Lacy’s arms dripped blood on the gray pleather seat as she struggled to calm her ferocious tabby cat, Gimble. The vet’s office was a cold and unforgiving place, and this checkup room was no different. The cat howled and continued to scratch at her as they waited for the veterinarian to return with the horrendous news of whether or not the cat would need surgery, or if it would just have an extremely intensive and expensive treatment. Lacy looked toward the clock and gritted her teeth when she realized they’d kept her waiting over an hour for the results.
The cat’s nail dug into her chin and got stuck, and the stinging pain was unbearable as Gimble began to convulse, both of them trying to get the paw unstuck from the chin. It finally tore through and the cat broke free of her arms and dashed in between the wall and the medicine cabinet, just deep enough to be out of her reach. Lacy laid flat on the floor reaching as hard as she could into the crevice as Gimble hissed and swiped continually at her already carnaged hand. She grabbed a fistful of fur and yanked, causing the cat to make an ungodly moan as it dug its claws into her even deeper.
Just as she began pulling the cat closer, the door opened and the stoic veterinarian walked in, clear glasses dangling at the tip of his nose. He looked down at the scene on the floor, blood droplets all over and a woman face first on the ground, covered in deep gashes reaching behind his cabinet. “Excuse me ma’am, please remain seated with your cat securely in your lap.”
Lacy’s face jerked toward him in anger. “Excuse me, animal doctor, but I didn’t choose to wait an extra hour with my impatient cat. What is the news?” She barked at him, another deep nail sinking into the back of her hand.
As the veterinarian took a deep breath to begin his sentence, Gimble’s attitude changed and he began to growl. He no longer was scratching, but walked out of his own accord and sat beside Lacy, looking up directly into the vet’s eyes. “Ma’am, I’m afraid the news is quite serious. Gimble’s health has declined to a state where he can no longer be helped. No surgery or at-home treatment is going to assist his failing well-being. We could put him down for you today, or you can bring him home and let him pass naturally, which should be in the next 72 hours. Let me know how you’d like to proceed,” the vet said, completely stoically without a drop of empathy.
Lacy stared wide eyed at him, slowly processing the news. Tears started slowly welling up in her eyes. Gimble’s deep growling slowly became violent hissing, and before Lacy could grab him, the cat flew towards the veterinarian, razor sharp claws extended. There was no time to block, the cat dug both paws into the vet’s cheeks and solidly stuck itself to him. The vet yelped, and began bashing his clipboard into the back of the cat, causing Gimble to bite down onto the vet's nose. Lacy jumped up to try and help, but the scene was too horrific.
The man’s screams were agonizing, and he threw the clipboard across the room and grabbed the cat by its bottom two legs and yanked downward. Gimble was tugged down, but his claws stayed firm in the cheek meat, and dragged down the man’s face. The man kept tugging and tugging, until finally the cat came free. The tearing sound was unbearable, and the vet’s cheeks were completely ripped through, the four deep lines on both sides looked like racing stripes, his teeth visible through the gore. He put both of the cat’s hind legs in his right hand, and whipped the cat around in a windmill motion to bash its head against the counter.
The thud and crack that came from Gimble’s head was enough to send Lacy into a state of pure rage. She came up behind the veterinarian and grabbed both of his ankles, pulling them back as hard as she could. The vet flew forward, unable to catch himself as he was still holding the cat, and his head slammed against the counter. He was lifeless on the floor when his assistant ran into the room with a parrot on her shoulder. “What happened!?” the assistant yelled.
“What happened!?” the parrot mimicked.
As Lacy looked up, wondering what she could possibly say about the entire occurrence, the parrot’s eye had an evil glint appear, and it flew toward the back of the vet’s head and began using its sharp talons to dig into the scalp. The assistant screamed, and the parrot screamed in a mocking copy, and began using its beak to peck deeply into the scalp as well. As the assistant was distracted trying to calm the parrot, Lacy grabbed the lifeless body of Gimble and ran out of the room.
She deleted her contact info from the unmanned computer, got in her car, and sped away. Lacy panted deeply as she gripped the steering wheel tight. She was wise enough to have a glass partition installed in the car, and as soon as the cat woke up, it began bashing into the barrier, desperately trying to scratch at Lacy’s arms. “Please Gimble, settle down baby,” she asked of him calmly.
The cat responded by jumping back onto her seat and shredding the already shredded upholstery, hissing in the process. She had a tear drip down her cheek, looking in her rearview mirror at her precious pet. “What are we going to do about your diagnosis, baby?”
The cat met her gaze in the mirror and yelled as it’s mouth filled with foam.
After a painful trip from the car to the front of her house, Lacy struggled to unlock her door while cradling the biting cat in her arm. As soon as she entered the residence, the putrid smell of rancid litter boxes rushed into her nostrils, and singed a couple millimetres off her eyelashes. This caused Gimble to instantly urinate all over her arm and shirt, as it hissed and swiped at her, finally jumping down and running toward his favorite piss couch.
Later that night, Lacy searched all over the internet for an alternative way to heal her sweet Gimble. She found an ad for someone local that claimed to have an experimental treatment for feline and canine clients that could no longer be helped by modern medicine. She contacted the person in the ad, had Gimble approved for the testing, and headed out the door to pick up this saving grace for her cat. “I’ll be right back Gimble, I found a way to keep you alive!”
The cat’s head twisted quickly towards her, and it hissed as it began bolting towards the open front door. Lacy slammed it just in time, and heard clawing on the wood from the other side.
As she pulled up to the address from the advertisement, she realized it wasn’t a building, but a utility shed beside a bridge. Lacy got out of the car, cautiously walked up to the shed, and knocked three times. The door swung open so fast that Lacy had to jump backwards out of the way, losing her balance and falling on her rear end in the process. This knocked the wind right out of her, and she gasped as she tried to grasp what had just happened.
A three foot tall figure cloaked in black stuck its head out from the shed and looked at Lacy. “The payment,” it said in a deep, pained voice.
Lacy handed over three stacks of cash, ten thousand dollars each. A bruised and severely damaged hand jutted out from the cloak and pulled the money back inside, instantaneously tossing a single white pill towards Lacy. “Treatment for Gimble. Give tonight. Long life,” the cloaked figure said before slamming the shed door shut. Lacy looked at the pill, seeing the number 7 followed by the letters C, W, N, and D. She shook her head and headed back to the car.
…
Four months had gone by, and Gimble had lived long past the veterinarian’s estimation of 72 hours. His behavior hadn’t changed, but his appearance had. His orange tabby fur was starting to dull a little, only visibly colorful in the sunlight, otherwise it looked to be gray. His teeth had either fallen out, or severely yellowed. Even when cleaned, Gimble reeked in a way Lacy had never smelled before, a sour milk, rotten meat, cat dump mixture that had caused guests to pass out as soon as they entered the home.
He also had shed his tail and hind legs, leaving only deep wounds that Lacy had bandaged. After a few weeks of Gimble dragging himself along the floor, she purchased a mechanical gray arm and installed it in the center of the house, assuring it could reach any room Gimble desired. The nodes at the end of the arm were attached to the cat’s spinal column, and Gimble could control where the arm took him via his brain signals. It was a haunting image, seeing the cat floating through the room on the long metallic appendage.
He could now scratch her face without having to jump, but slowly his anger began to wear off as his intense hunger began. No longer utilizing his legs, Gimble got no exercise whatsoever, and turned to food for pleasure. He would whine for hours until Lacy would finally just open every can of catfood she had in the house, and pour a gallon of cream into his dish. The cat gorged like this every hour, and after a few more months, weighed in over two hundred and fifty pounds, unheard of for a house cat.
The extra weight had deepend Gimble’s voice, the growls, whines, and moaning almost human like. Now that he was so heavy, the mechanical arm struggled to move him from room to room, the gears grinding and keeping Lacy up all hours of the night. When he did swipe at her, it would take out chunks of her flesh and knock her to the floor. Lacy still loved her baby Gimble, but it was quite hard that she couldn’t get any rest, so she began sleeping in her car.
The litter boxes were a different story, something that even with multiple hired hands, Lacy could not clean. The windows of her house had begun to melt and turn brown due to the unbearable, ungodly stench that came from those boxes. They looked like bubbling brown tarpits, the wetness so hot and putrid that one of the people Lacy hired to help her try and clean them passed out and fell in, never to be seen again.
A few more months passed, and Gimble was unrecognizable as a cat. All of his fur had fallen out, his ears had sunk into the fatness of his head, and his eyes had become pure white. He had gained so much weight that the mechanical arm could barely move him around the house, and dragged his lower torso against the ground, causing a horrible rash on the peach colored skin. He did nothing but scream and hiss, and could no longer lift his arms to scratch Lacy. She sat on the couch, shellshocked by what her life had become, deathly sick from the toxic air in her filthy house.
A knock came at the door, and Gimble hissed loudly through a wheeze as he made the mechanical arm push him towards the door as quickly as possible. Lacy got up first, walking with a limp to try and beat Gimble before he could block her from answering. They raced, and Lacy won. When she opened the door, a fireman in full regalia stood on her porch. The fumes that flew past her blew him back fifteen feet, sending him spiraling over her lawn.
Another fireman, this one wearing a gas mask, lept at Lacy and pulled her out of the house. Two more ran towards the house, closing the door and slapping a “condemned” sign on it. “Ma’am, it isn’t safe for you to be here, your house is causing your neighbors to come down with serious illnesses. Frankly we are surprised you even answered the door. We will get you to a shelter tonight, but for now, we need to take care of your poisonous home,” the fireman said sternly.
Four more firemen marched up to the house, each holding lit flamethrowers. They began dousing the house in liquid fire, and with the mixture of the toxic air, it lit up like a matchbox. A slow thud began pounding from the front door, but it was indecipherable over the crackling wood. “My, my baby, my Gim- please, I-” Lacy began, but passed out, too exhausted and sick to continue.
The firemen finished their torching, and the house was nothing but a black flat square of ash. They loaded Lacy into their truck and drove away.
Later that day, a blackened spinal column slithered out of the ash and squirmed itself into a hole in the lawn, not to be seen again for over a thousand years.
