Author S. K. Nicholas

There’s music. It sounds like Bloc Party. Some girl has done too many lines and keeps trying to bite people. She goes for my leg, but I kick her away and go stand in the garden. Reading Kafka and swaying from side to side, someone lights me a smoke while trying to talk to me about cars. I tell them to fuck off. Cursing, they walk away leaving me to dwell on the lack of women that have arrived. I’m young, and my behaviour is excusable. In years to come it won’t be. A girl who should know better is pretending to be a cat. When it starts to rain, I find shelter at the far end of the garden and she comes and rests on my lap. She’s cute but knows nothing of love, but then again I know nothing of being human, so it makes us equal. She allows me to fondle her breasts. Someone making mojitos cuts their finger while slicing a lime; there’s blood, and soon after they’re rushed to hospital. The day is young, though, and my drunkness is growing quite well. The cat girl is in no rush to move, and my fingers caress her nipples with a mixture of perversion and grace. She purrs something cute, and as thunder rolls in and others rush indoors, we remain outside with the elements happy to be alive. Although it doesn’t last, it never lasts. Taking her somewhere quiet, I lay her down on a patchwork rug and undress her. She smiles and calls me her baby. My vision begins to blur, and soon I see three of her. Nailing each one with the weight of half the world on my back, I tell her that I am indeed her baby. Holding me in her arms, I suckle her breasts and follow a beetle that’s scuttling through the thick blades of grass near our heads. Then there’s the smell of smoke; someone’s set fire to the shed. There are screams, although they’re more drunken than alarmed. Sirens come in due course, but I’m too afraid to open my eyes to see what’s happening. Disappearing into her body, the rain comes down heavy and sounds like gunshots as it hits the plastic roofing in the trees above. Within the hour, the sun is replaced by the moon, and as others swarm just feet from where we lay, no one can find us. The night collects us; it takes us to safety on a magic carpet as danger plagues those that remain.