The Monster

      

    Winters are long on the Manitoba prairies. Not that young boys mind. There's never a shortage of things to do. Ice skating, fortress building, following the trail of the Great Albino Rabbit. But the sun sighs and turns in early each night leaving precious little daylight for conspiring young minds.

     In Manitoba, too, spring arrives very suddenly each year, like no one saw it coming. Pasty-skinned people duck through their door fronts, putting noses to the breeze and pulling deeply on the smells of mold and thawing dog dung. Snow forts collapse against their own weight - nature's implosion. Snow people shrink like the old people in Great Grandma's nursing home and ditches fill to brimming, magically re-introducing last years frog smashing sticks.

     Spring is also the time of year for love. Not that little boys notice but mothers are aware, and they smile to themselves as the Robin makes his first appearance, strutting and cocky, bouncing from limb to limb. They notice, too, the neighborhood cats, mewling from afar, squawling like newborn babies. That sound they make? Oh, they're just playing, she would tell the children.

     “Aw, Yuck! Guys, come look at this!”

     “Gross!” Cody retreated, looking earnestly for something, anything, then broke a branch from last year's lilac bush.

     He returned to Jon and Scott, their noses curled in disgust, their faces plied into grimaces. Cody advanced on the grotesque display, branch wielded like a sword, his right foot pointed north, his left south, ready for flight.

     “Don't!” Jon's hands flapped, his eyes wild. “It might not be dead.”

     Now, over the years they'd happened upon many an adventure, stumbled upon many a curious oddity. But dead things had not really been among them. This was new.

     They'd happened upon it while investigating the alien landing site, just inside the park. A yellowing circle of grass with a conspicuous flattened anthill at its center.

     “Aliens.” Jon asserted.

     “Aliens?” The other two responded.

     “Yup. I saw a show on TV. They make circles just like this.” He kicked knowingly at the anemic grass. “They land at night when no one is watching and look for something to take test samples from.” He waited, for impact. “Like cows, or people or...ants.” They hadn't asked but he knew they wanted to know.

     They'd stepped into the circle cautiously.

     “It could be radioactive,” Jon warned, being the first to roll down his pant legs and tuck them into his socks.

     Thus when they found the mutilated critter, just yards away, they were certain - absolutely certain that they'd been visited by beings from another planet.

     “It might not be dead. They probably took its brain and left it here like a zombie. A cat zombie.”

     Cody gathered up courage and took another step toward it, poking gingerly at the creatures tail.

     “It's still fresh.” Cody deduced. “It's not stiff yet, look.”

     He gently lifted one paw with the stick and let it fall with a soft thud.

     “I have to pee.” Scott took an uncertain step toward home.

     “No.” Cody stopped him with a hand. “You're going to tell Mom. You can't tell Mom. She'll be mad.”

     “She won't be mad,” Scott argued, unsure.

     “She will,” Jon agreed. “We can't tell our moms...or anyone until we know who did this...and why.”

      Cody and Jon moved in for a closer look, certain now that the cat was very dead. Crouched down on their haunches they assessed, in silence. Scientists in a mutation lab. Morticians to a monster.

     It was oddly familiar. Perhaps the Peters' cat from up the street. It was distinctly hideous.

     “Look at its eyes.” Jon spoke low, not to arouse undue attention from the neighborhood.

     The creature lay in a heap, a mound of orange-white fur, mangy and wet. One of its ears was inside out, as if it had come out of the wash wrong and its legs were twisted and awkward. The real monster lay in its face. A cat overcome by a strange vampire mania. The lips pulled back into a chronic grin revealing fangs, pointed and menacing. But its eyes.

     “What's wrong with its eyes?” Scott was hunched now too, hanging over Cody's left shoulder.

     “They're like ping pong balls.” Jon offered. “With pupils.”

     “Maybe the aliens tried to pull them out. For test samples.”

     “Ugh.” Scott was running home.

     Rob and Rhonda were in the kitchen, a sleep deprived hang-over weighing heavy on their eye lids.

      “Are we out of coffee?” Rob shuffled items around in the cupboard, sleepily moving things from one place to another.

      “Oh god, I hope not.” A butter missile took flight as she dropped another dollop of pancake batter into the pan, sizzling on the stove top. She pushed the cake lazily in the grease, freeing it from the cast-iron's grip. She was moved, momentarily, to thoughts of last night and her shoulders lifted and fell rapidly, loosening from her throat an undignified snort.

     “What?” Rob stopped mid-count, losing track of the measured grounds going into the coffee machine basket.

     “I'm imagining Jerry out on his deck last night, having a nightcap because he couldn't sleep.” She broke into full on laughter, her words breaking now between gasps. “You could have at least put some clothes on.”

     “I had underwear on. Besides, it was dark. Jerry would have to have cat eyes to see me out there.”

     Rhonda had visions of Rob, white skin radiating in the street light glow. The caterwauling had begun around midnight from somewhere beneath their bedroom window and continued until two a.m. when Rob finally flew from bed, taking matters into his own hands.

     “Pfft. Speaking of cats, how did you get rid of it?”

     Rob was silent for a moment, meditating.

     “Let's just say its something I learned growing up on the farm.”

     Rhonda flipped the last pancake onto a platter and turned to him, discerning the level of deviance in his response.

     He saddled up to her at the stove, pressing in close. “I haf my vays, dahling. I haf my vays.”

     The back door flew open hitting the wall with a thud. Scott bolted into the kitchen, a muddy trail behind him.

     “Ah ah!” Rhonda pointed him back to the entrance. “Shoes. But first go and get your brother for breakfast.”

      Cody pushed through the doorway, the call of breakfast already in his nostrils.

     “Wash your hands!” Rhonda called after them as they wrestled for position all the way to the washroom.

      “Dad, do you believe in aliens from outer space?” Cody worked another strip of bacon into his grinding teeth.

     “Don't know. Never seen one. Thought I did when you were born but then the nurse told us that's how newborns are supposed to look.”

     Cody grinned and kept chewing.

     “The Peters' cat was attacked by aliens last night.” Scott leaped blindly into the conversation. “Its eyes were coming out of its head. The aliens tried to get a tester simple.” Scott chewed hard on his pancake, awaiting his parents shock.

      “A test sample,” Cody corrected, miffed at his little brother's immaturity in esoteric matters.

      “A cat? What color?” Rob and Rhonda shared a sustained glance.

      “Orange...and white. With a black spot right there.” Scott poked a sticky finger at his forehead leaving a trace of syrup gleaming above one eyebrow.

     “There are aliens. Yes, I'm sure there are.” Rhonda hunted for distraction. “But I don't think they take test samples anymore. That's kind of old science. Now they just take the whole creature in their space ships at night and bring them back in the morning. Usually, they don't even know they've been gone. Like a weird dream or something. I suppose its possible that the kitty sleep-walked right out of the ship and bumped her head.”

     Rob was watching Rhonda closely.

     “Is that true, Dad?” Cody sought Rob's final endorsement.

     Rob took a jab at another pancake. “What she said.”

     “Mom and Dad know something.” Cody sat on his knees at the coffee table, his pencil scratching along the surface of a sheet of drawing paper from the scrapbook Grandma gave them. A two dimensional saucer hovered near the top. From a window a rope descended toward the ground, snaring a cat by the tail.

     “Mom and Dad know lots of things.” Scott sat cross-legged on the floor, deconstructing a Lego ship.

     “I mean, they know something about the monster-cat. Didn't you see how they looked at each other when we told them. They know something.”

     Scott shrugged, sorting Lego blocks into yellows, blues and reds. “Maybe Mom and Dad have been ducted by aliens before.”

     “Inducted,” Cody corrected. “Maybe they saw the space ship. Maybe they talked to the aliens.”

     Scott's attention moved now from Lego to his big brother. “I don't think they know how to speak alien,” he stated, matter of fact.

“Mmm,” Cody pondered.

     “A black spot on its forehead, right here?” Rhonda jabbed a finger at her own forehead, leaving a pink spot in its place. She moved closer to Rob in the bedroom, cornering him. “That's the cat, isn't it?”

     “Hey. I'm a farm boy. It won't have felt a thing. Perhaps you could congratulate me for being a good marksman.” Rob placed a finger under her chin, tipping her face toward his. “One thing's for sure. It won't be keeping you awake tonight.”

     Rhonda smiled, a half smile. “I guess you have a job to do then. A little burial is probably in order. Before the rest of the neighborhood finds the alien-cat-monster.”

     She turned to leave.

     “Hey.” Rob's words stopped her in the doorway. “Aliens who steal creatures in the night? Really?”

     “You could tell them Daddy's a cat murderer.” Rhonda grinned at him, challenging.

     “Aliens it is then. And sleep-walking kittens.”

     The three stood, shoulders hunched against a light rain, peering down at the hole which gaped, wide and yawning behind the garden shed, ready to consume a furry carcass. The musty smell of early spring hung in the mist like an old wet blanket, rivaled only by fetid cat remains.

     “Dad, should you say something?”

     “Say something? Like what?” Rob pitched the spade into the mound of gumbo.

     “Like...I dunno...here lies Sparky the cat. He was a good cat...”

     “Maybe he wasn't a good cat.” Scott interrupted Cody's homily. “We didn't even know him. Maybe the aliens took him cause he was a naughty cat. How do you know his name was Sparky, anyway?”

     “Well, he's gotta have a name or he can't get buried.”

     “Maybe we should ask the Peters'. He was their cat.”

     “He wasn't their cat!” Rob was becoming anxious. Rain and wet trousers always made him that way. “He has no collar. He was a stray. A whiny, nuisance of a stray.”

     His voice was rising and edgy - a cat-murderers guilt. The boys stood with him, one at each side, silent and meditative.

     “Here lies Sparky the cat,” Rob finally complied, solemn and focused, “too curious for his own good, sometimes didn't come in when he was told, probably didn't clean up his Lego, and usually late for dinner. If he'd have listened to his mother he would have stayed away from the alien ship and done his homework instead. So...goodbye curious Sparky.”

     The boys gazed up at him. He nudged Cody's shoulder and rubbed knuckles into Scott's hair.

     “Let's do this.” Rob tossed in the first load of dirt then passed the spade to Cody who took earnestly to the somber task.

     “Dad?” Scott's voice penetrated the mist softly. “Don't tell Mom but I think the cat wasn't 'ducted by aliens.” He swatted a fly from his nose.

     Rob braced himself. “What do you think happened to him?”

     “I dunno but I think it was something else got it. If Mom found out she might be worried.”

      Rob dropped a hand to Scott's shoulder and squeezed.

     “It'll be our little secret.”