Death Cat

Prologue

Hospital beds are the places where the broken and ugly sleep; haunted by the eyes shut tight monsters of children. Nurses with sympathetic motherly looks stand in the shadowed door way of the special needs rooms. The door way isn’t shadowed in the typical sense it is shadowed in the sense that it is uncertain if the patients will live or die. ‘Poor dears.’ they all think and cluck their tongues in the exact same way as if they were all one mind.

They watch with sad tired eyes as if they were angels waiting for god’s orders of live or die. “Black Cheshire! Come here and tell us which is the victim of the day.” The cat comes within the hour to give the nurses just a little more time to grieve for their potential lost causes, and most of the nurses find peace in their failures, and watch the three types of sleeping; one is the open mouthed snoring which is an open dare to flies, another is the tight lipped that usually implies the person never let go of the burdens of active life, and the last is the peaceful smile where the suffering and pain hides. Black Cheshire the Windshire’s hospital cat rubs up against the nurse’s legs, and meows slowly like a brave man saying “It’s time to say good bye.” The nurse on duty mutters her respects and follow Black Cheshire to the bed of the one he chooses and hold the hands of the patient as if they were grieving for their own children.

The hand is very seldom the hand of a child, and it is bent like a very old woman or man when most are only in their thirties. They bow their head and try to hide tears, because Black Cheshire tends to scratch those who cry. He hops onto the beds and goes completely silent and still as if in a trance, and starts purring them into the afterlife like the Pied Piper leading the kids by motor bike. Their faces go slack as they fall into the last deep and silent sleep, and Cheshire goes to the next bed repeating the procedure.

When his work is done he nuzzles the persons face meows, and heads to his bed in the kitchen. Today it was an old man, a sixteen year old girl, and a thirty year old mother of a thankless family. Black Cheshire goes completely still and turns around tilting his head to the side, and a cough can be heard from the sixteen year olds bed. The nurse on duties blue eyes go wide, and she whispers “Death got it wrong...” No one is sure why these people get flu like symptoms, and then just go to sleep, but those in special needs seldom ever come around from it only four actually have.....