Special Mention - Amber N. Hafeez

Scaredy-Cat
By Amber N. Hafeez

Pepper always seemed to remember the rules about Halloween night. A
black cat wandering about tended to trigger people’s superstitions, and
Eleanor had heard too many reports of them going missing to risk letting
Pepper stay out. It was only one night of the year, and she didn’t seem to
mind. Eleanor supposed that she was spooked by the trick-or-treaters.

As the sky became black behind the stars, Pepper could be relied upon to
race in through an open window and make herself comfortable on the living
room rug, her tail snapping rhythmically with the ticking of the clock as the
night waned away.

“Which film shall it be this year, then?” Liam said, through the clattering
of his efforts to start heating up the pan to make popcorn.

Eleanor reclined on the sofa and shouted the name of her favourite
Halloween film at him. She knew that Liam would laugh at her and
complain about watching the same old thing again, but that they would
watch it anyway. She liked to tell herself that it was for Pepper, too. Right
then, the hairs on her back were fuzzing up and down with the sounds of
the popcorn in the pan. Surely the poor scaredy-cat needed a bit of
comforting consistency.
 

Towards the end of the film, around midnight, the sofa was beginning to
look like a crime scene of disemboweled sweet wrappers and discarded
popcorn bowls. Out of nowhere, Pepper started darting around the room,
pouncing at the walls, thrusting her fluffy black paws under the coffee table,
jumping into the air at what must have been a passing moth. What started
as a chuckle at the cat’s antics progressed until Eleanor’s stomach was
searing from her hiccuping laughter.

“Liam! Liam!” she gasped out, tears beginning to stream from her eyes.
“What is sh- she’s gone mad!”

Pepper leaped at the wall and batted her paws all over it, then did a
backflip into the middle of the room and span around. Her tail knocked
against a bottle of beer on the coffee table.

It wobbled.
 

It teetered.
 

It fell off the edge of the table and spilled golden foam onto the rug.
“Alright,” said Liam, shaking his head as his laughter dissolved into a
sigh. “That’s enough.”
 

Pepper was still swatting away at the air, uncharacteristically oblivious
to the mess she’d made. Liam got up and tried to grab hold of her, but he
could hear giggles bubbling up from Eleanor as she began dabbing at the
spilled beer with tissues, which brought back his own convulsions and made
him stumble.

“Pepper,” he said, making a swing for the cat, who had just rolled across
the room. “Come here you silly thing!”

When Liam approached her, Pepper arched her back against his legs and
hissed. She reared up and clawed the air before him, her fur bristling up all
over. She looked so alarmed that it finally silenced their laughter. For a
moment, they felt afraid.

What was wrong with their cat?
 

Then Liam took the opportunity to grab a firm hold of Pepper around her
belly.
 

“Alright, now, Pepps,” he said, carrying her out of the living room and
into the hallway. “Just stay out here for a minute and calm down.”

When Liam closed the door, Pepper became even more livid. She clawed
at the door, hissed, meowed plaintively, and then started yowling. Eleanor
and Liam exchanged looks of bewilderment and turned their film back on.
 

—
 

Pepper had tried as hard as she could to tell them, to warn them. She
cried out and batted at the door as hard as she could. Usually nothing got
past her; few creatures were any match for a cat. But this one seemed to
have learned how to best her over the years. When she heard the noise start
up from the television again, she knew it was over.

They had disregarded her warnings.
 

Pepper crouched down to peer through the crack under the door. She
was still mewling, but mostly just to comfort herself. In the living room, she
could see the corrupted spirit. The light scattered and refracted from it such
that it was barely an impression of a creature. But Pepper could make out
its scrawny, cat-sized body and the rough-edged, diaphanous wings that
brought it languidly towards Eleanor. It was smiling so beatifically in
anticipation that its pointed teeth emerged hopelessly large, even through
the tricks of the light.

It had been waiting a long time for this possession.