afraid to move, afraid that even the smallest shift might pull something terrible back into the room with me. Memory came in faint flashes. My mother stood in the doorway, unmoving, her face lost in shadow. He was there too, bent over me, perhaps picking me up.

I do not remember how I got back into bed. Pain dragged me fully into consciousness. It pulsed through my skull, deep and insistent. When I tried to sit up, the room lurched violently. My vision warped at the edges, bending and stretching as if I were looking through water. I forced myself upright anyway, gripping my ragged sleeping bag as if it might anchor me to something real.

The room was clean. The floor where glass had shattered was bare. No shards caught the light. No stains marked the place where I knew blood had been. It was as if the night had erased itself. I raised a trembling hand to my head and found the wound. My fingers brushed against it, and pain flared. It was there, hidden beneath my hair, undeniable proof that something had happened, even if they tried to erase it.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. The dizziness hit me all at once. For a moment, I thought I might collapse. Somehow, I stayed on my feet.

At the foot of the bed, Chewie sat in his usual spot. He was closely watching me. It was as if he understood more than he should.

I stumbled out of my bedroom and saw my parents talking to one another. They both wore sour expressions on their faces. As I approached, they stood there quietly staring at me. After that, they simply informed me they would keep me home from school. They said I needed time to recover. They said it was for the best. Looking back, I think they were afraid. Not of what had happened. But of what I might say if anyone asked.

A few days passed after that; it felt like time had dragged and the world outside ceased to exist. I spent most of it drifting between lazily playing with Chewie and sitting beside Ronda, resting on a windowsill, basking in the sun. At first, it was almost peaceful. She stretched out along the windowsill, soaking in the light. But when I ran my fingers through her fur, something felt wrong. It wasn’t soft anymore. It rasped against my skin, dry and splintering, like brittle straw.

Then I saw her tail.

The tip had darkened to an ugly, tar-like black. Not just discolored, but dead. The fur there had fallen away entirely, revealing something cracked and rigid beneath like charred bark. When I touched it, it didn’t move. It stayed stiff.

I told my mom. She barely looked, just said it was probably nothing, maybe a skin issue. She said she’d give Ronda a bath soon, hoping it’d help.

Over the next few days, Ronda got worse in ways I couldn’t explain. I tried to comfort her, stroking her back, whispering to her, but she didn’t react the way she used to. She did not lean into my hand. She didn’t purr. Unmoving except for the faintest twitching under her skin, she just sat there, absorbing the sunlight.

When she moved, her legs were stiff. They bent at odd angles, resembling dislocated joints. There were faint cracking sounds, subtle but unmistakable. It was as if something inside her was splintering.

Her tail only got worse. The blackness spread upward, splitting open in places. Thick, dark blood seeped out slowly, clinging to the surface in sticky strands. Beneath it, the flesh looked wrong. It appeared layered and fibrous, as if something tougher had replaced the muscle.

Then the lump appeared on her back. At first, I thought it was swelling or an abscess, but it kept growing. The surrounding fur parted and fell away, exposing stretched, greyish skin. A rounded shape lay underneath. It was irregular, pushing outward in knotted ridges, like something was trying to force its way up from inside her. When I touched it, it was hard, and I could feel some sort of pattern beneath the skin. It reminded me of the bark of a tree.

Ronda never left the windowsill. Not once. It was as if she had rooted herself there. Her paws curled inward, claws digging firmly into the wood. Dust gathered around her. She didn’t groom. She hardly even blinked.

Her fur changed. Each strand thickened and stiffened, lifting away from her body until she looked almost spined. When I brushed against her, it pricked my skin. Some of it snapped off entirely, falling in dry, pale fragments that crumbled when I picked them up. Underneath, her skin had split into long, thin cracks. They deepened over time, spreading across her sides, her legs, her face.

Her tail was no longer a tail. It jutted out behind her like a dead branch, rigid and uneven, its surface rough. No fur remained. Only that bark-like texture, streaked with dried blood.

She stayed on that windowsill. All day. All night. She howled constantly, a thin, broken sound. She never opened her mouth, though. Her jaw would creak and crackle, but it opened to no avail. It kept me awake at night.

I begged my parents to help her. They put her down. We couldn’t afford to take her to a vet, and we didn’t own a gun. So, a machete was the only tool we had that would get the job done. We had to pry her off the windowsill. A strange stain on the windowsill was the only thing left of her. I watched from that window as he took Ronda out to the backyard. As he swung the machete, it struck with a snap. He had to pry the machete out of little Ronda’s neck, as if he had struck a dead stump with it and it got stuck. A cloud of fireflies erupted from her body and dissipated in the hot summer breeze. I closed my eyes after the first swing and hid in my room for the rest of the day.

In the rural South, death is everywhere. It’s a presence that looms over you. You’re raised by the most unavoidable law of nature: everything dies. But what happened to Ronda wasn’t natural. Even as a child, I understood that.

That night, the one after Ronda’s death, was when everything began to truly change. The air was heavy with heat. Humidity clung to me and to the scabbed wound on my head. It pressed close and weighed on my body. I couldn’t sleep. At some point, I opened my eyes with restlessness. When I did, I saw them. In the doorway, cutting through the swampy darkness, was a strange pair of dots. They hovered high above the ground, perfectly spaced, like the eyes of something patient and waiting. The eyes of a predator.

I lay there, unable to move, for what felt like hours. Sweat gathered and ran over my skin, soaking through my clothes. The dots did not move. They did not blink. They simply watched. Without warning, they slipped behind the curtain. There was no shift in their position, no sound of movement, no trace of footsteps. Only silence. Still, something in me needed to know. I rose from the bed as quietly as I could.

I pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the hallway. They were there again. Pale, faintly glowing, fixed at the far end near my parents’ room. I stood frozen, staring, and after a long moment, they vanished once more. Slowly and carefully, I walked down the hall and reached for the door. I slowly eased it open.

Inside, I saw the dots hovering above my parents as they slept, unaware. The lights drifted downward, slow and deliberate, until they hovered near their faces. Then they separated, each moving with intent. That was when I noticed they were fireflies. I watched as one slipped into my mother’s mouth, and the other into his, both of them breathing softly, undisturbed.

I tried to call out to warn them, but a sharp pain flared on my head. Hesitation gripped me. I feared the repercussions if I woke a beast.

I went back to bed. The rest I refuse to recall.

Credit: Daniel March

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