Copyright © 2002 by W. E. Lopez
By
W. E. Lopez
I sat there on the porch with Mr. Bobbity’s pet carrier on my lap and watched Karen and Mattie going down the walk to the waiting taxi. If I had but known what was going to happen in the next three days, I might have gone running down the street, screaming in terror; but that was impossible. I’ve been confined to a wheel chair for the past six years.
After
they entered the cab and I waved goodbye they drove off. I lifted Mr. Bobbity’s carrier and looked at
him through the wire mesh in the front.
His jet-black fur was the darkest I had ever seen, while at the same
time, his golden eyes glistened back at me as though a ray of sunshine were
reflected in them.
“Well,
Mr. Bobbity, I guess it’s just you and me for the next few days. I’m glad Karen’s going to the sorority
reunion, but this will be the first time I’ve really been alone since the
accident. Karen has always been here
for me in case I needed help. A fat lot
of help you’re going to be.” Ka-bleert,
he accused.
Karen
and Mattie had been sorority sisters at Arizona State, but this was the first
time I had taken care of Mattie’s cat.
Putting
Mr. Bobbity on my lap, I did a 360-in-place and rolled inside, awkwardly
closing the door behind me. I certainly
didn’t want Mr. Bobbity to get out of the house and I couldn’t keep him
confined to the pet carrier while Mattie was gone.
Mr.
Bobbity and I rolled into the kitchen where I unfastened the latch on his cage,
but I set the pet carrier on the floor just a foot or so from the cat food next
to the refrigerator before I allowed the door to open.
Zoom! Mr. Bobbity was gone like a shot! His cannon-like velocity made an early
morning launch of the space shuttle seem lethargic by comparison. He ran from the kitchen, through the dining
room, and even though a cat’s footfalls may be almost silent, I could hear him
bounding up the stairs. Did he know I
couldn’t follow him there except with difficulty?
It
was four in the afternoon and I thought I might find a little time to work on
the latest video game creation my team from BetaSoft was in the midst
of. Jenny Hayden and six others make up
the graphics squad; Hank Messinger and four other nerds are the programming
squad; while me, myself, and I complete the mathematics squad.
Before
my accident, I had been an Assistant Professor of Mathematics as USC. Six months’ after my marriage to Karen, a
drunken driver had cut off an 18-wheeler at the same moment I had been driving
home on the Long Beach freeway. The
18-wheeler, in an attempt not to kill the drunk, had slammed on his air brakes,
locking his wheels while his semi-trailer jackknifed and pushed my little Audi
against the center divider. While the
drunk continued on his way, blissfully ignorant of the wreckage he’d left
strewn behind him, it took four firefighters thirty minutes to cut me from the
wreckage of the Audi. After that I
spent three weeks in the hospital before they released me for physical therapy
that failed to improve the condition of my spine. I would be forever paralyzed from the waist down.
I
couldn’t stand rolling around the campus in my wheelchair, not in the midst of
all that youth and energy, so I resigned and took this job with BetaSoft, which
allowed me to work from home at hours of my choosing while I telecommuted and
teleconferenced with the other members of my team. We wrote, coded, and tested videogames, which could be played in
video-arcades across the country, or downloaded for play on a home-PC if the
user wanted to purchase a license for the software. Because my specialty is probabilities of action, I determine the
nature and frequency of hazards and challenges to the player—what the rest of
my team calls “gags.”
My
computer is always booted on a DSL line, so I scanned my most recent
emails. Jenny’s art department had
forwarded some new designs for my approval, and Hank’s nerds had sent me a new
module to be inserted in the program.
This new game, similar to a theme I had stolen from a Japanese movie
titled Godzilla, pitted the player, in command of United Nation’s
troops, to try and capture an alien giant bent on enslaving the human
race. What the baddie intended to do
with it afterwards was never made clear, but it was the game that was important
and the action graphics made it fun.
After
firing up the game, I played for a while and made mental notes of gags I wanted
to insert. It was an hour or two later
when I noticed Mr. Bobbity crouched on the floor just outside the door of the
den. The game moves at an intense pace
but I allowed the alien giant to destroy a squadron of my fighter aircraft and
calling a temporary halt to the action so I could select tanks, helicopters and
infantry to go on the offensive again.
I
looked at Mr. Bobbity and a shiver went down my back. Did you ever see the movie Stargate? Do you remember the special effects to make
the alien’s eyes gleam a bright and flashing gold? That was the way Mr. Bobbity was looking at me now. His eyes flashed brilliantly and this time I
knew it could not be a reflection of sunlight.
I
decided to quit playing the game and rolled into the kitchen to make myself a
sandwich of salami, liverwurst, mustard and pepper-jack cheese. Then I grabbed a beer and rolled into the
living room and turned the TV to a cable channel that catered to teenagers by
continuously showing re-runs of old monster movies while generously inserting
advertisements for videogame software.
I have to admit that I frequently steal ideas from these hokey movies,
file the serial numbers from them and insert them into the video games we
create, and I never feel a moment of guilt.
Wasn’t
it Shakespeare who said, “There are only three basic plots; man against man,
man against nature, and boy meets girl.
All others are mere variations or combinations of the three.” I’ve decided there is only one plot to a
video game and it’s good guy versus bad guy.
The only differences are the weapons available for the conflict.
When
both my sandwich and beer were finished, I became aware that Mr. Bobbity was
again watching me, this time from the top of the stairs. Well, he could just go on watching, I was
going to sleep in the den tonight.
Hydraulic
pressure brought me awake around two in the morning. I pulled myself into my chair and rolled into the bathroom. Suddenly my left hand encountered a stinking
mess of slime on the wheel and I knew Mr. Bobbity had left his calling card.
I
washed my hands then got rid of a pint and a half of used beer, enjoying what
seemed like fifteen minutes of hydraulic bliss. After flushing the toilet I was headed back to the sofa when I
became aware of a breeze wafting from the kitchen. “Damn!” I knew I had not
left the door open! So I rolled into
the kitchen to see if there had been a break in. Finding none, I relocked the open door and sat there in the dark
pondering what had happened.
So
help me, the doorknob on that locked door began to turn and in strode Mr.
Bobbity with his tail held high. He sat
for a moment, washing his paws, while those molten eyes of brilliant gold
pierced me.
The
next thing I knew it was morning and I pulled myself off the sofa and into my
chair again for a return trip to bathroom.
This time I made a detour to the kitchen where I found a scrub brush and
disinfectant cleaning spray. Back in
the bathroom I wadded up some toilet tissue and removed the offending gift from
the carpet and flushed it away before I tended to my business.
After
flushing the toilet, I sprayed the carpet, brushed it vigorously, and sprayed
it again. While it may not be up to
Karen’s standards of cleanliness, it was the best I could do from my wheel
chair. Then I returned to the kitchen
where I put away the cleaning supplies and began to fix myself a bowl of
steaming oatmeal. It was only after I
had closed the door to the microwave and programmed the timer that I caught my
reflection in the darkened glass of the microwave. If you’re not confined to a wheelchair, you will probably never
have this experience unless you bend down quite low and almost put your nose to
the glass.
“Damn! Where had those come from?” There were six, eight, or a dozen long
whiskers sticking out between my nose and upper lip. I’m fastidious by nature and know that I had been clean-shaven
only yesterday morning.
Momentarily
forgetting my oatmeal, I rolled back to the bathroom. The ground floor bathroom has been especially remodeled to
accommodate my disability. The vanity
mirror is on a scissors extension so I can pull it close to my face when shaving. I studied my otherwise unglamorous mug in
the mirror.
“God! I could swear those are just like a cat’s
whiskers!” Upon closer inspection, I found light gray fuzz covering my cheeks,
my forehead, even my ears and the backs of my hands! What in the name of Judas was going on here?
I
found Karen’s cuticle scissors and removed those cat’s whiskers then attacked
that gray fuzz with my electric razor.
Ten minutes later I was greedily wolfing down my oatmeal and had
forgotten about cat whiskers and fuzz.
To
take my mind off the curious events of last night and this morning’s dilemma
with the whiskers, I worked furiously at my PC all day and late into the
evening. By the time I had sent off
half a dozen summaries and recommendations to the other members of my team, my
eyelids felt like they had been welded to my lower lids. I rolled over to the sofa and covered myself
with a blanket to gather ten hours or ten days of solid sleep.
Somewhere
in the dark before dawn, I woke with a buzzing in my ears. When I opened my eyes, there was Mr. Bobbity
sitting upon my chest with his blazing eyes fixed upon me. I leaped from the sofa and was across the
room before I realized my wheelchair was still at the foot of the sofa.
Mr.
Bobbity jumped to the floor and headed for the kitchen and I silently followed
him. Curiously, the room was intensely
bright, even though the clock said it was only 3:45. My vision was focused to a narrow pinpoint directly ahead of me
while the periphery was shadowy and blurred.
My point of view was also strangely close to the floor. Having been in a wheelchair for many years,
I am accustomed to looking up at things in the natural world, but this was more
than just looking up. It seemed as
though I were scarcely a foot above the floor.
Mr.
Bobbity approached the kitchen door leading to the back yard and paused for a
moment. I knew he could go no further
for I had double checked to make sure the door was locked this night before I
lay down on the sofa.
But
that didn’t stop Mr. Bobbity as the door slowly swung inward and he marched
straight through. Immediately I
followed and found myself in the back yard, leaping from the porch and
scampering through the grass, which had not seen a lawnmower in several
weeks. Karen has a boy that comes around
every so often, but not so often during football season.
I
leaped to the top of the fence that delineates my back yard from my neighbors
and jumped to the ground on the far side.
Jim Crandall has a largish garden, which he putters in every evening before
dark and weekends too. Each July and
August he favors Karen and I with his excess of zucchini. Karen makes a wonderful dish of zucchini
sautéed with tomatoes and onions strongly spiced with black pepper.
Tonight,
however, I was not interested in the bounty of Jim’s garden. I had scented the delicious aroma of a
family of gophers Mr. Bobbity had already smelled out. We each crouched in the loose soil between
the lettuce and cabbages while we waited for the thrill of the chase and the
warm salty taste of the kill. We waited
and waited, it seemed like hours. In
the first gray light of dawn I sensed a movement not far in front of me.
In
an instant my muscles tensed and I sprang at the gopher emerging from his
tunnel. Instead of ducking back into his
hole and escaping from me, the gopher unwisely tried to scamper across the
garden and duck under the protecting chicken wire on the far side. But his short legs were no match for the
powerful muscles in my shoulders and thighs.
Like a well-oiled machine my four-footed stride ate up the distance
between my prey and I with the speed of greased lightning. Running through the dark with the wind in my
ears and rushing through my whiskers was an exhilarating feeling I had missed
for so many years. I wanted it to go on
and on and never end!
At
the final moment, before the gopher could duck under the wire, my teeth sank
into his neck just behind his skull and warm blood covered my face and chin,
flowing thickly and freely over my tongue.
He thrashed and thrashed but his neck was already broken. Not wanting the thrill of the chase to end,
I released him and he vainly tried to scamper away before I pounced upon him
and tasted the fresh blood once more.
Again and again I toyed with my kill until he died and was fun no more.
I
crouched low to the ground and settled my hindquarters beneath me holding the
limp victim with my forelegs. Pulling
at the skin I sank my teeth into the meat beneath. It was glorious; an uneven contest in which I had no possibility
of losing but which was fun, nonetheless.
My
immediate hunger slaked, I crossed Jim Crandall’s back yard and leaped the
fence, jumping down and making my way to the kitchen door, still standing open.
Back
in the den, I leaped to the sofa and deposited my trophy on the pillow before
curling up to give my paws and fur a good wash.
+ + +
“Oh,
Karen,” Mattie said as the cab driver pulled away. “Wasn’t that absolutely the most divine esbat you’ve ever
attended?”
“Of
course it was, Mattie. It’s the first esbat
I’ve ever attended.”
“Ah,
yes,” Mattie said. “The first, but
definitely not the last. I was so
pleased the way the rest of the coven welcomed you into our midst. You made quite an impression on some of
them, most especially our warlock.”
“Do
you suppose Mr. Bobbity has finished his work, Mattie?”
“Trust
me, Karen, Mr. Bobbity is the finest familiar I’ve ever had. You’ll really be much more fond of your
husband now. Cats are much more
affectionate than men are, and so much easier to train, and they never leave
the toilet seat up. I promise you,
you’ll love him more than the very day you married him.”
“He
was so unhappy in that wheelchair, Mattie; he was so vital when we were
first married, it just killed me to see him wither away like that and shut
himself off from the world. I’m so glad
that he’ll be able to run and play and enjoy life again. I sure hope he will be pleased with what
we’ve done…?”
Karen
unlocked the front door with caution, fearful of what she might find
inside. No sooner had they entered the
front hall than Mr. Bobbity appeared from nowhere and scampered up to Mattie’s
shoulder where he balanced himself much like a parrot in a Robert Louis
Stevenson pirate tale. As Karen heard
his loud purring she could tell that Mr. Bobbity was quite pleased with him
self.
Then
another black cat bumped her ankle with his nose. The strange cat brushed his sides against her calf, buzzing and
purring and Karen was sure he was happy also.
She reached down and picked up the cat.
“All better now?” she asked Ralph.
“You know I was just trying to make you happy, Ralph. I wouldn’t hurt you for any treasure in this
world. But a witch must have a
familiar, you know, and aren’t you really happier to be done with that
wheelchair?”
Ralph
looked at her with his blazing gold eyes.
His motor was raucously sounding his pleasure. “Of course I’m happier now,” he thought. “Wait until you see the gift I’ve left in
the den for you. You’ll be so proud of
me!”