And like the cat i have nine times to die

Mayuko knew better than to talk to strangers. Especially strangers at night. That’s why, when she was approached by a man last Thursday evening, she responded with:

“Get the fuck away from me, pedo.”

She sped up her pace down the sidewalk and made a sour grimace, hoping that he’d find her too ugly to kidnap. He called out after her.

“Woah, hold on kid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

How convincing.

At the sound of his voice, a living room window lit up beside her. Mayuko turned her face away from it. Her padded footsteps were amplified by the stillness of the cold November night. If she held her breath, she could almost hear the children sighing softly in their sleep, the married couples slouching in bed pretending to be interested in television and avoiding each other's gaze. Still, she felt miles away from the nearest warm body, as though an invisible film separated her from the rest of the world. She often felt like this.

A dog howled from a nearby yard. The man was a few paces behind her.

“What do you want?” Mayuko demanded, turning abruptly to face him. She’d tried to sound authoritative, but her voice trembled as she took a good look at him. The man was nearly a foot taller than her, dressed in ill-fitting jogging clothes. His face was flushed pink, and he was quite chubby; Mayuko figured she could probably outrun him if needed. She was the second fastest girl in her grade.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to spook you, I was just concerned. Are you okay?”

“Yes. Bye now,” she said and began walking away.

“Wait, hey! You get how weird this looks, right? A young girl walking alone at night with no shoes on?”

Mayuko looked down. She wasn’t able to grab her shoes without walking past her parents’ open bedroom door, so she’d pulled on two pairs of socks before climbing out her window. Even with the double layer, the soles of her feet were rubbed raw from the gravel pavement, and she’d lost all feeling in her toes.

“Are you running away from home? Listen, I’m not gonna get you in trouble, but it’s not safe out here,” the man said.

Mayuko decided to be frank with him. It’s not like she was on some sketchy drug run. Technically, she wasn’t even doing anything wrong.

“I’m looking for my cat, Sylvia. Like Sylvia Plath,” she said.

“The writer?” he asked.

“Yeah. She’s my favorite.”

The man did not respond to this. Instead he said, “Wouldn’t it be better to look for Sylvia in the daytime? I mean, it’s dark and chilly right now, she’s probably asleep.”

“Cats are semi-nocturnal, actually.”

“You don’t say?”

At this point, they were walking side-by-side and Mayuko untucked her hair from the collar of her jacket, allowing it to drape down her face. She knew she’d be in enormous trouble if a neighbor peeked out and saw her walking with some strange man in the middle of the night.

Last April, Ms. Keiko, the living fossil down the road, snitched to her parents when she spotted Mayuko riding her bike with a boy. Her parents interrogated her about her new “boyfriend,” and the worst part was, she didn’t even have anything to hide. He was in her homeroom and Mayuko had a crush on him, but when they finally hung out, it was terribly awkward. All he wanted to talk about was baseball, and he’d never even heard of Virginia Woolf. When it was time to say goodbye he leaned in for a kiss and she squirmed away, speeding home and cursing herself. The next day, she overheard some of his friends calling her a tease, and though she wasn’t quite sure what that meant, it left a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“I can help you look for her. If you want,” the man said after a moment of silence.

Okay, so he was definitely a pedophile.

“No thanks,” she said. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears like a phantom drum, and she prayed the man could not hear it.

“Seriously, it’s dangerous at night. There are real creeps out there. You can think of me as something like a bodyguard.”

Mayuko considered this. She studied his face, doused in piss-yellow light from the streetlamps. His round cheeks were spotted with acne, sparse patches of an attempted mustache grew above his sweaty lip. Not exactly bodyguard material.

“Still no.”

“Suit yourself. But when you’re getting chopped into bite-sized pieces, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Jesus Christ.

The man stopped and dug around in his pocket. For a moment, Mayuko’s blood froze, thinking he was about to pull out a knife and play out his fantasies of dismemberment. She imagined how they’d have to stitch her body back together for the funeral, and how her school would hold some dumb assembly on the dangers of walking alone at night. But instead, his pudgy hand emerged with a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He stooped down to sit on a curb and lit one, disregarding Mayuko as she continued walking.

Suburbia stretched out endlessly ahead of her, the darkness swallowing up all lingering remains of the day. Children’s bikes lay abandoned in front lawns, skeletal and adrift. No one cared if they rusted; they were all getting new ones for Christmas anyways. Mayuko held a twisted sort of pride towards her own bicycle, even though her moronic classmates teased her about it. It was her father’s old model and comically large for her, but it had a sort of hackneyed personality to it. It was meant for riding, not for display.

Mayuko turned back to look at the man, now a distant figure marked by a glowing orange tip. Shadows of oak branches, naked from the frost, trickled down the dry pavement like tentacles. Wind chimes jingled in the distance and an uneasy feeling brewed within Mayuko.

“Why do you want to help me?” she asked.

He looked down as he confessed, “I, uh, I’m actually trying to do this exercise regime. A mile each night. But it’s just kicking my ass today. I’ll feel less bad if I at least walk around with you.”

He seemed earnest, almost pathetically so. Something about him was different from the clean-cut joggers who ran past Mayuko’s window each morning before dawn. It always bothered her that they never seemed to break a sweat; there was something eerily mechanical about their pale, blank faces. Something reptilian.

“Fine. Just don’t try anything funny,” Mayuko finally said. She waited for him to catch up to her and could hear the man taking shallow breaths to mask his panting. Musky smoke plumed out of his nose as he exhaled into the frigid air.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

The man laughed. “Not a chance.”

Mayuko felt heat rising into her cheeks. She shoved her hands into her pockets and toyed with the lint she’d forgotten to clean out.

“So my Mom thinks Sylvia’s gone for good. They’re going to the pet store tomorrow morning to get another cat, like she’s just replaceable. And obviously they don’t give a shit what I think.”

“That must be hard for you.”

“It’s completely fucked up. She’s like my best friend.”

The man looked over at her, his eyebrows furrowed. Mayuko suddenly became self-conscious of how embarrassing it was to admit that she had no friends other than her cat. A cat that didn’t even want to come home, apparently.

But all he said was, “Where’d you learn how to curse like that?”

“Every thirteen-year-old on the face of the planet talks like this.”

“Hm,” he replied. “It’s a bit gratuitous, though, don’t you think?”

Mayuko shrugged in response. She didn’t know what gratuitous meant.

As they approached a dead end, Mayuko led the man down an alleyway behind a convenience store. The neon sign that normally hummed above the doorway was switched off for the night. It seemed like the only source of light left in the neighborhood was the glow of the pregnant moon overhead. It must have been almost midnight.

“What’s your name?” she asked the man.

“John.”

“That sounds fake.”

“Ha. No, I guess I just had uncreative parents.” The man rubbed his chin then awkwardly pulled his hand away, as though he’d forgotten he didn’t have a beard to stroke. “What’s yours?”

“I’m not supposed to give my name to strangers.”

John chuckled at this.

“Okay, John. If you’re actually going to help me, go check around the dumpsters over there,” Mayuko said, pointing towards a dim alcove. There was rustling coming from a pile of trash bags, maybe Sylvia, but more likely a family of feisty raccoons. She didn’t like the idea of contracting rabies that night.

“So what kind of cat am I looking for?” John asked.

Mayuko thought back to how Sylvia looked curled up at the foot of her bed, her protector of the night. With each sleeping breath, Sylvia emitted a low, guttural purr; a sound like a great motorized ship of which Mayuko was captain, lulling her to sleep every night.

“She’s a black shorthair. One of her paws is white, like she’s wearing a sock. Oh, and there’s a little chunk missing from her left ear.”

“Gotcha,” John said as he crouched down to check under a pile of discarded furniture. “Syyylviaaa,” he cooed, and Mayuko grimaced. She never used that kind of condescending tone with Sylvia.

Mayuko inched her way further down the alley, using her hand against the brick wall to guide herself. Her fingers ran across a tacky lump, probably discarded gum, and she wished she’d brought a flashlight. All those years of reading Nancy Drew on the fringes of the playground; had she learned nothing? Something furry brushed past her ankles and her heart leaped. But even in the dark, she could tell that it was just some striped tomcat.

Mayuko and John made their way through the backstreets of the neighborhood and soon developed a routine: while John clumsily hoisted himself over brick walls to scour rooftops and window ledges, Mayuko checked under porches and neatly trimmed hedges. John came across a pet’s collar caught in the sharp metal pegs of a front gate. It was Sylvia’s, without a doubt: black leather, a pink heart-shaped tag (which Mayuko despised, felt that it degraded Sylvia) with her name engraved on one side and Mayuko’s home address on the back.

“Otamagaike Street,” John murmured to himself, reading the tag. Mayuko snatched the collar out of his hand and slipped it into her coat pocket.    

“Come on. She must be nearby.”

After scouring nine alleyways, countless bushes, and even someone else’s backyard (Mayuko thought she heard Sylvia’s cry but was met only by a beady-eyed possum), her body ached and she was on the brink of tears. But she’d never let herself cry in front of John. While she longed for the comfort of her bed, she couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping another night in silence. To make matters worse, John’s wheezing had become insufferable, and some mangy stray had been following them for the last few blocks.

“I’m fucking exhausted,” John said as he leaned against a picket fence, lighting up another cigarette. “To be honest with you kid, we’re not finding Sylvia tonight.”

Mayuko bit down on the inside of her cheek. She knew he was right. John nudged the stray cat away with his sneaker and threw the butt of his cigarette at it. It hissed and scampered over to Mayuko, looking up at her with slanted yellow eyes. Despite its matted gray hair and scary-looking teeth, its eyes reminded her of an amber display she’d once seen in a museum. Mayuko had begged her parents to buy her an overpriced amber necklace from the gift shop, but afterwards she’d hardly worn it. For some reason, this sudden memory filled her with overwhelming guilt.

Begrudgingly, she knelt down to pick the stray up; it wriggled in her arms, nipping at her puffy sleeves, before settling down. Even through her thick coat, Mayuko could feel its purr vibrating against her chest.

“Put that thing down. It’s probably got fleas,” John said, walking over to her. Mayuko recoiled at his hot, rancid breath against her cheek. He reached his hand out, but instead of petting the cat, he rested it on Mayuko’s shoulder. Mayuko looked at the ground, pretending to inspect her muddy socks, but could feel his gaze on the back of her neck.

“I, uh, I should probably be getting home now,” she said, wrenching her shoulder from his grasp.

“Why don’t I walk you back?” John asked, stepping closer.

“Um. No. I’m good. I just, gotta go,” Mayuko stuttered. Terror had struck, the kind she used to get at bedtime as a kid, switching off her bedroom light and racing to bed before the creatures in the dark could get her. Each night, she’d make it just in time, and was met with warm purrs from underneath her covers.

And so Mayuko ran. John cussed at her, his voice ragged and filled with rage, but she didn’t look back. As she bounded a corner, she felt movement in her arms and looked down to realize that she was still clutching the stray.

“You wanna come home with me?” she whispered to the cat.

The cat meowed, and Mayuko unzipped her jacket to snuggle it inside. As she did, she noticed that it was missing the tip of its right ear. She held the cat tightly to her body, protecting it from the cold, and began her course home.