It's just a cough.
At least, that's what he tells himself at first.
Only…he keeps coughing and coughing and coughing and sometimes it's blood and sometimes it comes up black, and sometimes it hurts him so terribly that it's all he can do to stay standing.
And now Perrito is coughing.
Initially, he says he's fine, but it never stops. Then, in the middle of their room at the inn, he goes into a fit so violent that Puss and Kitty are up with him the whole night as he coughs.
Kitty comes out of the whole ordeal with her own cough, marking each of them afflicted and by the time dawn cracks, all three are in writhing fits.
They cough and cough and cough again still — until one hour turns to two and then to three — until strength leaves their limbs and their bodies are swallowed up. It is in the midst of this hellish eternity that something black and foul that stinks like decay erupts from Puss' mouth and terror fills him all the way as he sees Kitty stumbling at the foot of the bed, hacking up a similar black bile.
A pit opens up inside of him that coincides with the searing in his chest; it is white hot and it radiates out from his chest and creeps to the fresh meat of his extremities like a forest fire would fresh trees.
The pain is so terribly excruciating that it almost becomes him.
The pain is him.
Glorious and blinding — it leaves him gasping and arching and praying with everything in him, to any god who will listen, that the ordeal will cease.
But it does not cease; it gets bigger and louder and more aggressive than ever — like a wave exactly crashing, bowling him over and taking him to terrifying depths where darkness is king and pain is forever and the blacks become white so many times he thinks he's dead.
And then it relents.
It doesn't end, but the pain ceases to overtake every part of him long enough for him to open his eyes and sit up.
Agony rears like a beast and, instantly, he's splayed on all fours, coughs bringing more black foulness that stains the sheets so deeply it resembles ink.
Another wave comes, traveling down his spine and spreading through him and out the tips of every limb and he is arching and clenching and screaming, crying tears that run black.
Through the muck he can see Kitty collapse and Puss barely drags himself to the edge of the bed. From his perch he can see her on the floor and there is black everywhere: black in her fur, black in her eyes and black seeping out of her ears and her mouth; there is so much of it that she is laying in a pool of it — submerged in it.
Panic numbs the pain and, through a surge of energy, Puss attempts to conquer the sloping edge of the bed, only for his weakened limbs to lose their grip and send him careening to the floor.
Stunned by the impact, Puss moves to right himself only to slip as the arm he uses to brace himself crumples under his weight. Confusion arises as he moves the offending limb and he is stunned.
There — stuck to the joint of his elbow — are the remnants of a perfectly functioning foreleg; only now it much more closely resembles chop-meat than anything that might rightly belong to something living. What was once healthy is now very much not so. What was once pink and fleshy is now raw and sickly looking, deadened — gnarly and blackened, like the branch of a withered tree.
Even as he stares, horrified by the sight of it, pieces of decaying skin slough off before his eyes; the skin unmarrying from the underlying fascia as effortlessly as the skin from an onion.
Puss wants to scream, but he can only whimper as yet more flesh falls away. He turns his attention to Kitty lying mere feet from him — burning with the need to reach her — yet he finds his legs equally useless. Frustrated, he growls, reaching out to her but the foul-smelling stuff is back and it's in his nose and in his mouth and his ears and it's burning his eyes and he can't even breath because it's filling his lungs.
It is purpose driving him more than strength as his other, non-mangled foreleg comes down in front of him like a garden-hoe; and, like said tool, he uses this good limb to scoop mighty armfuls of floor as that single arm animates him.
It is a systematic affair: take the foreleg, place it down, pull yourself, repeat. He does this even through the repeated commands of his body pleading with him to stop.
He does it even as the agony overtakes him.
He is full of pain, entirely on fire, and also leaking majorly; the rotten, sticky filth following his exact path around the end of the bed like a snail-trail, black and evil, it sticks like tar and pulls like fingers.
Slowly he moves, scraping himself along the floor even as the seeping stuff resists — creeping and alive like vines — it encroaches upon anything, adhering itself to the floors and the bed-post as well as the hanging bed sheets.
The contrary forces are not unlike navigating a heavy bramble; a delicate interplay of pushing and pulling, tugging and dragging; the desperation of a lone and frenzied thing struggling against the combined effort of many facets all working as a single, unified whole.
A disgusting, black spider-web of vileness of his own making that finds him trapped just out of arm's reach of Kitty.
It's everywhere.
He lifts up his good foreleg and it's overtaken now — so completely covered that when he puts it back down, it hits the floor with a sickening plop. The accumulation is gum in the works; the once normally smooth process now interrupted by the compounding presence of the gross, black stuff, sticking defiantly to the floor.
On both the left side and the right — around his neck, in between his shoulders, over his back and across his flank — in every nook and cranny it pulls and insists; trying desperately to drag him back to some dark hell.
Even now, under significant tension, Puss finds himself rapidly losing ground as the ick drags him back across the floor.
The slippage prompts action in Puss and he wretches the arm free of the filth and hurls it forward, bringing it down mightily and forcibly taking the lost inches back.
The retort is immediate as the goop immediately erases his progress with a harsh jerk; and from there it's a game of call and response as Puss struggles and the sludge meets his effort with oftentimes superior output.
He is still there, mere feet from where Kitty lay motionless, gaining ground only to lose it again. It's only as he's straining — Kitty squarely in his sights and Perrito in his mind — that strength comes to him.
"No," he manages. The word tastes horrible on his tongue as the dark substance leaks out, but he grits his teeth around the bad taste and digs the claws of his good arm into the wood of the floor.
From there he pulls, arching his body and using whatever leverage he can.
He pulls until his back aches and his claws chip and snap.
He pulls with singular fervor, the thought of reaching Kitty the only thing in his mind.
He pulls until he is broken; until he is wrought iron and everything is straight and stiff and flexing.
He pulls and pulls and pulls with every ounce of strength he can muster and there is a sudden and great release of tension, the resulting inertia sending Puss skidding along the floor on his stomach, now within arms reach of Kitty.
Puss recovers quickly from the shock and moves to stand, a distinctly fleshy noise cuts the room as his legs fail him once again. Puss turns to investigate and is mortified to find that his previously weakened right leg is now in a state of dilapidation not dissimilar to his mangled arm.
Even as he tries to maneuver himself, he can only watch as the single, thin string of connective tissue responsible for holding his right foot to his leg is severed by its own weight.
Panic fills him as he watches the resulting separation. The event is akin to jettosing a ballast and Puss' once normal equilibrium is immediately disrupted and he is sent reeling.
A terror larger and more legitimate than ever rips through him as he hits the floor. Now with one good leg and one good arm respectively, all sense leaves him even as the black stuff pervades — flooding him, choking him like bad water and marking every orifice as the mouth of its own foul river.
For a moment there on the floor he is empty and he reckons the stuff leaking out of him as an essential life-fluid leaving him. Dread fills his empty vessel and he is all fear and nerves as he watches his severed limbs bleed black.
Kitty's visage permeates the curtain of doom looming over him and it is only then that he turns to find her.
She is there, lying dead still, so still that it's picturesque; like a portrait — obscenely detailed.
But this is real, the pain in Puss' amputated arm and leg remind him so, searing as he rolls to his stomach and continues his hard fought journey to reach her.
Even before he does so, the extent of degradation is obvious.
She is drowning — so overwrought with the same black evil assaulting him that she more closely resembles a piece of ornately crafted masonry at the center of some dark, abyssal lake.
It is muck be damned as Puss drags himself through the filth in the same way an alligator might drag itself ashore, abandoning all pretense of safety as he brings his coated good arm down into the sloshy nothingness, using it like an oar to navigate the goop.
Eventually he reaches her, scooping her weight into his arms; but it's dead weight — like picking up a sack of flour — heavy and lifeless.
"Kitty!" He shakes her, but she does not move.
"Kitty…" he tries again, but she remains slackened and heavy. It's only when he turns her body in his grip and the black slop drips liberally down over the geometry of her skull that the reality of the situation becomes readily apparent.
There are parts of him that refuse to accept it initially, but there are other, more animal parts of himself that reconcile with the facts at hand almost intuitively.
She is gone.
It's clear if not only for the unusual way her weight sags, but also the strange blankness to her eyes: those wild, blue eyes now wide with both shock and horror, the strange black stuff escaping her tear ducts and running down her cheeks.
Puss mirrors her naked sorrow and the arm gripping her body begins to shake amidst the gravity of it.
It hits like a truck, like a train; it completely blindsides him, going through him like the cold. It is cataclysmic, world ending — chaos in a bottle. It connects with him solidly and he is left there, profoundly in weakness.
From there, everything is hell and fire and despair in constant flux. Emotion overtakes Puss and he is lost to grief. Anguished cries echo throughout the room as darkness wins the day and tears flow. Yet even at the height of such despondency, the degradation continues when Kitty both literally and figuratively slips through his fingers.
Figuratively in the fact that he's already lost her, but literally in the fact that, even at that moment, her physical body — her being itself — is literally slipping through the digits of his forepaw.
He is taken aback
Utterly incredulous
At a stunning and breathtaking loss for words as he watches, completely open mouthed, as his lover's body disappears before his eyes, evaporating away as easily and readily as snow.
The sensation is awful, greasy and slick, like melting butter in his paw and he openly wretches as blood and bone and fur and viscera all seep down through his digits, coalescing into the blackness surrounding him.
Suddenly, the thought of it all — of marinating in Kitty's essence — becomes too much for him and he all but leaps from the putrid pool with newfound energy despite having only two working limbs.
There, overlooking the soup containing Kitty's remains, is where Puss in Boots dies.
There is where strength fails.
That spot denotes the exact place wherein the legend known as Puss in Boots ceases to exist.
Puss falls — a veritable statue to his glory, crumbling.
He is on the wooden floor, splayed, bleeding black still and utterly motionless.
Tap tap tap
He is unmoving.
Tap tap tap
Slowly, his head rolls back toward the window and he sees there are crows there — two on each window-sill. They stare with special interest and they each have evil, red eyes. Their heads twist and jerk and as they peck obnoxiously on the glass.
Peck peck peck
Tap tap tap
Conspicuously, the crows who meet his eye gesture specifically, as if trying to direct his gaze. Eventually he follows and he is stunned by what he sees.
There, nestled under one of the sills, is what initially looks like an amorphous, black lump until Puss' addled eyes focus.
It is Perrito.
Painful feelings swell at the sight of him — bottom half gone — rotted away like something long-since dead. Even though his neck is craned, Puss can see it clearly: the dissolving flesh, the bubbling fats, the white bones of the ribcage, shining like a beacon amidst the forming goop.
It is too much to bear and the tears come freely.
He cries at his ineptitude.
He cries because, at the end of the day, no creature so pure should have to endure a fate so horrible.
He cries because it's all he can do.
He cries even at the cutting, high pitched whistle hitting his ears; and when he is finally able to see through the sorrow, Death is there.
"Gato…" the canine starts, an uncharacteristic softness in his eyes.
Puss responds to the gentleness with a laugh — a chiding, barking laugh, still crying hot, black tears. "I should have known…"
"You misunderstand, Gato," The canine responds quickly, the kindness never leaving him. "This-" He pauses for a moment, gesturing faintly to where Puss is lying.. "-was not supposed to happen…" There is a strangeness to the canine's posture — a particular rigidity to it; it is the stark, straightness of fear.
Puss laughs a hollow laugh more haunting than any conjurations of the fearsome deity.
"I…should have known…" The decrepit feline repeats, dragging ragged breath through gunked up lungs. "I could not…escape death…"
A heavy breath comes from the canine as he shifts awkwardly.
"I apologize." There is softness in his tone of voice — something between reverence and guilt. "When I am tasked to take someone…"
For a moment there is silence, and for the first time in its long existence, the deity is at a loss for words.
Death is not a being who revels in the misery and defilement that often comes with his obligation.
It is a burden.
It is heavy and ungainly and it weighs on him in unforseen ways.
The names he remembers.
The faces.
Men, women, children; running, fighting, pleading, even acquiescing with grace. But here — in this ordinary room in this unassuming inn — the death-dealer is rendered the most devastating of blows by the most pitiful of things, there on the floor, one arm disintigreated and one leg gone; black stuff ruling him, leaking from every orifice and coming from his mouth with so much volume that it's choking him.
The sight is terrible, really; with dead flesh peeling from open wounds and ragged, weeping gashes fleecing easily as sinew and connective tissue tears and separates, giving way to black blood.
He lies there, wet and gasping, like a fish set on land — a freshly caught thing beset with injury.
Death inhales.
"I was not lying when I said no one had escaped me." The wolf crouches down before the malformed feline, eyes lit with sympathy. "You are the first person I have ever let live…"
Death's red eyes smolder and the outline of a pawprint circling the feline's neck becomes visible to him — and even that outline is salient and grizzly and bleeding blackness. Strangely, it is not a mark on the physical body, but it is clear to him all the same that this same mark is the engine of this archaic evil.
The vehicle for his particular brand of malfeasance.
"Death is about you now," the deity replies, simply, refusing to meet the cat's eye. "But you can no longer die. Not naturally anyway…"
"I…do not…care…anymore…" Puss says, coughing. His breathing is ragged now as more liquid invades his lungs and he coughs and hacks and wheezes. "You have…taken my friend" cough cough cough "my lover…" cough hack "You-" cough cough hack wheeze "-have already…killed me…"
A chorus of horrible noises comes from the feline — a death knell, surely. But he is very much there and very much alive and very much still in agony.
Understandably so; the forces at hand are ones inexplicable to mortal beings. They are factors of reality unto themselves, energies meant solely for the discrepancy and delineation of gods.
But Puss in boots is not a god.
He is a thing made simply; a collection of soft things and fluffy things and things that fail and things that rot and things that concede readily to the unknowable.
Things yet undeserving of such torment.
The wolf stands, still averting his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Gato."
The statement hangs in the air for a moment. Death exhales, turning to look the decaying feline in the eyes.
"You are right, this was my doing, but I assure you, it was not done with malice or even conscious forethought on my part…"
Puss laughs again, vile goop erupting from his mouth.
"You're…" wheeze "telling me…" a wheeze, a cough and another laugh. "This was…" cough wheeze "an accident…?"
Death sighs. "In a manner of speaking…"
More laughter comes from Puss and more black goop comes with it. "Hell of a-" cough cough wheeze. "-slip of the ... .wrist…" cough hack wheeze. "Amigo…"
"I know…" The wolf responds, particularly melancholic. "I am sorry…really…"
It takes just about all the energy Puss has left to crane his neck to look toward the Kitty-soup, and swivel then to Perrito's remains before rolling his neck back to lock eyes with the wolf again.
"I think…" cough hack and blackness. "I think…I would like…" cough cough cough. "To go…as well…" cough cough wheeze.
The wolf's eyes soften just then. "I understand."
With the utmost reverence, the canine kneels before Puss again, extending one mighty paw to place it squarely on the feline's head.
"You really were fearless…"