The cat and I are not alone.
Thunder cracks again, but this time it spurs me to movement, towards the dark, towering shape in the bedroom door I am sure wasn’t wide open when I went to sleep.
“Nobody wakes me up and lives to tell the tale!”I scream, which, as battle cries go, could use some workshopping.
Lightning flashes again, another peal of thunder following right on its heels?—
There’s nothing there.
The dark shape must have been a shadow, or worse, a figment of my overstimulated imagination.
Somehow, I’ve also overshot the doorway, and I’m now teetering on the top step of the stairs, my balance totally out of whack thanks to my run towards an attacker that ah, wasn’t an attacker at all.
“Shit, shit.”My arms freewheel around and I attempt to take a step back, really very much not wanting to eat it down an entire flight of stairs in the middle of the night.
The cat darts between my legs and I suck in a breath, everything happening so fast that when I fall, I’m not sure which direction I’m going.
Until I land on my ass, timed perfectly with another loud clap of thunder.
“Ouch,” I say on an exhale.
The cat plops gracefully on her hindquarters, regarding me with those luminous green eyes.Then she stretches one leg up and starts to lick her butthole.
“That feels pointed,” I tell the cat.Apparently grooming her privates is worlds more interesting than the fact I’m crumpled on the floor.
“Well, it’s not going to lick itself.”
“What the fuck?”The words explode out of me and I scramble upright, crab-walking towards the open bedroom door.
“Such language from a would-be bookstore owner.You’d think you’d have a better vocabulary.”
I must have hit my head when I fell.
There is no way the cat is talking to me.
“Cats can’t talk.”
“Ah, but I am not just a cat.”
Over the noise of the pounding rain, I barely make out the sound of my phone vibrating where it’s hooked into the charger, and crawl over to my nightstand, not willing to take my eyes off the talking cat.
“A talking cat?”I say, just because I have to acknowledge what’s happening out loud.
“Not a just a talking cat,” she repeats regally.
Right.
It’s Ivy, and I’ve never been so happy to get a call at… two AM.
“Ivy.”My voice sounds breathless and weird to my ears.“Possible concussion, I assume.Maybe there’s a gas leak up here.Maybe I’m dreaming.”I’m babbling.
“I need you to take a deep breath and calm down.”Ivy’s voice is tired but excited, and she doesn’t seem at all surprised at my strange greeting, which makes sense because her freak matches mine.
“Never in the history of humans has telling someone to calm down made them anything but madder,” I tell her.
Gingerly, I check the back of my head for sore spots, bumps, or—heaven forbid—blood.
“I can’t figure out where I hit my head,” I say into Ivy’s annoyed silence.
