Latch
Mary jolted awake, breath sharp in her throat. She lay still, waiting for feeling to return to her heavy limbs.
For a moment, she couldn’t tell if the pounding she heard was in the walls or inside her own chest. She was on her living room couch, the AC blasting on her face.
But the dark still felt thick, undulating – as if it stared back at her from the ceiling, breathing slow and tidal, held in the moment before a wave collapses.
Her gaze shifted to the floor.
Through the darkness, she could make out last night’s sad fast-food dinner for one on the floor. Next to a wadded-up cheeseburger wrapper sat a small fluffy cat, sitting and watching her with expectant eyes.
“Shit!” Mary gasped as she finally remembered she was late. She threw off the blanket tangled around her feet and reached for her shoes, not registering that her alarms hadn’t gone off as expected. “I’m late, Fluff! Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Fluff didn’t move from his spot on the floor, only meowed back in disdain.
Mary gathered her phone and wallet, but her keys were nowhere in sight. Finally locating them under some socks, she scrambled to the door. In her haste, she didn’t notice that they stuck slightly to her palms, leaving a thin black film, slick but more viscous than sweat.
“Bye Fluff, I’ll be back, love you, be good!”
She was brought up short as she tried to push open the screen door and slammed into it instead. It was latched from the inside. Mary’s paranoid fear of a fire breaking out and trapping Fluff inside kept her from ever locking any of the doors of her second-floor apartment. Her pulse thudded in her ears as she stared at the metal hook, trying to recall the last time she’d even touched it. It looked … wet? “Locked from the inside?” she thought, glancing back into the apartment, hesitant. Heartbeat now in her fingertips, her hand hovered above the metal.
Another meow from the floor reignited her urgency.
“Right! Ok, be good!” She finally unlatched the door, letting it swing free, and stumbled down the wooden steps toward her car. As her hand reached for the driver’s door handle, that same watched feeling that had woken her rose again – heavier this time, like static dragging lightly across her neck.
Mary looked up at the window—and froze. At first, she thought the glass had warped, the darkness behind it warbling, slow and deep, light bending in the wrong directions. Then she saw Fluff, hovering in the center of the window, suspended inches above the sill. The distortion breathed.
“What—?”
Mary realized in horror that Fluff wasn’t floating. He was being held by something with too many arms – a thing both solid and liquid – its limbs folding and unfolding in ways her eyes could not follow, bleeding into the dark of her apartment. Fluff blinked, slow and bored, tail flickering lazily. Tendrils coiled, languid and loving, around the fluffy cat. They moved in that same tidal breath as the dark, petting the cat’s orange fur with strange care. Together, they waved at her through the glass.