TASK 8 - "Night of the Wet Cat!" by Tsvetelina

“That’s it, I’ll go torch the damn fleabag.” Valerie was hysterical. She was hysterical and was hysterically clutching a zippo lighter in one hand and a hairspray in the other. It was raining in through the open window. Someone dumped a tangled mass of spaghetti leftovers from a window on the upper floor. A sticky meatball brushed her nose and crash-landed on the window sill. She didn’t notice.

“You’ll do no such thing.” That came from the unoccupied corner of John’s mouth. The other corner was occupied. Lucky Strike. John was languidly chopping carrots. The carrots were orange. His nails were yellow. He was in the company of a dead salmon. It was staring at him from an oval white plate on the kitchen counter. It didn’t say much.

“It won’t stop mewing. I’m out of laundry pins and it hid under the table anyway. That mewing freaks me out. Plus, it’s wet. Wet cats stink like hell. I’ll go dry it out.” The door slammed shut behind her. The meatball on the window sill was sticky.

“Don’t get wet. These are my only good socks you’re wearing.” The chopped carrots were piled in the baking tin. They were still orange. John decapitated a fennel bulb. His cigarette resting in peace in the ashtray, he now started whistling a tune from “La Traviata”. The kitchen filled with the sound of sparrows being strangled. The salmon didn’t mind.

The landlord was allergic to peanuts. He was a retired cook for the US army. He had lost his left eye in a freak accident involving a cripple Venecian prostitute, a stiletto heel and considerable amounts of cheap grappa. He was replacing the light bulb in the lobby, strenuously stretching his scrawny arms to reach it while precariously balancing his asparagus of a body on a red plastic bucket. When Valerie rushed past him, creating a whirl strong enough to make him clumsily grasp for the lamp cord he squeaked under his bushy moustache: “Jeez, woman, where’s the fire!?”

“Oh, we’ll have one alright!”

“What’s with the hairspray? Having a bad hair day, are we?”

“I’ll go torch a cat.”

“Well, I’ll be damned! What for?”

“It won’t stop mewing. It wails like a friggin’ siren.”

“The guys from my platoon in Vietnam never complained of such nuisance. Cats tend to be very quiet when served with rice and soy sauce, if you know what I mean.”

“John silenced a fish for dinner. I have a cat to torch.”

Valerie turned her back on the peanut intolerant, cat-cooking, one-eyed asparagus perched on a red plastic bucket and darted off towards the mewing, wet, stinky, hairball-vomiting, rat-eating, soon-to-be-torched fleabag. The sky over Bologna was full of night and rain. On the splashy pavement there was a tangled mass of spaghetti leftovers. On the same splashy pavement there wasn’t a wet stinky cat. On the window sill above her there was a lone meatball. The lone meatball was sticky.

John’s only good socks were soaked. Valerie’s hair looked like a tangled mass of spaghetti leftovers. Her hairspray couldn’t do anything about her bad hair day and it couldn’t torch the cat that wasn’t there. What it could do was nest in the nearest trash bin. Valerie squelched in the lobby. The landlord attached to the bushy moustache was perched on a red plastic bucket.

“Dinner ready yet?”, mumbled the orifice under the moustache.

“The damn fleabag’s gone!”

“Oh, well, look on the bright side. Maybe it got run over by the milkman’s truck.”

“Yeah, yeah. I hope it’s cat pate by now. Or dog food.”

The apartment smelled of roasting silent fish. John was in the john. Valerie looked down through the window. She wished her hair was short. That way there was a chance she wouldn’t look like a mafia cuisine specialty. On the pavement below there was a cat who wasn’t there.

“Did you torch the damn fleabag? Are my only good socks ruined?” John’s voice carried from inside the john.

“There’s spaghetti on the pavement and on my head.”

“I told you we’re eating fish tonight.”

Two hours later on the kitchen counter there was a cooling speechless fish with a stupid expression, snuggly buried in multi-colored vegetables. On the window sill there was a contented pigeon with a sticky meatball in his belly. The doorbell rang. Valerie opened, wearing John’s not-so-good-but-dry socks. The landlord smiled sheepishly which caused his bushy moustache to part in the middle – a telltale sign he was allergic to peanuts. He held a baking tin in his hands. There, snuggly buried in rice and splashed with soy sauce, lay a roasted quiet cat.