Seuss!

Gerard sighed as thunder rolled through the gray clouds outside. Useful as his current task may have been, it was one of the last things he wanted to be doing. He wanted to be at home, sitting on the couch with Lyn and holding their daughter in his arms, watching a different rain, rain that misted over the house in short, warm intervals from April to September. Instead, he was on the other side of the country, sorting through the remnants of his childhood and feeling more miserable than he felt he should.

“Enough with the separation anxiety,” he said aloud. “They’ll still be there when you get back.” He had hoped the sound of his own voice would snap him out of it, but it only made him feel worse. He wondered if he was supposed to be worrying all the time. He tried to shove it out of his mind and focus on what he was doing, but the thoughts of his other obligations continued creeping through his head. He would have to head back home soon to start recording the new album, and he had promised to watch the baby for a few hours so Lyn could go shopping with some of her friends, and he still needed to pay the electric bill, and a million other things.

“Gerard, can you help me with this?”

He set down the heavy box he was holding and carefully stepped back through the maze of cardboard to take the armload of books away from his younger brother, who had decided to fly back with him for the few short days he had planned to be there. “Maybe you should stick to carrying one at a time. They weigh more than you.”

“Shut up,” Mikey said as he brushed some dust off of a nearby box and sat down on it. “I want to help too.”

“Go see if Mom needs you for anything,” Gerard answered. “I can take care of the rest of these.”

“Alright, alright.” Mikey climbed down the stairs leading from the attic and into the hallway. Gerard rested on the floor for a moment, folding his legs and grabbing a few books from the top of the pile. They were mostly children’s books that had been ripped apart, chewed on, and colored in by both him and Mikey. He slowly sorted through them, deciding which were too destroyed to keep and setting them aside to be thrown away. He smiled sadly as he opened an orange Dr. Seuss book and flipped through it. Several pages fell from the tattered binding and collapsed in a heap at his feet.

Setting that one aside, Gerard picked up the next book. Another Seuss story, this one seemed to be in nearly perfect condition. Its dark slate blue cover popped out through the gray light streaming in through the rain-spattered window, and the white block letters seemed brighter still. ‘The Cat in the Hat,’ the title read.

He frowned. Something seemed strange about it. He remembered a different cover, one with some kind of scribbled picture on it, but he shook his head. Maybe he had drawn on it a long time ago, and his mother had bought a new one to replace it without telling him. He decided that had to be the case. He opened the book and flipped through the pages.

He did a double take. On every page, the cat character was gone, and huge paw prints littered the sides of the pages. He could understand if a muddy-pawed cat had somehow gotten into the house and run all over it, but for the cat to be missing on every page was simply strange. He closed the book and slid it under the shadow of a nearby box. As he stood up and tried to put his mind back on what he was doing, he heard a noise, like something shuffling around in the back corner of the attic.

“Okay, Mikey, I know it’s you,” he said with uneasiness knotting in his stomach. The feeling reminded him of when they played hide and seek as little kids. It almost helped.

The noise picked up again, heavy footsteps mingled with something soft brushing against the boxes. He turned to look for the source, but the dim light fell far short of that half of the attic. He squinted. A black hose-like shape slithered deeper into the shadows. A quiet thud echoed through the room as a colorful cylinder fell to the floor and partially rolled toward him. He just stared at it.

It was a red and white striped hat.

“That’s strange,” Gerard muttered. He walked over and picked it up with one hand, gingerly fingering the fabric and completely unaware that the source of the strange noises now stood directly behind him.

“Now that is a very unusual hat,” an unfamiliar voice called right into his ear. He jumped and turned around with fear and confusion in his eyes. “I wonder who lost a fine hat such as that?”

“Who are you?” Gerard asked, still unable to see much of the voice’s owner. A white-gloved hand snatched the hat away from him.

“It could be a creature they call a Gazat…
Who balances things on his head…’cause it’s flat!” the voice cried, displaying the hat on one hand. Gerard thought it shook its head.
“No, it wouldn’t be that, it would never be that.
Perhaps it belongs to a strange acrobat,
A man of the circus, who lost his dear hat!”

“Um…hello?” Gerard tried to get the creature’s attention, but it continued to ignore him entirely.

“Or maybe,” it said, “it is nothing like that.
Perhaps it’s a sort of a hat-wearing cat!”

It stepped into the light, and Gerard found himself completely lost for words. There, standing upright before him, was a black cat with white gloves and a white stripe down its stomach. It had a clearly defined, almost human face and a ridiculous red bow around its neck, and it had situated the hat atop its head between its two strangely shaped ears. It was smiling at him.

“You’re…the Cat in the Hat?” Gerard was amazed that he wasn’t stuttering. He ran a hand through his hair. It was unbelievable, but the proof was standing in front of him and flicking its tail back and forth. “What the f-”

“Now, now, my friend, we mustn’t get mad.
In fact, were it me, I’d truly be glad!
Outside is the rain, oh! That miserable flood!
Out there is the cold, and the wet, and the mud!
But in here it’s dry,” said the Cat in the Hat.
“And here is where fun is! And that, sir, is that.”

“I don’t understand,” said Gerard. “Why are you here? How did you get out of the book?”

“I’ve left it for good!” the Cat said with glee.
“I’m out of that book; I’m finally free!
I climbed from the pages and out of that book
I left, and I’ve landed right here in this nook!”

“I must be losing my mind,” Gerard muttered to himself. He sat on the nearest box and tried to understand what was going on. All he could do was shake his head. “I still don’t get it. Why are you here? Is it because of me?”

“Of course it’s for you! You’re lonely and sad.
But now that I’m here, I think you’ll be glad.”

“I don’t see how I could be,” he answered, deciding to play along while he figured out if he had somehow hit his head and lapsed into a coma. He wondered if he would even know if he did. “I’ve got work to do. I need to find stuff I can give to my daughter. Like these books…well, any of them that aren’t destroyed…”

“Oh, that’s not the problem at all,” said the Cat.
“The problem is not with your work, not at all.”
“The problem is you!” cried the Cat in the Hat.

“Me?” asked Gerard, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes, you!
You work every day and you work every night,
You never take breaks or see sight after sight,
You never have fun,” the Cat said with a pout.
“But I’m here to change all that, without a doubt!”

“I can’t help it if I’m busy,” Gerard tried to explain. “I have a family now, and a lot of people depend on me…”

“No, don’t interrupt,” the Cat said with a snap.
“You haven’t yet seen what is under my cap.
This hat, you can see, is no plain, boring hat.
It has tricks of its own, but I’ll leave it at that.”

“Can you just…stop?” Gerard stared up at the Cat with a look of disbelieving shock. “I have no idea what’s going on, or what it has to do with me, but I don’t have time for it.”

“No time for fun?” asked the Cat. “Why, how sad!”

“That’s not what I said,” he insisted, trying to get control of the conversation. “I love having fun.”

“In that case, my friend, it’s time to run!”

The Cat leapt forward and grabbed Gerard’s hand, then snapped its fingers together. Gerard cried out as the floor dropped from beneath him and he felt himself being hurtled through the air, barely managing to hold on to the Cat’s gloved fingers. His eyes watered as strong gusts of wind and flashing lights bombarded his senses. Just a few seconds later, he felt trees crashing beneath him, and he landed in a river with a deep, powerful splash.