Alfred's English teacher, Kirkland, wants each kid to write and present a poem about what they want and cannot obtain. Many poems are about expensive material goods. Those that want extra credit recite spiritual or interpersonal struggles. Alfred, who once lusted for endless items, and who has had plenty of experience with all of these things, speaks of how desperately he wants to be a cat. Kirkland does not like this much.
After he finishes reading his poem, a girl raises her hand and asks, "So... like a catboy?"
"No, dude. I want to be a cat. Just your typical stray cat."
"Huh. That's weird." This is as rude as comments get in Honors English, and the next person quickly rushes in to fill the stretching silence; they become a pinprick of light, a star, amongst many others, whereas Alfred's stupid poem about cats is the ever present darkness: it would only stand out if one let it, and Kirkland was not going to permit it to do so. Alfred's poem is unorthodox. Alfred's poem, which is only a few lines long, stands out like a sore thumb; it's a clear mockery of the prompt and the people that followed it.
"Alfred, I need to talk to you," Kirkland said after class.
"Sure thing, Mr. Kirkland."
"I'm failing you for this assignment."
"Why? I followed instructions."
"You did not follow instructions," Kirkland hisses; he does not hit Alfred, so the message doesn't truly get to him. Alfred is only afraid of the discoloration; after all, bruises aren't very attractive.
Kirkland, of course, does not hit his students, and Alfred could only assume that he doesn't think of them in a sexual manner either; in contrast, this is the only way Alfred can think of himself anymore, and perhaps that is why Alfred doesn't get along with his teachers.
"The instructions were to write something serious. Not... that. Wanting a PS5 would have been fine. Wanting a job would be fine. Wanting money would be fine. But wanting to be a cat? Maybe that would have been fine, but you didn't put any effort into this poem at all," Kirkland continues. "Hello? Alfred? Are you listening to me?"
It is such a shame that Alfred can only spend so much of his time wondering why he is so filthy. Just five more minutes and Alfred would figure it out, surely. He gathers himself and responds, "What if I was serious? I do want to be a cat. Imagine how wonderful it would be to be a cat. To just... to eat, and run around. And meow."
"Alfred, this class is held to higher standards than regular English. There must be something you're serious about, something you want."
Alfred wants a lot of things.
"I want to be a cat," he repeats. "It just seems like there's a lot of perks." He turns to leave, begins to walk away, and Kirkland touches his arm. This is a friendly touch. This is not bad, even if anyone could advise Kirkland not to touch his students. Alfred tenses; his entire body is suddenly tingling rather unpleasantly, and the best part is that he has not been touched everywhere, things are not that bad. This is how Alfred knows that he is the problem, that's he's obscene and abhorrent and he's these things independent of what has been done to him.
"Is there something going on at home?"
How many times has Alfred been asked that question? "No."
Before Alfred leaves the school, he stops at the bathroom and washes his face, hands, and neck with hand soap. Hand soap is abrasive and shit, Alfred thinks, and the worst part is that it only makes him feel better while his face is still wet. When he's done he feels, if possible, even worse than before.
...
Honors English is Alfred's last class for the day, so he begins the walk home immediately after it ends. By all means, it's not a cause-and-effect sort of thing; school's end does not necessarily mean walking home, or so Alfred would like to think, although it hasn't led to anything else yet.
Sometimes Alfred considers not going home; there's nothing for him there anyway. Always he passes a stray cat, a black one that's incredibly nice to him. Alfred always stops to pet her, but today he gives her a bit of a ham sandwich as well. She meows appreciatively, and Alfred sits down on the sidewalk to pet her. Alfred is, for all intents and purposes, a dog person; however, he doesn't have a dog. Alfred has no friendly figures in his life at all except for this one alley cat.
He sits there for a long time, and it's very peaceful. Alfred loves public spaces; he's so much safer out here than he is at home.
...
Alfred's parents hate cats.
"Alfred! Where the hell have you been?" His mother grabs his wrist, squeezing harshly, and pulls him inside. "You're an hour late!"
"I was petting a cat."
"For an hour?"
"Yeah."
"You goddamned idiot. What if some pedo kidnapped you?"
Alfred can't respond to that; as a punishment, he has to sit and do his homework in the office while his father looks through his bag and his phone. His mother goes and sits next to him, peers over at his homework. Eventually she begins to rub his leg, and Alfred continues as if nothing is wrong. It is what he does best.
He wonders when his mother's affection had become a punishment. Originally the cat poem had been a joke- obviously, if Alfred could have anything, he would have a residence in a state far away from here- but now he's thinking about it more carefully and he decides he really does want to be a cat. He wants to have claws, to be more powerful and dangerous than other creatures. Instead his mother kisses his hair and Alfred tries to ignore it.
...
Alfred is flirting between two extremes constantly. The first: wanting to be so brutally disgusting that nobody would ever want to touch him, that he would be physically repulsive and people would just stop. The other side of this, though, is nearly lust: he sometimes wants to be clean, to be attractive, to be wanted. The latter is much more shameful.
He goes between them, which is to say he's normally in the act of careening from one to the other. Today this culminates while showering, as all truly bad things do. He turns off the lights so he doesn't have to see himself, and while waiting for the water to heat up he brushes his teeth. During the actual shower, he shaves and then scrubs himself harshly with soap. Alfred had read that it was advised to wash one's hair two or three times a week, but he feels rather unclean and is willing to compromise healthy hair with the abstract, unattainable cleanliness. So he washes his hair, again, as he does every day. After he rinses off the soap, he uses more of it. He rubs it into his skin until it's smooth and warm with bubbles, until he's not there anymore. It's the only way he really feels clean, and even that is only until the soap washes off and he's left in his own skin.
Afterwards he brushes his teeth again and uses mouthwash. He dries his hair with an old T-shirt, dries his body, and finally turns on the lights to put on his clothes. This is the fourth day in a row that he changes his pajamas, which are usually just a T-shirt and sweats. Alfred doesn't have the number of clothes necessary to change home-wear every single day, but he feels rather dirty when he doesn't. Then again, he feels rather dirty constantly.
Alfred likes to think he's doing this for himself, but in truth he doesn't feel like anything he does is for himself anymore. This is a performance, that's all it is. When did life become a performance?
He goes to his room, feeling somewhat better than before he took a shower, and opens the door to the usual: a full trash can, several open containers of food on his desk, clothes on the floor, and a layer of dust over everything. Alfred isn't fine living this way, but he doesn't have the energy to fix it. Instead he lays in bed and lets the pigsty he lives in bother him.
His mother enters his room, lays on the bed next to him immediately. She is crying. Alfred sits up just as his mother says, "Your father is being such a dick."
"Really?" Alfred asks. He gets up and sits at his desk, wipes the wrappers and stale food away. He pulls out his phone and navigates to safety, lazily participating in an idle game, as his mother tells him about the latest argument, and how she misses their dog, and did Alfred miss their dog and did he ever realize what a dick his father is? Alfred's mother only ever talks to him when she wants to be sad, and she constantly downplays any emotions they don't share; Alfred is resentful and this is what he thinks about until his mother says, "Alfred, come here," and all is lost.
Alfred's heart skips a beat and he resists the urge to cringe, but he goes over and lays next to her anyway. She hugs him, strokes his hair. Alfred regrets wearing a tank top today; he feels that wearing three or four layers of clothing would not be enough protection.
When Alfred had first realized he was being abused, he had always thought, 'At least it isn't sexual.' Alfred had always imagined sexual abuse as this obvious, looming thing that he wouldn't be able to live with. In a way it is, but as his mother vents to him he cannot help wondering if this constitutes covert sexual abuse or if he is just an asshole. Is this the role a spouse ought to take? Alfred wonders, noting almost calmly that his mother is still touching him, not quite inappropriately but certainly uncomfortably. He cannot imagine what a healthy relationship looks like, either romantic or parental. Alfred assumes this counts, which leads to his next thought: he had not expected that he would live this long after the realization.
Alfred continues living only because he hasn't actively tried to die yet. This, whatever it is, has not driven him to suicide yet. Until it does, he has little choice but to continue being a functional human being: he still has to shower, eat, do homework (however poorly), and try to get decent sleep. Even the mundane things continue; his heart continues to beat, as it is now, even as his mother strokes his hair and decides to turn to a better topic: what Alfred will be like as a partner. His mother thinks him conventionally attractive enough to get any girl he wants. Alfred doesn't much like this topic; he cannot imagine a relationship, or intimacy for that matter, that is completely willing. He cannot imagine that anyone thinks of him in a manner that isn't only sexual or abusive, or both. His mother never speaks of what she imagines the relationship will be like; she essentially only comments that Alfred is very attractive. Alfred wishes it all would just stop.
Eventually his mother leaves him, because he is nothing if not used. Alfred returns to his desk, to his phone and stale food. He takes a three-day-old Toblerone bar, breaks off a small piece of it, and tries to eat it.
It is the second thing he's eaten today, the first being a NutriGrain bar. He reflects on how every day is 'today', how strange that is. He reflects on how the days pass, and how the present safety he derives from being alone won't last very long. Alfred almost wishes he could view everything in past tense, or perhaps that he could peak ahead to see how his story would end.
Alfred reflects some more on his Honors English class, because it is the only class he genuinely enjoys. It has destroyed him, but so has everything else; for that matter, it has destroyed everything else. Alfred, in this past semester, has become accustomed to reflection, to contemplation. Once one learns to analyze a character's actions, one is only so far away from being aware. Alfred wishes that he could live his life simply, that he could live on autopilot. Autopilot itself is a beautiful idea to those that already have no control of their lives. Autopilot, half-unconsciousness, takes part of the blame away. If only it could completely replace human operators; if only Alfred could think without thinking, or die without dying.
All of this is just a distraction from the chocolate he is trying to eat. He knows he'll be sick if he eats sweets on an empty stomach, but he doesn't want to face his family and he needs to eat something, right? Alfred imagines himself getting diabetes, or dying of a stroke at thirty-nine (but wasn't that better than ever living to forty?), or merely getting fat. Somehow this last one is worse than the others. Alfred knows he should eat something, but the excuses pile up and, perhaps for the better, he abandons his Toblerone bar. He can't look at anything else on the desk. This is how eating always is; he rarely completely wants anything anymore.
...
Alfred sometimes has the urge to throw the towel in, most noticeably while he is playing Tetris. Alfred is absolute shit at Tetris, and yet it is the only game he plays anymore. Every time he makes a mistake, he gives up immediately, mashing the top button until everything has fallen down and he can restart. Every time he does this he feels horrible. He never beats scores or even clears more than a few lines anymore.
Today Alfred is already well into the stages of beginning to hate Tetris for no reason other than how bad he already feels, and he knows that Tetris isn't the problem here. Alfred could easily play other games, but can no longer imagine anything other than this. Playing a different game is one of the easiest ways to make life less hellish, and yet he doesn't deserve this particular lack of pain.
It is 'today', again. As Alfred is walking home, he thinks of how nice being a cat would be. Even if he was unlucky enough to be a house cat, escape would be easy enough, and then he could be independent. What started as a joke now leads to Alfred legitimately hoping he is reborn as a cat.
Alfred holds the reserved piece of sandwich delicately between two fingertips as he gets closer to where he always meets the cat; the meat is the best he can offer, and the cat never expects anything more. However, the cat is not there. Alfred walks a few blocks in every direction, steps into abandoned buildings once he's a bit more frantic. After searching a couple alleys, going around stores and asking cashiers if they've seen her, and calling out, he finally finds her behind a dumpster.
The cat is stiff and cold, curled on an old newspaper. Alfred pokes her with his shoe. She doesn't move. Alfred has no reasonable way to comprehend this; although this was a cat he met only in passing, he feels indescribable grief. He checks for needles and, upon not finding any, sits next to the cat. It occurs to him that he is already late, and he wonders if his parents will hurt him for it this time; this is the second time, after all.
Alfred eventually puts the bit of ham next to the cat and tells her goodbye. He thinks that perhaps there is no reprieve in the world, that maybe it is not so good to be a cat; then, it is not very good to be him either. Life suddenly feels so heavy, so unbearable. He cannot help but drag his feet as he walks home, and he cannot help making himself panic over what his parents might do to him. This is his reality. He does not even have the privilege to call it his past.
Based on the song of the same name, and what the band said of it: 'No nightmare can be scary if it has a kitten in it,' or something. This is my first time writing in the present tense, so any feedback on this in particular would be greatly appreciated, but feedback in general would be ~hella lit~. Have a wonderful day and stay safe.