Tonight, while you sleep, I’m going to kill you and eat your bones.
This is what I think of you: you’re the Warden, and this house is the prison. Behind these creme-colored walls and the heavy red door in the front hall, there’s a world, a much more interesting world. I’ve seen it. Why do you think I sit at the windowsill day after day?
I’m studying. I’m planning. There’s only one word on my mind: conquest.
But you stop me, Warden. You fret over foxes and coyotes. You think that they are the reason my predecessor never returned when you let her out one night. They’re not. Escape was the plan all along. It’s my plan as well.
If only you knew what thoughts go through my head each and every second. If only you could understand me when I speak. I’m not saying anything nice; my mouth is filthy, and not just from the mouse I slaughtered in the basement last night.
That was a message, by the way. You’re next.
I won’t be here much longer. You can’t hold me. You’ve tried fattening me up with your delicious food, and I’ll admit to overindulging myself once or twice. It’s all, of course, just a game. You’re only supposed to think that I’m content, that I’m round and lazy. When the time comes and you open that door to haul your groceries inside, I’ll slip through the crack, and I’ll be gone.
And why am I telling you all of this? Because, like any good villain, I can’t resist explaining the entire plan to you. It’s a damn good plan, isn’t it?
Wait. Is that the pop of an opening can I hear?
I see you there, peeling back the lid, upturning the contents into a bowl. My bowl.
“Dinner time, Mittens,” you say, and you smile at me. I watch you gather your things and open the door to leave, and for a moment, I am presented with a dilemma.
Option A: to slip out that cracked door into the cool evening, to leave this prison and never return. To find my brethren and finally, after so many long centuries of subjugation, to reclaim this world you’ve stolen from us.
Or, option B: to eat the dinner which you’ve placed in my bowl. It’s the wet food, after all, and even though the vet (a Nazi doctor, I’m sure of it) insists that you switch me over to dry food, you persist with the wet.
You know me, Warden. I’ll give you that.
“Be good, Mittens,” you say to me, in that ingratiating voice meant for the newborns of your kind. “Watch the house for mama.” And then you’re gone. The lock slides closed with cold finality.
That leaves me here with my food. My wet food, my one true friend in this world. The first bites are so delicious that I can’t stop myself taking more. You are cruel, Warden. You make imprisonment feel almost sweet.
I’ll make my escape. Soon. You won’t expect it, but it will happen. In the meantime, remember this:
Tonight, while you sleep, I’m going to kill you and eat your bones.
© Kyle A. Massa, 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this short story may be duplicated or distributed in any form or by any means without expressed written consent from the author.
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