Derek climbed up the arm of the sofa and kissed Susan on the cheek, leaving a small bloodstain on the side of her face.
      “Happy Valentine’s Day, Darling,” he said as he reached behind the cushion and produced a badly wrapped box. He held it out to her in his tiny shrivelled hands.
      “Oh Derek, I thought you’d forgotten,” said Susan. “I wonder what it is? Chocolates? Perfume perhaps?”
      “I hope you like it, Darling. As it’s our first Valentine’s together, I made an extra special effort.”
      Susan beamed as she tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box. The smile melted from her face as she examined the contents.
      “Derek?”
      “Yes, Darling?”
      “There’s a dead cat in this box.”
      “Do you like it? I had to chase that little bugger for ages before I caught him.”
      “Its…erm…not exactly what I was expecting. It’s got a big bite out of it for a start.”
      “Oh, right. Sorry about that. I got a bit hungry when I was wrapping it. The rest of its fine though, as long as you pick the maggots off.”
      “Maggots?”
      “Well, I didn’t want to leave getting your present till the last minute, so I picked it up last week. Didn’t think that one through properly, I’ll admit.”
      Susan put the box down on the coffee table. Dark blood soaked through the cardboard and formed a pool on the glass table top.
      “Oh for goodness sake, Derek.”
      “Ok, Ok. I got it. I’ll just go and get a cloth,” he said as he climbed down from the sofa and scurried off to the kitchen.
      “Derek, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
      “Wait a sec, Hon. I can’t hear you. Where are the cleaning cloth’s again?”
      “They’re under the sink, behind the washing powder and your bottle of chloroform.”
      Derek returned from the kitchen holding a box of blue cleaning cloths and began mopping up the spreading patch of blood from the coffee table. “Sorry about that, Susan. What were you saying?”
      “I’ve been thinking, and I don’t know if I’m getting what I need out of this relationship. I mean, sure, the sex is great but…are you listening to me Derek?”
      “Oh, sure. I was just wondering if you were going to eat that?”
      “No, Derek, I’m not going to eat the dead, maggot ridden cat that’s oozing on my coffee table and staining my cream carpet. Can we focus please?”
      Derek stuffed the decomposing cat into his mouth and nodded in agreement. The ginger tail jiggled about, between his lips as he nodded. Susan rolled her eyes and continued.
      “As I was saying, the physical side of the relationship is great, but I can’t help but feel that you’re lacking in certain other areas.”
      “Mmph?”
      “Can you please not speak with your mouth full? It’s little things like that, Derek. Your manners are atrocious and there’s no romance in our relationship anymore. Back when you were attached to Simon, we would talk all night long. Now you just want to have sex and eat roadkill, often at the same time.”
      Derek screwed his face and swallowed hard. His throat stretched to allow the dead animal passage into his stomach. He coughed and a hairball flew from his mouth, sticking to the to the side of the sofa with a wet splat.
      “I thought we agreed never to mention Simon again,” he said.
      “Well, at least Simon made an effort. He would take me to nice restaurants and buy me flowers. I’m beginning to think I chose the wrong brother.”
      “It’s a bit fucking late for second thoughts, Susan. In case you forgot, Simon is dead. We drugged him and I cut myself free of the boring wanker with a hacksaw. We sold his organs on the black market to pay for the new kitchen and I still have one of his legs in the freezer. I just don’t know what you want anymore, Susan. Why won’t you tell me what it is you need from me?”
      Susan burst into tears. “Oh, Derek. I’m so sorry. It’s just that…I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while…I recently discovered that I have a congenital heart defect and the Doctors say that I need a transplant soon or I’m going to die. I didn’t know how to tell you. That’s why I’ve been a little snappy for the last few weeks.”
      Derek looked straight at the wall, his face a frozen mask, devoid of emotion.
      “I know it’s a lot to take in, Derek. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling at the moment. Rage, frustration and utter helplessness I suppose. That’s probably because the muscle relaxants that I injected into that dead cat while you were in the kitchen are taking effect.”
      Susan picked up Derek’s tiny limp body and carried him through to the kitchen, laying him on the granite work surface. She cut open his shirt with a pair of scissors, and then removed a sharp carving knife from a drawer.

      “You have a big heart, Derek. After all, it’s not so long ago that it kept both you and Simon alive. That’s all I ever wanted, Derek. Your heart.”
      Susan pushed the blade into Derek’s flesh and cut a cross across his belly, slicing through skin and muscle. She reached into the hole and pulled out the partially digested cat, dropping it in the waste bin with a look of disgust on her face, then put on a pair of yellow marigold gloves and thrust her hands into the stomach and under Derek’s ribcage.
      “And you know what they say, Derek. The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”     

_____________________________

©2011 Graeme Reynolds

 
Graeme Reynolds has been called many things over the years, most of which are unprintable. By day, he breaks computer programs for a living, but when the sun goes down he hunches over a laptop and thinks of new and interesting ways to offend people with delicate sensibilities.
He lives somewhere in England with two cats, a flock of delinquent killer chickens and a girlfriend that is beginning to suspect that there is something deeply wrong with him. Visit him at http://www.graemereynolds.com

Mark drifted in warmth and darkness. Images flashed through his mind; random, jumbled but tied together by a subconscious narrative thread that defied logic.

He could hear knocking. Steady, regular. It tugged at him, puncturing the womb that his mind floated in. Awareness leaked in.

No, he thought, not knocking. His mind processed the sound, rising from the depths of his dream. There was a weight on his chest, restricting his breathing. The weight twitched in time to the sound.

Hyunk! Hyunk! Hyunk!

The fog cleared from his mind in an instant. His eyes snapped open and saw two flat green disks staring back at him.

Hyunk! Hyunk! Kaff! Squelch!

The cat’s mouth opened and a lump of partially digested food, grass and hair appeared on the duvet. The severed head of a mouse stared at him with dead black eyes.

“Oh God! Gerrofoutofityabastard!” he yelled, throwing back the covers.

The cat leaped from the bed and vanished into the darkness. Within moments he could hear it being noisily sick somewhere else in the house. He looked at the alarm clock. 4.15am. Mark groaned.

“Please Mark”, he whined in a falsetto imitation of Joanne. “Look after Mr. Whiskers while I go away. It’s only for a couple of days and he’ll be no trouble.”

Yeah, right. So far the thing had stolen his dinner from the plate, sprayed acrid urine across his laptop and now blown chunks of mouse all over the duvet. This was not Mark’s definition of being no trouble.

He got out of bed and felt something warm squelch under his feet. He put on the bedroom light, and sure enough, there was the rest of the mouse – stretched out over the floor of the bedroom - a drawn out string of entrails with sporadic patches of blood soaked fur that poked out from between Mark’s toes.

“Aw man, that’s gross!” he muttered, and hopped to the bathroom to clean his foot.

Jo had inherited the cat; a scraggy, flea bitten ginger tom, from her aunt about a month ago, after the silly old cow had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck. Mark had disliked the cat instantly. There had been times when he had caught it looking at him with a strange expression on its face that made him uneasy. When Jo had to go away on a business trip, she had pleaded with him to housesit and look after the animal. He was regretting his decision.

He walked back to the bedroom, pulled on a pair of shorts and headed downstairs, ensuring that the lights were on so that any other presents lying around on the floor could be avoided.

Sure enough, on the stairs was a reddish brown mass with wisps of steam curling from it.

Nice, he thought, stepping around it and continuing down the stairs. A flash of orange fur between his feet made him stumble, and for a moment he teetered, stepping backwards to catch his balance.

Squelch!

”Oh for…are you trying to kill me?”

The cat flicked its tail at him and wandered off into the living room. Mark was sure it was laughing. Cursing he hopped to the downstairs bathroom to clean his foot again, and then headed to the living room. Mr. Whiskers was lying on Mark’s suit jacket, that had fallen from the door where he had hung it the night before. The cat scratched itself and clouds of ginger fur filled the air, coating the expensive black material with a layer of hair and flecks of dandruff.

“OK Mr. Whiskers, I think it’s time you went outside for a while,” he said, and reached towards the animal.

Mr. Whiskers disagreed. The cat arched its back and growled at him; swiping Mark’s outstretched hand with razor sharp claws. Blood welled up in the parallel tears in his skin. The cat ran past him before he had a chance to react, disappearing into one of the other rooms.

“Bastard cat! I’ll deal with you later,” he growled after the retreating animal. He headed to the bathroom to dress his wound, leaving spots of blood on Jo’s expensive cream carpet in his wake.

After ten minutes or so, the bleeding had stopped. Mark’s head was thick with fatigue, but there was no point in going back to bed. He had to be up in an hour, and there was still the matter of cleaning up the mess.

Jo kept the cleaning things in the cellar, along with her suitcases and a bewildering array of junk that she refused to simply throw away. Holding his injured hand, he opened the cellar door and peered into the darkness below. At the bottom of the steep wooden stairs, lay Jo. Dressed in her business suit, her legs bent beneath her, and her head at an unnatural angle.

“Oh my god! Jo!” he yelled, and ran down the stairs to reach her.

Something orange and hairy entangled itself in Mark’s legs and he plummeted head first down the stairs. As he fell he saw Mr. Whiskers on the staircase, licking his genitals.

“I’m going to kill that fucking cat,” he thought, before he landed besides his girlfriend with a wet snap.

Mark lay on the concrete floor twitching. He couldn’t move his body – couldn’t even blink.

Blackness closed in around the edge of his vision as he watched the cat strutting down the stairs. The animal brought its face up to his, filling his vision with malicious flat green disks.

Mr. Whiskers turned around and raised its tail into the air.

“No!” he thought, “It wouldn’t!”

It did.

The acrid urine hit Mark square in the face, burning his eyes and nostrils. Mark watched Mr. Whiskers saunter back up the stairs, pausing at the top to glance back at the dying man. The last thing Mark saw was a grin on the cats face, and a last contemptuous flick of the tail before the darkness claimed him.

__________________

©2011 Graeme Reynolds

Graeme Reynolds has been called many things over the years, most of which are unprintable. By day, he breaks computer programs for a living, but when the sun goes down he hunches over a laptop and thinks of new and interesting ways to offend people with delicate sensibilities. He lives somewhere in England with two cats, three delinquent chickens and a girlfriend that is beginning to suspect that there is something deeply wrong with him.
 

See Graeme’s blog at:   http://www.graemereynolds.com