The Black Cat

Another dim misty night. Hazed light seeping through the alleyways from the main street. Faint sounds of car alarms going off and sirens sounding in the distance.
Rats causing movement at the corner of your eye, scurrying over the cobble stone paths into old cardboard boxes left rotting away.

Walking through the twisted maze of alleyways, going nowhere in particular. Trying to keep the cold away. *crunch crunch* the usual sound of the grit from my shoes grinding against the wet damp cobble stone.

‘Eeeeep!’...*thump*.
I look up from my feet and slowly look over my shoulder. That was different.
At the end of the path sat a black cat. Black as a no-moon midnight. Staring me down with its mesmerising yellow eyes, black slits cutting down the middle.
It held my gaze for a moment then looked to its left and walked in that direction around the corner, toward where the squeal seemed to come from.

I turned around to follow the cat, and walked slowly down the abandoned alleyway. Turning into the next alleyway I catch a glimpse of the cat again turning down another path.
The black cat was nowhere to be seen, but something lay tattered on the ground. A mix of bright pink and brown messed up together. A girl lay face down on the cool ground, with blonde tangled hair, wearing a small torn pink dress. It was so bright pink it shone through the bits of mud splattered on top.
I knelt down to turn her over. When she was on her back I could take in a lot more. For one, she was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

I new I couldn’t just leave her there. As much as I could see she hadn’t been attacked yet, if i left her she certainly would be.
I slung her onto my back and started for where I’ve been sleeping the last few weeks.
Not that I’ve done much sleeping.

I crouched as I entered the doorway of cardboard boxes.
Someone got away with my only blanket a few days ago, so I placed the girl down on top of a pile of lightly crinkled newspaper I’d laid out for myself, and lay out lots of flat sheets of newspaper on top her.
As I left, I put a piece of cardboard in front of the door and made my way toward the soup kitchen. Morning mist hovering in and out of the alleyways. As much as I should be thinking about the girl, the cat kept crossing my mind. Why? Its not like it meant anything right? It was just a stray cat...wasn’t it? Ether way I couldn’t stop imagining it, and it’s powerful eyes.

Ragged people already crowded the small hall. An old worn clock hanging on an angle in the top corner on the right wall, stroke two o’clock with it’s broken arrows as I walked in to line up.

Though prisoner of surrounding mumbles and groans, the broken arrows clicked in my brain like the shock you receive when whacking something with a metal bar. I stared at the clock and prepared my self for each and every second of every minute until..*whack!* I hit the floor hard. Shocked, I didn’t move, I didn’t even have time to process what happened when I caught a glimpse of something move like a shadow on the other side of the sea of legs. My brain went silent, nothing but my own heart beat pounded in my ears. Another movement, somewhere.

I finally picked myself up to avoid being kicked another time by impatient scruffy men much older than myself. They’d pushed me over in the first place because I hadn’t moved when the line (if you could call it that) eventually moved a few scuffling inches forward.

By the time I got to an edge of a long rusty bench, I’d completely forgotten about the strange shadow-like movements I’d seen. I fumbled a bit while I tried to pick up a bowl but didn’t manage to get such a clean one. I reached across the bench to a young lady that volunteered here, as she filled my bowl with warm mush I was surprised to find her still here after I witnessed a fight a few days earlier she’d tried to break up. She got away with just a broken hand and black eye. Luck, if you ask me.

I wished I could hav asked for a second bowl, but then I’d also have to wish that I was as lucky as serving girl. A spilt second after saving myself from asking, something clinked and clanked in the kitchen, no one took any notice until a loud cry of fear from the kitchen ran through the hall. The manic groans and grouches dropped to almost a silence then replaced by low-volumed mumbles and people looked back and forth from the kitchen to whomever next to them.

The dirty ragged people almost went back to their usual mode when, ‘skeeeeeeeeeechh!!’, people turned to stare at the kitchen as a black cat jumped over heads as it hissed and landed somewhere amongst the crowd. Women screamed and men started to beat the air and stamp wherever they could.
In the moment of panic and chaos I turned back to the lady who now wasn’t there but as I grabbed the ladle found that she lay fainted on the ground, I’d help her any day but now. I found the biggest closed bowl and started scooping the warm mush as fast as I could into it and ran through the kitchen without being seen and escaped out the back door only being hit by the cool air.

I stumbled a bit, before I hid around the closest corner to gasp for air. The cool fresh air (well as fresh as it can get on a city morning) calmed me down, and I started to think straight again.

While regaining my balance I started to walk in the right direction. I looked down at my hands, I hadn’t managed to spill much mush so I slowly poured the lumpy fluid into my mouth and felt it as the warmness seeped down into my body.

The sun was rising quickly in the sky, and all I hoped was the girl hadn’t woken up, panicked, and run away. Someone like her would get lost in seconds running through endless mazes of alleyways, even if they found the main road they wouldn’t make it to the new part of the city without being mugged or attacked. Downtown is a dangerous world for an outsider.

Holding my breath while I move the cardboard out the way then drawing a deep breath to find pink still shining through torn holes of the newspaper. I place the bowl of mush inside a tight small box to stop it falling over and turn to the beauty that almost hurts as the girl futters her wakening adjusting eyes.

‘Harry?’, I don’t answer to her puzzled squinting face. ‘Tom!?!’, she pushes her self back as far as she can with I jolt.
‘No I’m..’, I pause for a second, ‘..I’m Jack’, I say in puzzlement myself.
Her face dropped. ‘Where am I?’ she looks at the cardboard closing her in, ‘Did you...did you…r-rape me…?’ she slowly stutters out with a worried glance at me then to the newspaper scattered everywhere and draws her body closer together.
I pause and stare at her, ‘Erm, no. but only by your luck that I was the one that found you…’.
She cuts me off loudly, ‘Lucky!? You call this lucky!? Just look at me!! This isn’t lucky!!!’ she pauses to take a breath.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ I force the words quickly and sharply out my mouth. ‘This isn’t your place to be.’
‘and I didn’t choose to be in it!’, she argues back still shouting, and beats at the cardboard hoping to find a quick exit. She finds a weak spot in the wonky wall where old used tape has gotten to moist from the mist. She throws her arms about her and stomps till she is fully out in the open.

I don’t know what she saw but in seconds she re-appeared in front of me and froze not having a clue what she should do.
There was a long awkward silence.
Embarrassment was sinking its words in all over her face in bright red marker as reality dripped back into her brain.

She eventually looked at me and bit her lip, ‘you wouldn’t happen to hav anything to eat would you?’, she asked quietly. I took the large bowl out off the box now bloating at the edges and handed it over to her along with I spoon I’d snagged too. She tucked her dirty blond curls behind her ear and started to eat.

‘is there some reason its in a big mixing bowl?’ she asked curiously.
‘it’s a long story’, I grinned.