Arrival[I’ve decided to write a short story a week, all year. Here’s my third.] On the day my life...

Arrival

[I’ve decided to write a short story a week, all year. Here’s my third.]

On the day my life changed, it was midnight dark outside when my cousin announced he had to leave for a lunch meeting. I laughed at him from my spot at the table, playing a handheld game. “Where is this meeting, Canada?” I asked, trying to navigate a particularly difficult area of the game.

He looked at me like I was the crazy one. “What are you talking about, it’s noon.”

I looked at my watch and sure enough, it was the middle of the day. He hadn’t noticed it was still dark, and I hadn’t noticed how much time had passed while I played. I’d gotten up early because I couldn’t sleep, the sort of thing that often happens when one sleeps in a bed not their own, and I’d been staying at my aunt’s house for several days now. I was divorced and sad, and not sure what to do with myself since I didn’t think I was cut out for what everyone else defined as a relationship. My aunt and cousin had been a nice escape from my new reality.

“What the hell..?” I said, making my way to the window. “Was there another eclipse today and nobody mentioned it?”

“Uhm. I don’t think so?” he said, finally concerned and confused.

I slipped on my shoes by the front door without adding socks and went outside. It was snowing and the yard and road were covered with a good few inches of the stuff, suggesting my trip home was going to be delayed at least a day. The horizon was lit a little bit, but sure enough, the sky was dark and cloudy; more dark than usual for a snow storm in a place it rarely snowed.

Above us, the clouds seemed even darker than they were on the horizon, suggesting the sun’s light wasn’t even hitting them. There was something up there.

My cousin stood next to me and we stared at the sky. The air rippled a little, as if with a sound we weren’t equipped to hear, and the snow stopped suddenly. Through the clouds the shape that had been blocking the daylight descended and stopped just above the house.

It was larger than anything I’d ever been able to comprehend and still float in the air. In the darkness it was hard to make out details, but the surface seemed industrial; full of pipes and panels and metal. I could feel a slight pressure in my ears, but it was not altogether unpleasant. I looked over to meet my cousin’s eyes and he had the same nonplussed look on his face that I imagined I had.

A soft light shined down and we looked up to see some kind of opening. The light beam ended behind the house, and we saw three dark shapes start to descend slowly. My cousin and I pushed past each other to rush into the house and out the back sliding glass door, rushing around the table and chairs to get our hands on the lock and push it open, getting tripped up by the wooden stick holding the door closed.

I grabbed it and flung it out of the way, knocking over a chair while my cousin slid the door open and flew out onto the back deck.

I arrived a breath after, stopping beside him to see the beam of light ending in the center of the yard, and in the center of it were three cats. A fourth cat, one I recognized as a familiar neighbor cat, jumped the fence to flee at the sight of us.

The remaining three stared at us, and we stared back, and the light faded away.

“Holy crap,” I said, my voice sounding much more calm than I thought it would.

“Yeah,” replied my cousin, equally calm. “Aliens finally arrive, and they turn out to be house cats.”

We hesitated a moment longer, looked at each other as if deciding something, and both shrugged. “What the hell,” I said, and stepped forward gently.

The cats were normal looking house cats. One was an orange tabby, muscly and big-pawed. The second was a fluffy calico, washing its shoulder. The third was black with short hair, sleek and shiny. They watched us approach, their eyes intelligent, their muscles relaxed.

I knelt several feet away from them and held out a hand for sniffing purposes. They all seemed to exchange a look and make a similar decision, for they approached my cousin and me.

The black cat came close and sniffed at my hand, then rubbed its whole body luxuriantly on my outstretched palm. It purred loudly and startled itself and its fellows, as if none of them expected that to happen. The other two cats took turns approaching my cousin and me, and my cousin grew bold enough to pick up the calico. Its eyes widened, but he had many years of cat cuddling experience and the calico seemed to relax after a moment and purr itself.

The air shook then; the unheard hum reaching into hearable range as the ship started to whine. We all looked up to see it start to break apart, but before we could decide to run for cover, we realized it was staying aloft in its pieces. Light started to break through and we could see the dark metal pieces converting to something else and separate from each other, floating off to join the still heavily snowing clouds. They seemed to evaporate. Perhaps they turned to ash and fell to the ground with the snow; neither of us were sure afterward.

The black cat jumped to my shoulder, startling me, but balanced expertly without digging in its claws. The orange tabby jumped to the highest point it could get: the railing on the deck. They all watched in rapt fascination as the ship disappeared. My cousin and I stared as well, the snow falling onto our upturned faces.

“Well. What now?” asked my cousin, absently petting the calico in his arms and meeting my eyes with his.

“I don’t know. We didn’t have a plan other than getting here,” said the black cat, matter-of-factly from my shoulder.

My cousin and I stared. Apparently aliens were less surprising than talking cats, for we were both suddenly speechless and shocked.

“What?” said the orange tabby.

“Oh. Oops. I guess these don’t talk here.” said the black cat. “Sorry, we thought we’d pick a form that wouldn’t scare you, but we didn’t know much about these. What sound do cats usually make?”

My cousin cleared his throat. “Er. Usually they meow.”

The calico tried out the word, “meow.” It sounded very human and not like a normal cat meow. “That’s weird. How do you communicate with them? What does ‘meow’ mean anyway?”

“Um. All kinds of things. Usually it’s just cats trying to get us dumb humans to do their bidding.”

“Meeeow.” said the black. “I don’t like it. What kind of language has only one word?”

“Not a very good one,” I agreed. “We usually spend a lot of time guessing.”

“That’s just silly,” said the orange. “We’ll just keep using this language instead.”

The cold finally registered on me, since I was still in my hoodie and pyjama pants and I shivered. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

My cousin and I had a long talk with the three cats. They had been fleeing their planet, where their population was dwindling for no reason they could understand. What once had been a three planet empire had been whittled down to a small civilization with less than twenty individuals.

These three, siblings it turned out to be, had decided to leave and live their last remaining years somewhere else, where they wouldn’t slowly watch their friends and family die off for no understandable reason.

“And so we came here,” finished the orange, who seemed to be the eldest or the leader of the group. “Cats seemed to be pretty loved on this continent, so we picked that form to use. Seems to have worked.” he licked a shoulder with what seemed like smugness.

“I guess that was a good call,” said my cousin. “Just… maybe don’t talk around other people until we’re sure they’re not going to sell you to the military for vivisections or something. Not everyone likes, al- I mean, cats, as much as we do.”

“True” I said, then remembered something. “Wait, can you pick other forms?”

“No, not anymore. It was kind of a one time thing now that the ship is gone,” said the orange. Neither my cousin nor I noticed the hard look he gave the other two at that.

“How, er,” my cousin cleared his throat and tried again. “How much time do you have left, if you don’t mind me asking.”

The cats did some calculating, figuring out the differences in time from their planet to ours and then agreed, “Probably a hundred years or so.”

“Oh,” I said. I had been picturing months or weeks. A hundred years was a long time to be a cat, I thought.

And that’s the story of how my cousin and I have had between us the same three cats for the last thirty years. The black chose to stay with me, and the other two went with him. We hang out often, since we live in the same town, but Renna had had just about enough of being stuck with her two siblings all the time and was ready to see them only in smaller doses. Being stuck in a ship for a thousand year journey will do that to you, I gather.

He went on to get married and have a pile of kids - all surprises, I gather. The orange and calico were named Daris and Marna, respectively, and they helped babysit that pile of kids every now and again. His wife was ecstatic when she found out they weren’t normal house cats, and they all get along famously.

As for me, I spend my days exploring the Earth with Renna, seeing it and its people through new eyes. I spend my nights writing down her stories and sending them out into the world - her mind and my typing fingers pay the rent and keep us fed.

And for us, it’s enough.

———

@artofstevetownsley @whiskeyandwashitape

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