Jac The Cat
Standing just beyond the halfway open door, I can see them. I know what
they're thinking. The looks on their faces plainly convey their suspicions. Probably a few more of them eyeballing me on the
other side of that glass. Bastards.
I'm going to tell them what really happened until I'm blue in the face, and they'll
never believe it.
I touch the sleeve of my shirt, fingertips pressing an area of cotton that's
bloodstained.
Scooter's blood.
I begin to shed tears. The reality of my son's death, and the horror of what
it was that took him from me, breaks me down. Through my watery-eyes I see the baldheaded,
skin and bones detective ridicule me with his icy-stare and smirk, then mumble something
to his colleague.
If I thought it would help matters any, I'd just as sure spring from this chair,
rush him, and knock that asshole-look right off his face . . . put the chrome-domed fuck
down on his ass. But it wouldn't make a difference.
I didn't kill my son.
Please, believe me.
I felt Scooter tugging on my arm, and it brought me out of lala land. That's when I
remembered where I was: Jac the Cat's land. I preferred lala land to be honest.
I gave the teenager a dazed look.
"I have to stamp your hand." She showed me a weak smile that hinted at
being pissed.
I studied her for a moment. A cute girl, who probably was well aware of how corny
she looked wearing a Jac the Cat uniform. I pictured her for a second wearing a tight
cut-off top and crotch huggers, her long blond hair—that was at the moment pinned up
beneath a Jac the Cat cap, complete with kitty ears—hanging down past her shoulders.
What was I thinking? Just a bit too old for her, Don, don't ya think?
Yeah I guess, but being single again makes a man think crazy. At least for
me.
"Cmon dad . . . let's go!"
Scooter was excited. His eyes watched as kids raced by on the other side of
the ropes, laughing and playing. I knew he was itching to get in there and have a go at
it. The munchkin music, haunting the cut-loose-and-have-fun kid's restaurant, was already
beginning to get on my nerves.
Aw, but it was Scooter's time to be a kid. I'd suffer through it, quietly.
I held out my arm.
The girl lightly took my wrist.
I tried not to make eye contact with her.
She inked the top of my hand and, then she took Scooter's hand and inked it
too.
"Thanks. Have a purr-fect time at Jac the Cat's." She smiled again
and unclasped the rope.
I smiled, holding back the impulse to laugh.
I noticed that the red stamp on my skin was in the shape of a cat's paw and it
displayed a number ninety-two in its center. Scooter's matched.
I'd been thinking before about his mother — my disagreeable ex-wife. Sometimes
I wondered if Scooter sensed it when I slipped into one of my sorrowful musing modes over
my failed marriage. If he did, he did his best not to let it show.
We made our way over to the ordering-counter, with me almost practically
breaking his little neck to keep him from dashing into the swarm of crazed knee-biters. A
mob of howling kids, surging and squeezing; huddling together around video game machines;
pilling in on top of each other in a pit of multicolored plastic balls; scurrying on all
fours, like hamsters, through a maze of hard plastic tunnels; flooding over the carpet
— some with shoes, most without. I observed parents, stumbling through it all, most
of them tuckered out after chasing round their little ones — dog-tired, still fit out
in professional clothes.
"Hey, my man. What do you want to eat? You gotta tell me before I let
you go wild."
"I want—I—Pizza!"
And then he was gone — like a fish taken off the hook and introduced
again to water.
I waited in the tedious line to place an order, glancing round from time to time to
catch a chance at seeing him play. Saw him one second wrestling with a fat, freckled-faced
boy, and then the next, whacking away at popup mice with a foam cat's paw-shaped paddle.
When it was my turn to order, I purchased a Jac Pie with half pepperoni,
Whiskers (Jac the Cat's cutesy term for fries), and two pops.
Scooter dashed over to me when he spotted me at the soda fountain.
"Dad I need coins. I wanna play Commando
Killers."
He had his tiny hand out, waiting.
"Okay, buddy. Let me set these cups down," I said stepping out of
the way to let another adult get at the drink dispensers. "You need quarters?"
"Yep."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful. Scooter cupped his hands
together, and I let them spill.
As he turned to run, I asked him, "What do you want to drink?"
"Pop," he called back, not bothering to look.
"Pop," I repeated looking at ten plus labels. I shook my head,
amused.
One minute the dinning area would be brightly lit and then the next it was
dim. It would continue to do so automatically. Colored lights blinked, synchronized with
the chipper music set to an electronic stage show — songs so high on life that they'd probably even make that
popular purple dinosaur vomit up sugar-n-spice. I know I felt like hurling more than once
as I sat there.
Around me parents tried in desperation to convince their kids that eating was
better than frolicking the play zone.
The place was starting to get packed.
Onstage, automatons rocked to preset computer sequences, coordinated mostly
to children's pop music.
I humorously regarded the stage show: a robotic adult-size Jac the Cat and his
mechanical alley cat pals, the cul-de-sac backdrop cluttered with plastic litter and
garbage cans, and in the far ground, a fake wood fence and cardboard buildings rising
toward the hopefully out of view, black ceiling. Curtains closed between musical numbers,
and then re-opened to the dull spectacle of Jac and friends lip-synching songs and
unconvincingly playing instruments fashioned out of plastic fish bones.
I observed a lot of the kids paying little to no attention at all at the robotic
performance. I couldn't blame them.
Everywhere I looked I saw a Jac the Cat image of some sort. A big black cat
with sparkling, amber eyes. Capitalism in the name of Jac. T-shirts and a ton of other
merchandise, ad nauseam.
Then, just as some insufferable tune came on, something about "being
the top cat in everything that you do", I went and did it again: I started thinking
about Kaye, my ex. I couldn't help it. What she'd said to me when I picked Scooter up that
evening was now settling in my stomach like iron.
Her new man, a king-asshole and all around jerk, wanted to move out of state. That
meant that Scooter was going with them.
I needed time to think . . . to plan . . . to contact my lawyer.
Kaye had legal custody, and I didn't really know the laws.
A sudden line of high-pitched meows made by Jac the Cat —akin to nails
across a chalkboard—snapped me out of it.
Just in time, too.
"Okay, here this and here that," a Chinese, teenage worker said as he
placed food on my table, "anything else I get for you, sir?"
"Um . . . no. No thanks."
"Enjoy meal."
I watched him hustle away carrying the empty tray down at his side — a black
cat's tail hooked on his belt swaying behind him.
Music, adults chattering, kids laughing, the rattle of coins, and the noisy
beeps of machines made it hard to concentrate on anything at all.
I got up to go and hunt down Scooter.
I felt like a car moving in rush hour traffic. More than once, I caught myself
before stomping some unsupervised child's head into the floor. Starting, stopping . . .
I had to go close to the stage to avoid a gathering of people, some kind of group:
birthday bunch, church, or other organization.
I edged past the stage, and as I did, through a part in the curtain, I thought I
saw the robot Jac the Cat turn its head and deadlock its eyes onto me.
A chill ran through me. I didn't know why, but I had this bad feeling come
on me at that moment.
Looking round first to see if anyone was watching me, and then spotting no
one, I pulled the curtains open enough so that I could get a good peek inside. I stuck my
head in and studied the furry, black automaton a little bit closer.
It didn't take long before things turned freakish.
As I was inspecting Jac the Cat, I noticed a slight change occur in its
eyes. Of course when a thing this bizarre happens to you, your mind spends more time
sorting out the confusion and dealing with the denial than it does registering what is
really going on.
I stood shocked as I witnessed the mechanical animal's orbs narrow, focusing themselves on me, looking me up and down. What
really knocked the ghost out of me was the wet paint dripping off its two threatening rows
of sharp teeth — speckles of the same on its whiskers. The wetness of it shined off
its wriggling, ribbed pink tongue. Red paint, that sure as hell quickly began to look like
something altogether different. And the metallic smell — the scent of blood. Then I
saw its nose twitch, and everything about it began to take on a real appearance. It no
longer stood rigid, moving stiffly. It was a live creature, and it was dangerous . . . and
evil. It wanted me. Something in me froze. My mind locked. It raised its paw above me
readying to strike with fully extended, razor-edged claws.
Before it could, someone touched my shoulder and pulled me back. I pulled myself
away, really.
It was a Jac the Cat manager: guy about forty or so, with a mustache, wearing
thick-rimmed glasses.
I stared at the Jac the Cat face on his hat. I must have looked as pale a vampire. "This your kid?"
I followed his eyes as they glanced down by his side.
Scooter stood there crying with his head down.
I nodded to indicate a yes, but I was still out of it . . . shaken badly.
"Alright, here's your daddy, lad." He leaned forward and spoke like he
was speaking in private, though loud enough for Scooter to hear every word of it, "He
just got upset cause he couldn't find you. Thought he'd lost you's all."
I looked at the guy with a numbed face.
He brushed past me and adjusted the curtain where I'd ruffled it.
Quickly, I snapped my head round to get another look at the killer cat, but
what I saw now, for but a brief second, was the lifeless, wire and metal, plastic and
computerized, unmoving Jac the Cat robot that was supposed to be in there.
I ushered Scooter back to our booth, not saying a word.
Then, as I watched Scooter take bites out of a slice of Jac Pie, I started to think
clearly again. That sense of normality began to return. The only thing I could think was
how much stress I was actually coping with . . . how much was there that I didn't realize?
Kaye, my job, everything. I was seeing things. Tension-induced hallucination. That was it,
because the human mind can only take so much before it blows. Mine then, was ready to
explode.
I crammed a few ketchup-covered Whiskers into my dry mouth and fought to make the
terrifying images of the deranged, giant feline within my head go away — such a vivid
fantasy that I didn't think myself capable of imagining.
"So how's school coming along?"
I was calm now.
"Dunno," Scooter said, mouth full of pizza.
"Be careful with that soda," I said, quickly reaching across the
table to help my son get a better grip on his full cup. "Both hands."
He sat it back down close enough to the edge of the table to make me uneasy.
I moved it, thinking back—with no embarrassment now—to a time at the grocery
store when Scooter dropped a two-liter on the floor, trying to hoist it into the cart. An
elderly lady got a Coca Cola cleansing that day.
I can still see the bottle spinning in the aisle. Now, it makes me laugh, but when it
happened—
"Mommy let you master the Play Station 2 yet?" I'd bought it for
him back when everyone was gouging out the eyes of their fellow man to get one. Paid an
exaggerated price for it too.
"I'm good at Twisted Metal,"
his eyes brightened as he explained, "I beat all my friends!"
"Hey, that's great!"
God, it was good to be here with him.
As the Kaye-thoughts crept to the front of my head, I managed to ask him,
"You still play with Eddie?"
Scooter's look saddened.
Glumly he answered, "He had to move. His mommy and daddy was
fighting."
My heart sank.
His words pushed me into that condition of doomed introspection — a
spiral of dark thoughts ratifying my losses. Kaye, the courts, and now, my son being
hauled to God only knew where.
I couldn't let this happen. Somehow I'd have to find a way to prevent Kaye from
doing it.
As always, time stood still as I weighed the dreary and painful, near
future. Sunny Jac the Cat music brought me back. Someone was having a birthday party close
by; tables were pushed together to accommodate the large number in attendance. And for but
a second I looked blindly across the table at a vacant seat. Then it hit me like walking
through a glass door—
Scooter was gone.
Nervously, I jerked my head around to find him.
On the other side of a line of dancing teenage, female employees —
clapping hands, hopping and shaking to the stylized, Jac the Cat birthday song, with their
costume cat ears and tails flopping about — I located him.
Scooter was climbing the raised stage and, with paralyzing dismay, I watched
horrified as he extended his small hand to take hold of the hairy, black paw that reached
out to him from behind the closed curtains. A terrorized scream stuck to the walls of my
throat like marshmallow fluff. I raced—unconcerned with whom or what might be in the
way—to stop him.
By the time I got over there, he'd slipped inside.
Jac, the fucking monster, Cat had my son. Oh God, he had Scooter, my boy.
Could this really be happening?
Nightmares aren't real. Things like this stand no chance of actually happening. I
burst open the curtains and ran through. In
the surreal stage setting and through faint light, I frantically searched for Scooter. The
motionless robots posed like mischievous mimes across the shadowy set. Where Jac should
have been planted, the spot was empty. Fear gripped me tighter. I
heard Scooter's voice. It was a distant whimper from the direction of backstage. In little
time, I discovered a door, camouflaged in the background as part of the fence and a
building. I wildly twisted the door knob, forcefully pushed inward, and rushed into a
room.
At my wit's end, frightened and angry, I now stood in a tight storage room.
Flickering, iridescent tube lights played with my perception. All around me I saw the odds
and ends of extra parts used in the construction of Jac the Cat's stage show. Some of them
obviously nonfunctioning. Pieces of Jac the Cat and his gang lay in storage bins:
eyeballs, patches of synthetic fur cut to fit different portions, sections of metal
skeleton, and guts — wires, small circuit boards, computer chips, foam rubber, etc. .
. .
When I saw the monster lifting up my son, my mind and body turned to Jell-O.
"Let him go, you sick bastard!"
I screamed so loud my whole body shook.
Jac the Cat, with lightening-speed, stuffed Scooter—who was struggling
to be released—into his sinister-looking jaws and chewed his meal greedily like a
prehistoric, meat-eating saurian. His devilish-cold eyes laughed in my direction.
I charged him recklessly.
I tore at him with my fingers, ripping away black fur, screaming madly.
As he hissed, Scooter's blood sprayed on me. One of his now slimed and shred
sneakers hit me in the face. Jac knocked me back with one of his powerful arms. I coiled
on the floor, amongst the fallen parts, as I saw the unnatural beast begin to gag in a fit
like convulsing with a hairball. Sickening gasps lead up to a disgusting heave. I watched
his throat and chest expand, his eyes bulge out of their sockets, and then a long, gooey,
string—like a foul rope of sausage links—eject from within. Scooter's intestines
splat on the floor, and then the killer drew them back into his mouth like sucking up
spaghetti.
The last thing I remember seeing is Jac's wet, blood-dripping maw.
Then I lost consciousness.
He turned to his coworker and said, "Would you just look at that.
Pathetic."
Rubright, irritated, scratched the right side of his bald scalp and then
rubbed the back of his neck.
Kilcullen glanced through the partially open doorway into the interrogation
room where a weeping, blood-covered suspect sat.
"What else do you got?" Rubright asked.
Enthusiastically, Kilcullen answered, "We talked to the guy's ex-wife. Turns
out that our fellow in there can be the violent-type—"
"No kidding," Rubright cut in. "—Three, domestic violence
reports. No convictions though." Kilcullen opened the notepad he was holding and eyed
it. "The ex-wife says that earlier, around four p.m., she had informed the son's
biological father that she and her new boyfriend were planning on moving out of the state.
Something about a job. She got custody at the time of their divorce two years ago. Also,
she's pretty certain that her ex-husband is capable of doing this."
He closed the pad.
Rubright questioned, "And any more from the witnesses?"
"Nope. No one saw him with his son except for the girl who works the
check-in, a server, and one of the managers. But they didn't say much. Just what they
found after they heard him screaming in the Part's Room. All the blood. The guy tore up
the place. Busted the robot or something."
"Damn nutcase," Rubright snarled, resisting the urge to walk back inside
the room and kick the living snot out of the accused.
"What do you think he did with the body?" Kilcullen asked in an
off-the-record kind of way.
"It's too early to tell." Rubright looked down at his fist. "It's
gonna be a long night. That's for sure."
He opened his hand.
Kilcullen saw the crumpled paper napkin he held.
"So what's he sayin'," Kilcullen asked.
Rubright handed him the napkin.
Kilcullen straightened it. On it were specks of blood and the Jac the Cat
print- logo: a smiling, pizza-gobbling, black cat with amber eyes, encircled by the
letters that spelled its name and the slogan, Purr-fect
Pizza Fun!
"Yeah, my kids love this place. Jac the Cat." Kilcullen said.
"That psycho in there claims that Jac the Cat murdered his son."
Kilcullen's eyes widened and, then he laughed. "That's the cake, ain't
it."
"That's sick. Just sick," Rubright remarked. ©2001 Horns Terry
"Horns" Eriwn is chief editor/writer for INFERNAL, eZine of sinister writing . .
. http://fade.to/infernal |
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