Elliott shook her head, trying to clear it. “Helga! Why are you haunting me? Why can’t you leave me in peace?”
Lesley tsked at her. “Oh, honey, Helga isn’t haunting you.”
“Yes, she is. I know I should have gone to her funeral, but—”
“Elliott, Helga didn’t die.” Lesley gestured toward her computer monitor. Her e-mail vanished to show an image of Helga happily at work in her office. “You did.”
“I don’t understand.”
Laughing, Lesley transformed into the image of a red demon with glowing yellow eyes. “Welcome to hell, my dear. From this day forward and throughout all eternity, you will get to be Helga’s editor. Oh, and I should mention, she’s now doing a book a week.”
Old MacDonald Had an Animal Farm
LISA MORTON
I’m pacing my cage again today. My captors are taunting me outside.
Oh, I know—I shouldn’t whine. After all, most have it a lot worse than I do. Worse as in forced labor camps. Strange torments. No hope. Me, I have a cage that used to be a five-bedroom house I couldn’t afford, and I’m taken care of . . . but except for them, I’m completely alone. The last human being I saw—two months ago—was being chased down the street on a motorcycle, pursued by a pack snarling and biting at his back wheel. God only knows what happened to him.
How did it reach this point? I try to tell myself it wasn’t my fault, that I was an effect rather than a cause, that they made me do some of the awful things I did, but I’m not convinced.
So I go over it again in my mind, as I’ve done a thousand times since . . .
I knew something was wrong when my cat walked out of the kitchen, stopped, looked me right in the eye, and said, “This food sucks.”
Poised as I’d been with a mug of steaming coffee halfway to my lips, I managed to douse myself with it and yelped slightly. Meowsy gave me one sideways glance and then sauntered past, looking even more disgruntled than usual. “Idiot,” he muttered before disappearing into the bedroom.
I’d just been insulted by my cat. Or rather, for the first time I’d heard it.
I set the cup down, wiped myself off, and froze for a moment, trying to decide what to do. My indecision was interrupted by a tiny sound from outside the living room, a high-pitched, musical voice. Feeling a lump of dread growing in my gut, I walked the three feet to the window, looked out, and saw—
—a bird. A bird that was pecking at a feeder I’d hung outside and exclaiming excitedly, “Seeds! Mm-mm-mm . . . good . . .”
I already had my phone out of my pocket. I’d only been home from the hospital for twelve hours, and obviously something had gone wrong; I was reacting to a medication, or I’d had an aneurysm, or . . .
But I felt fine otherwise. And I wasn’t seeing purple pterodactyls fluttering in the corners of the room or hearing Grandpa calling out to me. That would have made more sense—wasn’t that what they always said happened to people like me?
People who had died.
Two days ago, I had died. I didn’t remember it, of course, but the witnesses described it and the doctors confirmed it.
It was an office pool party at the boss’s place. There were probably twenty of us there, including that loser Randy from accounting . . . and Cheryl. Cheryl, the new front-desk receptionist. Cheryl, she of the loose, killer smile and the drown-in-’em green eyes. Cheryl, who that day looked daaaaaaaaaaamn fine in a bikini.
Of course I was hardly the only one to notice. Every unmarried young guy in the company wanted to ask her out, and every married guy wanted to ask her in (to his office, that is, for a “private chat”).
But doggoned if she wasn’t flirting back at me.
I was feeling really and truly good at that party, except that Randy noticed and decided to screw with me: He took over the bartending duties and managed to make me some margaritas that had at least three shots of reposado each. After two of those drinks, I was just plain stupid.
What do stupid guys do to impress girls they like? Yep. Stupid physical stunts. I’d been on the diving team in high school, and I thought I’d show Cheryl the real deal with a perfectly executed leap into the pool. Which I did. A beautiful jackknife.
Except I dove into the shallow end.
They say I was lucky, all things considered—I didn’t break anything or permanently injure myself. Just knocked my head on the bottom and promptly lost consciousness. A few seconds (well, okay—it was actually a full minute) passed before Cheryl realized I wasn’t fooling around and raised the alarm.
Later, I found out she’d brought me back with mouth-to-mouth. Damn, I wish I remembered that.
As it was, the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital a day later. The doctors told me I’d been dead for about ninety seconds but had fully recovered. Cheryl had saved my life. They wanted to keep me overnight.
I was released the following day. I was so tired when I got home that I just checked Meowsy’s food and fell into bed right away.
Now my beloved animal companion of eight years was calling me “idiot.”
I ended up putting the phone down before I called my doctor. I’d wait first and see if it passed. Surely it would. In the meantime . . . it was actually kind of a fun hallucination. I’d go with it and see how it played out.
I walked into the bedroom and saw that Meowsy had just curled up on the bedspread for the day; he was licking his paws and pretending not to notice as I stood over him.
“Meowsy,” I said, arms crossed over my chest, “I don’t appreciate being called ‘idiot.’”
Meowsy stopped licking. He looked up at me, and I’d swear I saw shock in his big green-yellow eyes. “What?”
“You called me an idiot. That’s not a very nice thing to say to someone who feeds you, and changes your litter box, and plays with you, and—”
He cut me off. “Oh, spare me. I just didn’t realize you could hear me.”
It was the strangest sensation, now that I could analyze it: My ears heard the cat going “meow meow meow,” but my brain was turning those sounds into perfect English. “I couldn’t . . . until this morning.” My words came out normally—I wasn’t meowing. A longstanding suspicion of mine had just been confirmed: Cats understood English.
Meowsy sighed, then said, “Well, Mac, this changes things.”
My cat had just used my nickname. I had no idea how he knew that . . . but then this was just a hallucination, right? “Really? How so?”
“I’m going to have to watch what I say around you now.”
That didn’t make me comfortable. “What . . . what were you saying before?”
He jumped off the bed and headed for the little swinging door that led outside, indicating the conversation was over. “Don’t ask.”
They ran another MRI and some other tests. Everything came back fine. My doctor told me not to worry about it—the hallucinations would pass.
Except they didn’t. My trip into Doctor Dolittle Land continued unabated. I fully expected to meet the pushmi-pullyu any second.
I heard them wherever I went: laconic cats, enthusiastic dogs, chattering birds. I had to be careful where I stepped, because I could even hear the tiny “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” screams of insects as my foot descended before crushing them into oblivion. Meowsy kept mum around me for the most part; he only opened his mouth to complain about his litter box (“Hey, y’know, Mac, let’s see how you’d like crapping on the crap you crapped yesterday”) or food. He started spending more time outside, disappearing from the apartment for long chunks at a time.
Work was a different matter, though. Cheryl and I started hanging out a lot together. I even told her what the initial “B” at the front of my name stood for (“Burne”—my parents were demented—and she immediately agreed that “Mac,” as in short for “MacDonald,” my last name, was far preferable). She invited me to her place at last. I was looking forward to our first intimate evening together . . .
But of course she had a cat. Or rather, a
kitten—cute little girl, not even a year old. A tortoiseshell who was as far from aloof and inscrutable as you could get.
I didn’t think Cheryl was quite ready to hear my confession about my superpowers yet (damn, it really would have been so much easier if I’d just come back being able to see dead people), but it was hard to tune it out when this little kitten, Mittens (Cheryl apologized and said she’d come prenamed), was blathering away at our feet. I swear she couldn’t have been meowing that much, but somehow she went on and on about everything from how my feet smelled to what was on the television to a bird that’d flown by the window in the morning.
Cheryl wanted to kiss me. For real this time, not a desperate life-saving maneuver . . . but that damn kitten was distracting. Finally, just as our lips met, the kitten blurted out, “Ooh, are they sharing food? What are they doing? That looks fun—”
I’d had enough. I turned to the kitten and said, “Hey, don’t you have somewhere else to play?”
Cheryl looked irritated, of course, glancing from Mittens to me. “Sorry, Mac . . . is she bothering you?”
“No,” said the kitten.
“Yes,” said I.
The kitten stared at me, wide-eyed. “You can hear me?”
“Yes, I can, unfortunately.”
“What are you doing?” That last was from Cheryl.
“I’m talking to Mittens.”
Well, she didn’t believe me at first, so I thought I’d prove it by having Mittens tell me some things about Cheryl I couldn’t possibly have known. Mittens obliged by telling me what color T-shirt Cheryl had worn to bed last night (black), and what she’d watched on TV (a movie about people who were lost and there were lots of birds), and what her favorite food was (some kind of smelly fruit).
Cheryl was underwhelmed, to put it mildly. In fact, she immediately assumed I’d been stalking her, and our date was effectively over.
“Gee, thanks a lot, Mittens,” I grumbled on my way out.
“Get some help, Mac,” was the last thing Cheryl said to me.
Two days later, I’d just pulled up and parked in front of my building (after another depressing day of watching Cheryl work extra-hard to avoid me) and was walking to my door when I overheard something:
“. . . so it’s all gonna go down soon, and they don’t have a clue.”
I stopped and looked around, and saw two alley cats, one tan and one black-and-white, sitting in the evening shadow of a driveway a few feet away. When they saw me staring at them, they turned sarcastic.
“Look at this moron,” said the tan one. “Sure will be fun when the tables are turned, huh?”
Black-and-white answered, “No kidding. Hey, whattaya wanna bet this one is gonna be on his knees any second making stupid baby sounds at us?”
I tried not to let on that I could understand them, because I wanted to know more about what they were saying. So I played along, squatting and smiling. “Hi, fellas. Aren’t you two fine looking?”
“Finer than you, dork,” said Mr. Tan.
Already bored with me, Two-tone yawned, then said, “So when do we make our move?”
“We’re just waiting on Tongue. Once he gets the dogs lined up, we’re good.”
They turned then and strolled off.
What the hell had I just heard? “The tables are turned”? And “our move”?
I’d just unlocked my door when something clicked in my head: Tongue.
Oh dear God—Meowsy’s full name was Meowsy Tongue. I’d had a friend who just returned from a trip to China when I got the kitten, and it’d been riotously funny at the time.
“Meowsy?!”
I closed the door behind me, and Meowsy sauntered out of the bedroom. “What?”
“Have you been meeting with other cats at night?”
He froze, glanced involuntarily at the little swinging pet door that let him go in and out, then got a shifty look. “Cats always meet with other cats at night. So what?”
“Are you . . . planning something?”
“What did you hear?”
When I didn’t answer right away, Meowsy walked up and swiped a paw at my ankle. I yowled and jumped, then looked down to see blood welling through my sock. “Ow! Meowsy, what—?”
Meowsy’s ears went back and he assumed a look I’d only seen him give me once before, after I’d accidentally stepped on his tail. “That’s just a taste of what’s coming, human. You might as well hear it, because you can’t stop it: We’re taking over.”
“Who’s ‘we’? You mean . . . cats?”
“All of the animals.” Meowsy relaxed a bit and settled back on his haunches, resuming his usual imperious expression. “It started with the cats, because we’re the smart ones, but the rest fell in line pretty quick—the dogs, the birds, the rodents, the reptiles, even the insects and spiders. The human race has done a pretty good job of screwing up everything, but no more. You’ll be our pets in less than a month.”
Part of me wanted to howl with laughter, but somehow the biggest part of me was chilled to the core. “Meowsy . . . haven’t we—haven’t I—treated you well? I mean, I get you the best food, I brush you, I—”
He cut me off with a derisive snort. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. ‘The best food’? Get a clue, twerp—I’m a frigging carnivore! I crave fresh meat and you serve me this ground-up crap made out of grain by-products! You only clean the litter box twice a week—how would you like it if I made you flush your toilet only every three days? You hacked away my masculinity before I was even old enough to know what it was for! And worst of all: ‘Meowsy Tongue’?! That is the dumbest damn name ever! What were you thinking?!”
I mentally squirmed; he was right, after all. “Well, y’know, if you hate it so much, you could’ve told me before—”
“With what?!” Meowsy lifted his head and opened his mouth. “Take a look in there, pal—that palate’s not made for human speech! I should ask why it took you so long to understand me!”
I had no answer. I hung my head, silent, abashed. Meowsy sighed and seemed to relent.
“Still, you haven’t been without your uses, I suppose . . . and your newfound talent may yet prove useful to us, so we’ll keep you around. We won’t send you to the labor camps with the rest.”
“The what?!”
“Good thing you didn’t come back only being able to see dead people,” Meowsy said before walking past me.
When I tried to leave not long after that, I found two snarling pit bulls at my door. “Where do ya think you’re goin’, Mac?” I didn’t know dogs could snicker until that moment.
I slammed the door shut and saw Meowsy eyeing me with considerable cat amusement.
I got to my phone before he could stop me and called Cheryl. Of course she didn’t believe me when I told her Mittens was actually part of a plan to take over the world and turn humans into slaves. “Don’t call me anymore,” she said. Just before she hung up, I heard Mittens say in the background, “Yeah!”
It all went down pretty fast over the next few days; they kept me locked away, but I watched the news and read the blogs. Dogs started ordering their masters; cats committed billions of tiny acts of home sabotage, leaving their human owners so confused they couldn’t think straight. Even the poor stupid chickens and turkeys pitched in, unaware that the cats had something else in mind for them once the overthrow of the human race was complete. I saw videos of Rottweilers herding humans, while wasps stung anyone who fell out of line. Too many of us were reluctant to take up arms against Snowball or Bootsy or Bunbuns.
After a week, when civilization was in chaos and us homo saps were finally starting to realize what was going on, Meowsy led me to my laptop and told me what they wanted me to do: I used my webcam to create a video in which I relayed Meowsy’s message to the entire world. The animals were calling for humanity’s immediate surrender, and in return they guaranteed we would be treated well.
In two hours the video was all over the Internet and on every major televi
sion station. A lot of folks just laughed; others agreed with a full surrender; a few who complained were suddenly attacked by birds that would have made Hitchcock pale. I’m like Indiana Jones: The snakes were the worst for me, especially when they showed up in the White House. Within four hours, the television stations were all down . . . but it’d been enough. The victors had made their terms clear.
Because there was no doubt they were the victors, in what had been a very brief war.
That was three months ago.
Because I’d served them (and because I could still conceivably be useful to them, in the unlikely event of any human uprising), I was treated well. They gave me this gorgeous house, and I get to eat what they do—fresh chicken and turkey. I think most of the human slaves get fed by-products.
There’s no more electricity (they don’t really need it), and I haven’t seen another human being since that guy on the motorcycle with the gang of shepherds going after him.
So . . . did I sell out my species?
For a cage this really isn’t so bad. The previous owners had nice taste, the plumbing still works, and they do allow me some time in the backyard, where there are some fruit trees to tend to.
I tried telling them I was lonely, that I wanted a little human friend. They said no. I told them I wanted Cheryl. They didn’t care. I told them I was in heat. They said they could make an appointment for me at the special human spay and neuter clinics they’ve set up. I didn’t push it after that.
Today I was rummaging through the bookshelves here, and I came across an old classic I loved as a kid. It’s the one about the guy who’s the last survivor after a vampire holocaust, and at the end he realizes that’s made him legendary. As for me . . .
I am house pet.
Two for Transylvania
BRAD C. HODSON
“Spawn of Satan, I banish you to hell!”
Van Helsing crashed the hammer into the stake, plunging it deep into the beast’s pallid flesh. A scream erupted from its fanged jaw, and its taloned hands wrestled with the wooden shaft desperately, but to no use. The monster’s eyes dropped, its hands fell to its sides, and Dracula was once again only a corpse.
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