Hello friends! Due to the high number of requests, this is my second neko-based Jalice fanfiction! Thanks to everyone who has stuck around through Lucky Cat and motivated me to keep writing! Please take the time to review if you want to see more! I love hearing your feedback! This story, although polar different from Lucky Cat, will still feature neko Alice and her romantic tale with Jasper in a completely new (and slightly darker) adventure. I hope you enjoy! Without further adeu, here is the Pilot for "Cirque de Nightmare"!
Alice's POV
As a child, I always considered myself lucky. The house I grew up in may not have been the nicest, but it definitely shouted "country home" with the sunshine yellow walls and the smell of blueberry pie baking in the kitchen. Mississippi was a great place to live because the people were always friendly and when someone new moved down the road, you always showed up with some kind of baked goods at their doorstep. Momma said when I was born the whole town showed up for the baby shower, which is probably why I had so many toys in the bottom of my closet.
Momma and Papa moved to Biloxi about two years before I came along. Since Momma had just moved out of her parents house, Papa was the sole provider with his degree in science and engineering. They bought a small house on a huge stretch of farmland to the edge of town and decided to buckle down there for the rest of their lives. By the time I was born, Momma had a job working as a wedding dress tailor and was making a lot of income off of it. Unfortunately that meant that as soon as I was out of diapers, she was usually traveling.
That left me home with Papa. He was often working in the basement, where I was forbidden to go. I was too young, he constantly told me, and I could mess up his important research. I never knew what he researched, but he spent a lot of time down there. For some reason this never bothered me. Instead, I spent most of my time growing up outside on the farm, feeding the chickens and riding my beautiful stallion, Jackson. I was a real country girl.
One of my favorite things to do as a child was to help Momma cook. Sometimes, when Momma would have an occasional day at home, I would help her clean the house and then we would go down to the creek and pick berries together. By the afternoon, there would be a fresh pie cooling in the windowsill. Some of my favorite memories were rolling dough on the kitchen counter, listening to the radio and talking about Momma's new dress designs. Momma would call me her "little angel" because I was so small. She always said that even though I was tiny (a whooping four foot six by age fifteen), I had a heart bigger than the world. I knew some kids weren't that close with their Mommas. I knew I was lucky.
Every Sunday, no matter what, we always piled into the blue pickup truck and went to church. I didn't mind church, other than being forced to wear a frilly white dress. The people were always nice to me. The same old woman would tell me every week: "Mary Alice, I just love your dress". Even though I hated my dress, I would giggle and thank her because that was the polite thing to do.
Sometimes church would be the only time in the whole week that I saw Momma and Papa sitting together. As I grew older, I started to grow wary of their relationship. They were never as close as two parents should have been. I always assumed it was because they both worked so hard. Still, I felt lucky. They both loved me very much and I knew that no matter what happened, they would always love me.
My luck ran out on my sixteenth birthday. It was a Sunday. We all piled into the pickup truck to go to church, but it was a rainy, dark morning and the roads were really slippery. Another driver lost control of his vehicle around a turn and slammed our truck right off the road and into a big oak tree.
The passenger side was completely caved in, and Momma was killed.
We didn't go to church that day or any day after that because Papa couldn't understand why God would be so cruel to take my momma away from us.
Months later, Papa was still in a deep depression. He hardly ever came out of the basement and when I made him supper he would tell me to leave it on the stove. The same pot would sit there for the next two days because he wouldn't eat it. I was hardly ever home anymore because I had gotten my first job, trying to keep the house. I was only sixteen and my part-time job at the bakery was paying the bills. When I finally confronted Papa about it, he claimed that he was very close to a breakthrough in his research, and when he did, we would be rich beyond our wildest dreams. I believed him.
Before I knew it, Papa started bringing home cats. Whether they were stray cats or adopted, I wasn't sure, but he never had any food or toys for them, he would just take them into the basement and close the door. I wondered if I should call animal control or something, because he had brought in at least twelve different cats in a number of days.
Once I asked him if I could play with the cats, and he shouted at me to leave him and his research alone.
Finally, one early morning, Papa barged into my room and shook me awake. He looked like he hadn't slept in days by the bags under his eyes and the shakiness of his hands.
"Mary Alice," he had said, out of breath. "Come with me. I have something to show you."
Still wearing my nightgown, I followed Papa into the basement. I had never been further than the fifth step from the top, so I had no idea what to expect from the place my father had basically been living out of for three months. What I saw was beyond anything I could explain.
There were cages lining the unfinished walls, each of them full of cats. One or two of them were meowing pitifully at the bars, but most of them lay still, unclear if they were alive or not. The "office" was a wreck; papers were spilled across the ground, test tubes were unmarked and scattered among the desks, and the weirdest thing I saw was a hospital cot locked down in the center of the room. There were restraints fastened on the cot, as if it had been used in a mental facility.
"Papa… what is all this?" I asked him, running my hand along the bars of the cages, briefly stroking the fur of a malnourished-looking feline.
"My research." Papa told me. "I've run all of the tests, Mary Alice. It's going to work, I know it will."
"What's going to work?" I asked, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand straight.
Something hard hit the back of my head and I fell forward, and that was the last thing I remember as a human.
When I finally awoke, I was in a lot of pain. I tried to move my arms, but they were fastened to my sides by the very restraints I had noticed before. My entire body felt sore and weak, as if there were rocks weighing me down. I turned my head to look around, but everything was much brighter than I remember and I couldn't focus my gaze on anything in particular.
"How do you feel?" A familiar voice shouted, sounding like thunder in my ears. When I opened my mouth to speak, my jaws felt heavy and my lips were dry. When I went to wet them with my tongue, I felt the canines of my mouth much sharper than I remembered them to be.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked, attempting to tug at my restraints again. My ankles were also fastened. "Papa?" There was fear running through every vein of my body, which didn't feel like my own any more.
"My experiment was a success!" Papa shouted again. "Mary Alice, you were the final test!"
"Papa, what did you do?" I cried.
"Something inhumane!" Another voice caught my attention, one that I did not recognize. I struggled to see where it had come from.
"Something terrible!" shouted another unfamiliar voice.
"Get out while you can!"
"He'll hurt you worse!"
"Let us out!"
"Help us!"
I jerked my head from side to side, but I could not see anyone in the room except the faint outline of my father, who was crouched over his desk and shuffling through papers. The wider I opened my eyes, the clearer he became. I continued to examine the room for the source of the voices.
The cats. Several of them were meowing and pushing at the bars of their cages, but they were all staring straight at me.
I can hear you…?
"Mary Alice." Papa interrupted my train of panicked thought by holding up a hand-held mirror in front of me. The reflection of the light on the ceiling temporarily blinded me and I struggled to adjust my vision once more.
I did not recognize the person in the mirror.
Her eyes were the most striking topaz I had ever seen. I knew it could not be my reflection because my eyes were hazel.
Her hair was cropped short and sticking out in several directions. I knew it could not be my reflection because my hair was longer than my fingertips.
There were large furry ears on the top of her head. I knew it could not be my reflection because that was impossible. To test this theory, I blinked my eyes. They blinked back. I turned my head. The jagged bangs fell across her forehead. I tried to twitch my ears. The furry ones twitched back.
"For years, I have been researching ways to enhance the human body." My father began to explain, setting the mirror down and picking up a folder. "My best hypothesis was by using cross-species genetics. With careful research, I found a way to infuse human DNA with that of a domestic housecat… thus hypothetically giving them the enhanced capabilities of a feline… the perfect vision, extended hearing, sense of smell, balance… to make a form of superhuman. Do you understand?"
I didn't understand. All these years that my father spent locked in his secret laboratory, he was experimenting on animals and trying to create a superspecies while I was upstairs baking pie with my mother?
"Think of all the possibilities, Mary! The elderly who have lost their vision and hearing...the children born with poor sight… we could enhance our bodies just by a few injections! Naturally, I succeeded in all of the possible experimentations. The last step was human subject testing and… well, where was I going to get a volunteer for that?"
"So you use your own daughter?!" I shouted, pulling at my restraints one more.
"Don't you see, Mary Alice? This is a good thing! You're going to be famous! We both are! You're going to have the life you always dreamed of!"
"Let me go!" I cried. "Turn me back! I don't want to be a cat! I want my hair back! I want to wake up!"
"You're not dreaming, Mary Alice, and certain things had to be sacrificed for the better good. There were a few negative side effects of the transformation and until I work the bugs out, I can't sell my serum."
I looked away from my father; my heart pounding out of my chest.
"This is a nightmare."
"It's not a nightmare."
"This is real."
The cats across the room continued to speak to me, and I wondered if my father even realized. Was I the only one who could hear their language and understand it? Had he expected that to happen?
"W-what side effects?" I whimpered, remembering his words.
"You seem to be experiencing a significant amount of hair loss, much like chemotherapy, I suppose. The injections must have targeted your hair follicles like some sort of radiation." he told me, speaking in words that I didn't quite comprehend. "To save you the despair, I cut most of it off. It was slow down the shedding process, I believe... The feline appendages were also unexpected. I'm not sure how the public will take to growing a tail or losing their hair." Until he had mentioned it, I hadn't even realized the furry tail sitting between my legs. "I'll have to work out the kinks. It will take time but it will be perfected."
"Papa, please, please let me go." I was starting to sob; my lungs gasping for air between cries. "I want to go back to school, I want to see my friends-"
"Didn't you hear me?!" My father raised his voice so loud that it made me jump. I tried to curl my body defensively but my ankles were still mounted to the bottom of the hospital cot. "There is no turning back now. This is for the better good. You won't be going back to school, Mary. You won't be seeing your friends again either." My father leaned over me, sticking something in my mouth that I could only assume to be a thermometer. "Temperature is high, but stable…"
"Papa, please." I whispered, feeling tears running down my cheeks. "Please, let me go."
This time my father did not answer me. He continued to check all of my vitals as if he was a nurse, writing things down on his notepad and typing things into his computer. The only noise came from my own sniffling and the neverending cries of the cats across the room, which only seemed to intensify. Even with the relentless shouts and pleas coming from the cages, and even with my own father standing just several feet away, I had never felt more trapped and alone in my life.
Over the next several months, I had come to the conclusion that my father was a madman. Whether it was because of Momma's death or not, I wasn't sure, but the man was psychotic. He kept me locked in the basement since the morning of my transformation. I had tried everything, including breaking the little tiny window in the corner and climbing on top of his desk to climb out. Unfortunately he had been one step ahead of me, lining the window with thick barbed wire. It sounded barbaric, but my father was desperate to keep my existence a secret until he had perfected his experiment.
Although he did not neglect me, my father had become distant and uncaring. He no longer apologized when pricking me with needles, taking blood samples or checking my vitals for any kind of abnormality. He fed me the bare minimum and monitored my behavior closely, down to how often I went to the bathroom and how much I slept. I was no longer a daughter to him. I was an experiment.
Thankfully there were no drastic changes in my physicalities. My hair had stopped falling out and had grown just longer than an inch or so. Considering I had been more upset about losing my hair than growing a tail, I was very thankful that it was starting to grow back. I was still the same four-foot-six girl, just with brighter eyes, shorter hair, and two big cat ears atop my head. I had noticed several small differences in my own personality, however. For example, I was constantly tired, often sleeping for several hours of the day. My appetite only craved fish and cream, which was not in the least satisfied by the peanut butter sandwiches that Father would hand me. Sometimes I had to fight the urge to lick my hands when they were dirty. I felt like a cat trapped in a human's body, or vice versa.
I knew that my friends had long forgotten about me. Father informed me about a week after my transformation that he had reported me as a missing child. The entire town of Biloxi searched for weeks, feeling pity for the man who had lost both his wife and daughter within the same year. If only they knew I was here, trapped beneath the house I once called home.
Father's visits to the basement became less frequent, considering he had to get himself an actual job to keep the house (and therefore his research) a secret. My only company was the few number of cats who had survived in the cages. Most were too ill or damaged from my father's beta testing to survive, but the three of them that had lived became my close companions. They roamed free in the basement and I rationed my dinner to share with them. Unknowingly to my father, I could speak their tongue and the three cats had become my only friends.
Eventually, Father often began coming home very intoxicated. He would stumble down into the basement complaining about his job and how his life had been a failure. He would throw a few things around, rip up some papers, and tell me that my life had been a waste as well.
"This experiment… my life's work… it was all a complete failure." He told me, as if I was a friend and not something that he had been pumping full of chemicals for seven months. "You're a failure. You can't do anything except see in the goddamn dark."
He would throw some more things around and then stumble back upstairs for the rest of the night, forgetting to feed me. This happened nine times in a row before I decided that I could use the opportunity to my advantage.
It was a Friday afternoon.
Father would get off of work soon, and I would be waiting for him.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Sylvester meowed from the top of the filing cabinet. "What if he isn't intoxicated today? What if he sees you standing there with that pipe and hurts you first?"
"It's Friday." I told him confidently, sitting on my cot and letting my legs dangle off the edge. "He's going to get drunk because it's the weekend and he doesn't have work tomorrow."
Another of my feline friends, Oliver, joined me on my bedside.
"If you get out of here, what will happen to us?" he asked me. I reached over and ran my fingers down his ginger spine, stroking his fur.
"I wouldn't dream of leaving you behind. You're coming with me, all three of you." I hadn't exactly come up with an escape plan yet, but I was sure of one thing: when Father came downstairs, I would attack him with the pipe I dismantled from beneath the bathroom sink and knock him unconscious. Then I would upstairs, gather all the food and clothes I could carry, and run away as far as I could.
"Princess can't make a journey." Oliver pointed out, glancing towards the tabby cat sleeping quietly in one of the open cages. "Not when she's expecting my kits. I won't leave her here. When we are freed from this house, we will live on the farmlands and hunt mice until our bellies are full. Our kits will live long and happy lives and know the feeling of sunlight on their pelts." The tom spoke as if he was daydreaming, shaking his nose and turning his head to look at Sylvester. "Will you make the journey? Will you keep our Mary Alice safe?" He meowed. Sylvester nodded quickly and leapt down from the cabinet, settling down in my lap.
"You saved me when I was on the brink of starvation. I will follow you to the end of the world." he promised.
I began to stroke Sylvester's head as well, feeling comforted by his presence. I was immensely thankful for the company of these felines, and for the ability to communicate freely with them.
"The sun went down." I pointed at the small window I had once tried to escape through. Between the metal bars that my father had installed, I could see the evening sky getting darker. "He'll be home soon."
I sat very still and waited. Sylvester stood beside me on the cot, one black paw resting on the rusty pipe I had chosen as my weapon. Neither of us spoke, and both of our ears were alert and waiting for the sound of the front door to open upstairs.
Finally, the sound came. I jumped to my feet, grabbing the pipe in my hands and walking over to the base of the stairs. When I stood in the shadows, I was unable to be seen from the top of the stairs. By the time he got to the bottom step, it would be too late.
Part of me was fearful of hurting my own father. Although he may have been cruel, he was also mentally unstable. If there was any way to escape the basement without hurting him, I would have done so. This was my only opportunity.
Sylvester stood in the shadow with me. I could feel the softness of his fur against my bare ankle and it comforted me. We listened to the unsteady footsteps above our heads for several minutes, as if he was pacing.
"What if he doesn't come down at all?" Sylvester mewed from my feet. I shushed him as the door at the top of the stairs creaked open.
"Mary Alice?" My father's voice echoed down the stairs. I wasn't sure whether to answer or not, and by better judgement I kept quiet. "Mary Alice?" He called again, sounding slurred. "I'm sorry Mary, I've been a bad father."
His words shocked me, as I was unprepared for him to speak at all.
"I hurt you, I know I did… please forgive me." His voice was wavering, and step by step, I heard him stumbling down the stairs. He was definitely drunk. "Mary, I'm sorry. I'm so… so… sorry. I can change, I can… fix this…I'll make it better, sweetheart, I'll make it right…"
My heart wanted to believe him, but my mind knew better. I gripped the pipe tighter in my hands and stood very still, hoping he would not see my golden eyes glowing in the dark.
"You must." Sylvester whispered as if he was reading my mind.
"Mary please answer me, baby…" My father was at the bottom of the steps now. He was standing just steps away from me. Sylvester was right. I had to do it.
With my own cry of regret, I jumped out of the shadows, arms outstretched and pipe in hand. I slammed the PVC into his skull with all the strength in my body.
My father collapsed to the cement, unmoving. My pounding heart was deafening, and for a moment I stood frozen in my spot. Blood began to gather beneath his head, absorbing into the grey concrete and staining it dark.
"No…" I whispered, dropping the pipe loudly and falling down on my knees beside him. "No!"
"It's over, Mary Alice." Sylvester meowed from beside me, stroking his tail across my knee. "He's gone."
"No!" I shrieked again, covering my mouth with my hand. I felt like I was going to be sick. "I didn't want to kill him! I didn't mean to! Oh God!" My eyes clamped shut, unable to look at his bashed forehead any longer. "No!"
"Mary Alice," Sylvester murmured soothingly, "Look… there, under his jacket."
I forced myself to look. As the tomcat had pointed out, there was a small black weapon in the belt of his pants, peeking out from behind his jacket. A gun.
"He… he was going to…"
"Shoot you? Yes, it appears so." Sylvester meowed sadly. "You've done the right thing, Mary Alice. It's over now."
For the next few hours, I replenished myself and reminisced in my childhood home. After eating a fresh cooked meal, I showered and dressed myself in clothes from my bedroom. Sylvester, Oliver, and Princess followed me through the house, eyeing me sadly as I took a look around my home for the last time.
"We need to go soon." Sylvester informed me. "The sun will come up and it will be harder for you to travel during the day."
He was right. Not only was I supposed to be "missing", I was no longer a human. Certainly I would be gawked at or taken in for some kind of scientific research. They would question my existence and how I became what I was, and then I would be forced to tell them about my father, who had just been murdered by yours truly. Maybe they would think I was some sort of government weapon and shoot me. Maybe all of this was a waste and I was destined to die. anyway.
I shuffled around my bedroom, folding clothes and stuffing them into an extra-large backpack I had once used for school.
"Where will we go?" I mumbled to Sylvester, who lay comfortably at the foot of my bed.
"Wherever you'd like." He mewed, licking his paw. "Preferably somewhere warm. I've had enough of that musty old cellar for a lifetime."
I couldn't agree with him more.
"You'll be careful, won't you?" Princess asked timidly from the doorway, sitting close to her mate. I glanced over at her, smiling at her swollen belly.
"Of course we will. You'll be a wonderful mother, Princess. I hope you all live an easy life for the rest of your days." I continued to stuff miscellaneous items into my backpack. "You too, Oliver. Look after her well."
"We will tell our children your story, and their children after that. You're a hero, Mary Alice." Oliver meowed, curling his tail around Princess.
At last, my bag was packed. I had managed to fit several pieces of clothing as well as enough food and water for a few days. After zipping up my bag, I bent down to allow Sylvester to climb onto my shoulders. It was hard walking out the front door for the last time. I had to accept the fact that this was no longer my home.
I said my final goodbyes to Princess and Oliver on the front porch, where they dashed down the field and disappeared into the horizon. After a moment of staring after them, I sighed.
"We must go." Sylvester mewed. "This is no longer the place you once called home, Mary Alice."
I zipped up my jacket and pulled the hood over my ears. There were a good few hours until sunrise, and I reminded myself that it was important to get as far as possible before daylight.
With Sylvester perched comfortably on my shoulder, I took my first step away from everything I've ever known, plunging into the abyss of a world where I no longer belonged.
Where will Mary Alice go? Will she ever find a new place to call home? Who will she meet on this epic journey, and what obstacles lie ahead for our little neko?
Let me know what you guys think and stay tuned for the next chapter of "Cirque de Nightmare"!
-fuchsialight
PREVIEW: THE NIGHT TRAIN
I stood in the tree line as the train rumbled past us. It did not whistle. There was no light from the engine. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought the train was a figment of my imagination; a play of the shadows. My cat-like eyes allowed me to see the graffiti on the cars, even through the darkness, and they were moving slowly enough on the tracks that I was able to make out what kind of art it was.
On one car, a vintage-style advertisement read: "SEE MAN TURN INTO BEAST BEFORE YOUR EYES". On another car, "THE WORLD'S STRONGEST MAN". Some of the cars had no words, simply bright streams of color and pictures of balloons, animals, and men with top hats. After watching several of these roll by, I saw a line of large car-sized cages with different animals: lions, tigers, elephants, and horses to be exact. By the time the animal carts had turned back into passenger cars, it had dawned upon me exactly what I was looking at.
It was, more or less, a circus train.