Skyline
JestaAriadne
To disclaim: Don't own CATS... thankfully. It turned out just perfect without my help :) My story. Muahaha.
NOTES: Whoo!! A fanfic!! Rumpelteazer's PoV. ANOTHER style experiment Yeah, maybe I do have some sort of obsession with the sky in my writing - so what?? I happen to like the sky. Tis very pretty in my opinion.
Oh, and forgive me please if there's stuff wrong with medical details or anything... (That'll be later on, this is just a little short first part. There'll probably be six chapters in all.) Yeah, enough notes. Enjoy?!
Prelude
Beginnings are never great places to start things, in my humble opinion. That could be cos I'm so rubbish at them myself. Once I get started I'm fine; I'm off, I'm crazy like a firework and you can't stop me yakking away, but intros and all that have never been my strong point. Besides, take the very beginning of the story of My Wonderful Life, and you'd have something like this:
"Sometime in some place, probably London, but you never know, there was a cat called well, we don't know her name, but there she was. At some point, she went and fell in love with (or maybe she didn't) a tom who's name is just another factor x. They had a kitten (or maybe more than one) and it was a little (presumably), cute (well, maybe) queen (at least we're sure on this one). They might have called her Rumpelteazer, but more likely the little thing just picked that up from somewhere later. And so there I was; all small and noisy and being sick probably and all those other kitten things. And then, hey presto, the parents disappeared. Or died, or something. I don't know."
Well, that's enougha that. There you have it. Now you know why stories start with "Once upon a time".
~~~
So, not the very beginning then. The beginning doesn't make sense, and isn't worth the telling, but I muddled through it. I made it. I laughed my way in and out of the gutter, or we did. Me'n Mungo. Me darlin' Mungojerrie. My other half. My second self. My soulmate? The other pea-in-the-pod. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Didn't I tell ya? Can't stop me now... Birds of a feather. Cats of a fur?? Yeahhmmmm.
The "cocky cockneys" as the junkyard's resident wit Mistoffelees calls us. Yeah, it was funny the first time, Mist. Heh, I don't mind really. I can call him much worse if I feel like it. Sides, he messes with me too much and he's gonna lose that sparkly collar of his. That pretty, sparkly, shiny collar
Er, anyway, back to whatever point I had Me'n Mungo. That seems like a decent enough place to start from. No, he's not my brother, or my twin, or my clone (only male and bigger and kinda cooler.) No, we're not the same, we only pretend to be. Sometimes. It's nice. Makes me feel safe.
I don't know if we "fell in love" right away or what. Maybe we just desperately needed each other. Cat, what am I talking about "maybe"?? "Other half" describes it just about right, especially when well, then I'd swear he was my whole, doing everything, even living, for me.
So let's take a couple months back... that's all it was, I guess. There was I; the cuter, hyperer half of the extremely notorious duo, happily flaunting fake pearls or whatever the latest shiny thing I found was, champion sprinter of the whole junkyard, and happy happy happy.
And, of course, that's about when it happened. Of course, of course, of course. So I've got my pretty-much-perfect life, (albeit with all those jaded kittenhood non-memories and the half-forgotton struggle to get here) but doesn't that just leave you screaming "AND NOW WHAT??"? It seems no one can get away clean in this life.
So. To set the scene. Early autumn in London. Well, it was probably early autumn everywhere in England, but that's beside the point. We'd been residing comfortably in Victoria Grove for almost a year now, and wow was it strange to think of it like that. I was a house cat now, technically. A house cat, but not really a house cat. The phrase comes with all sorts of connotations of daily cream allowances and silken cushions and little name-tags round your neck, probably with a fancy flouncy name like Esmereldina calligraphed on it... Or is that just the way I've been brought up? Ha. "Brought up." That's the streets for you then. My mother, father, great uncle Juniper, what have you - never had no real relations that I knew of, remember? Just those damned dirty dangerous places where everything is threatening grey. So moving up in the world into this luvverly big shiny house, I didn't exactly know what to expect.
But I was used it now. And it almost was like the urban legends - sans silk cushion and name-tag, true, but it was a very comfortable existence. But we never quite let ourselves settle into it, not 100%. I always felt I had to preserve something of that spunky crazy kit who survived streetlife for however long it was.
Mungo and I still held our infamous heists now and again - although the bounty was getting piteously tame most of the time. It was a nice little hobby. It was fun. And we still raced each other back home, every single time (got to burn off the calories from that daily cream allowance somehow, you know!) - and I still always won.
So here we go.
"Race ya!" I yelled, like it was a new and fantastic idea.
"Yer on! An' Oi'm gonna win this time!!"
It was very sweet of him... he actually genuinely had that tiny bit of hope that he really might.
Hehe. Not a chance, me Mungo!
Down the straight road from the park - easy as pie (lemon meringue for preference... mmmmm...) - take the corner just right - corners always used to be the tricky part for me, I'd go flying off sideways and have to nearly stop to recover my balance, but I'd got it perfect now. And down a nice straight pavement again. I could still just hear Mungo's panting behind me, a good half of the street's length or so - I'd have lost him by the crossing. Sprinting on. This was something I was good at. A nice crazy run, wind full in my face and fur and pearls flying everywhere; this was how it was meant to be.
And I'd arrived at the crossing. Maybe I'd stop and wait a coupla seconds (or minutes...hehe...) for dear ol' Mungo to catch me up once I was on the other side...?
Except that I never got to make that choice.
Because halfway across, a car hit me. I was stupid, yes, not to have noticed it, but it's just not something you worry about when you're going for your personal record to the traffic lights... I certainly wasn't thinking about it as I went flying towards the curb.
I suppose the driver stopped, because someone rushed over to me as I was lying there pathetically, screaming my head off. I just thought, pointlessly: This is it, isn't it?
Childishly: It's not fair.
And, coherently: If I die now, I am seriously gonna kill someone.
Yeah. Not very funny really, was it? Something of a last-ditch attempt, I think.
My side - my back - my legs... I was burning up. I thought I was on fire and there were crimson nuances running through my head. I was going to die? It didn't make much sense somehow, and though I always had acted on impulse without planning anything, this just didn't fit in with... - I was burning. My head was on fire with - well, it was just pain, wasn't it? I was just dying. Mungo, where are you?
I blacked out. Well, they call it "blacked out", but for me it was more like a smashed kaleidoscope of sun spots and blind spots and crazy colours. Like fireworks going off in my head before I faded to dear kind grey.
---to be continued sometime soon, I think---
(there's a lot more written, just a lot of gaps too)