Neil Gaiman guest edited the the Guardian Book Site a couple of weeks ago and set a challenge: write a super short story that begins with:
It wasn’t just the murder, he decided. Everything else seemed to have conspired to ruin his day as well. Even the cat.
Here is mine:
Companion Animal
It wasn’t just the murder, he decided. Everything else seemed to have conspired to ruin his day as well. Even the cat. Especially the cat.
The animal watched Roger from the window sill, licking saliva onto the back of her paw and smearing her face sleek. Roger stared back.
He had been feeding her. Just doing his job while Samantha read the newspaper and cut chunks out of an apple with a paring knife. He kept up a stream of chatter. He liked to tell little jokes. Puns and jokes. He was already an excellent companion. If he could only make humour work, he’d be all the better, he thought. He opened a pouch of cat food.
“Where did Napoleon keep his armies?” he said.
Samantha did not look up from her newspaper. “Roger, seriously.”
“No! He went of his own accord.”
She sighed. “It doesn’t even make sense.” She cut another chunk of apple and popped it into her mouth.
“That’s why it’s funny. It’s the unexpected juxtaposition of two jokes! Get it?”
“No, Roger. Please stop it with the funny thing.”
But funny was a project. He had been working hard on it. He liked to have projects. He put the food in the cat’s bowl which he placed on the floor. He enjoyed the creature’s little internal battle. She wanted the food but she hated to get close to him. She paced, and slunk around Samantha’s ankles. As if Samantha would ever feed the cat. Of course she wouldn’t. Not with a good companion like Roger to do it.
Samantha turned a page, ignoring him.
On impulse, Roger picked up the bowl again. If the beast hated him so much, why should he indulge her? Maybe she should learn a lesson. There was no reason the animal should find him so repulsive. “I’m flesh and blood, after all,” he said to himself.
“What?” said Samantha, absently.
“That cat,” he said. “Looks at me like I’m a demon.”
“You don’t smell right.”
“What do you call a cat with no nose?”
“I’m warning you, Roger.”
“Awful!”
The cat watched him. Watched the food. He emptied it into the dustbin with a deft scoop of the fork in his hand. “I’m vat grown. But it’s all real. I’m all real human meat.”
She looked up at him. Narrowed her eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re throwing the cat’s food away.”
He looked at her a little guiltily. He was surprised she had noticed.
“I think it was bad,” he said.
She sighed. “Look, Roger. This thing isn’t working out.”
“I’ll give her more food. It was bad. She didn’t come for it.”
“That’s because she hates you, Roger. And I have to be honest. I’m finding you pretty hard going, too.”
“I’ll stop with the jokes.”
She thought about that for a moment. This was where she changed her mind. Every time they’d had this conversation before she’d changed her mind here. She gave a little shake of her head. “No. I’m sorry, Roger. I’m going to send you back.”
His chest constricted, and a cold feeling spread out from between his shoulders. “Samantha. They’ll decommission me. You know what that means?”
“That’s between you and CompanionCo.”
“They’ll keep my body and junk my mind. They’ll kill me.”
“Don’t be over-dramatic, Roger. You were never alive to start with. You’re a bunch of chips in a vat-grown body. You’re a companion animal.”
“I’m a companion person. I’m a good companion. I tell jokes.”
“Calm down,” she stood now, took a step toward him.
He looked at her, as if he might find the key to winding her back, to reset this conversation. He felt something like panic. Only not panic. A mounting desire to smash, or to inflict pain. It was the cat, he thought. The cat did this. He snarled and aimed a kick at the beast.
“Stop it!” Samantha yelled.
Roger felt a heavy thud, like a punch, just below his chest. He looked down to see the paring knife protruding from his belly, and the first welling of blood. Dark and frothy. His legs gave beneath him.
What’s red and sticky? he thought. What’s brown? Up blood creek without a paddle. He fell, first to his knees, and then backwards.
Samantha stood above him. “Oh my god,” she said. “Oh god!”
He had been here for minutes now. Or was it hours? Hard to tell. His body had grown cold. But his mind, his computer companion mind ticked on. His fixed eyes were not sightless. He could see. He could see the cat groom herself on the window sill.
She leapt down onto the table and regarded him for a little while. At last she jumped to the floor. Thump thump. She sniffed him.
That cat, he thought.
She licked at the blood round the blade in his belly.
It’s all the cat’s fault.
She began to purr.
