HAUNTED
Thirteen
The cat ran through the foreign streets, transfixed on its route. It knew exactly where it needed to go.
It sniffed the air and blinked its cerulean eyes; through another backyard, down another alley. It followed its senses, searched for the right scent trails.
Time was of the essence. He needed to get there as quickly as possible, no matter what.
There it was - her scent was more concentrated here, as was the boy's. It mingled with another smell, less defined, that he didn't recognize, but he disregarded that fact for the moment and concentrated on his goal.
The cat slipped through a crack in the fence and focused on finding a way to get to the upstairs window unnoticed.
It dashed into some nearby dead bushes. The brambles knotted themselves in his dark fur and threatened to keep him there forever, but he ignored them. He sat and planned for a little while.
After his plan was thought out, he ran, rapidly, toward the side of the house, and opened his own little portal that opened near the top of a tree close to her window.
It was a quick matter to jump across the branches, fly over the gaps between them, and land on the abandoned windowsill. It was covered in peeling paint flakes and splintered chaotically under his careful paws.
The sun had sunk completely below the horizon when the cat tapped twice on the glass with its paw. At first, he didn't see the girl behind the boxes stacked in front of the window; she eventually came to move one so that they could see each other.
Just as he had hoped, the sight of him made her open the window immediately. At first, she petted him for a bit, asking him what he was doing here, and the cat mewled, requesting his own time to talk. It had not come to be adored, no matter how high that was on his list of priorities.
He had come with news that he needed to deliver.
"Well, what's your problem, Cat?" the girl asked, as sarcastic and feisty as when he had first seen her. "Why'd you come here, anyway?"
The cat blinked and bared its teeth slightly as it sensed a change in the room. Something was off. Its ears picked up tiny clicking noises that it couldn't identify.
It made a sign that it hoped the girl could identify: it sat down on the box it had been standing on, closed its eyes, and pawed one with its front paw multiple times.
"What? What's that supposed to mean?"
He opened his eyes and stared in horror at the space behind the girl. Sitting on another box was the source of the metallic clicking noises.
The cat mewled.
The hand jumped.
One of its metal appendages - supposedly the index finger - embedded itself into his chest, just barely missing his heart. He fell onto the box in pain. The piece of metal was then pulled out, leaving him to bleed and die.
It turned and saw its next victim, jumped, and as she fled, landed on the back of her head with such force that she fell over onto her face and stopped moving on impact.
The last thing he saw before he died was a small metal hand dragging a bloodied blue-haired girl by her left ear to a door that wasn't in a specific corner five minutes beforehand. All of this was from a vantage point on top of a doggy cardboard box turning red with blood and then dripping all over the room.
But even those that were killed in the worst possible way rise from the ashes of the earth like a phoenix, creating new life from old.
The cat was awake again, sitting on the fringes of reality like a tree at the edge of a forest.
And much like the tree, he was only visible to those who looked closely enough to see.
(A/N): I had fun writing this. This is the third time I've killed Cat on record; my excuse is that since he's so fun to write, I just love him to death. XD
(What, you think Cat's yours? Fight me for him! FIGHT ME!)
Anyway, I bet people are excited. And if you're not, get psyched, people. This is where the character studies I talked about come into play. You know, the ones about their worst fears?
Sadly, Wybie's and Norman's lists are still lagging a bit behind Coraline's. Especially Wybie's, since I can't really pad it with Normaline filler. The few fears that I do have for Wybie, though, will be greatly satisfying, and probably enough for everyone. Same thing with Norman, in general, 'cuz not all the Normaline there is random filler... hehehe...
My good readers, how much awesomesauce do you want with your epikness?