Black Static #59 (July-August 2017) by 2017 Jul-Aug (epub)

Author:2017 Jul-Aug (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dark Fiction and Film
Publisher: TTA Press
Published: 2017-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

***

Mighty, mighty humans!

They were going to discard my bloody mother in disgust, the bloated woman outraged at the mess of my mother, the shaggy man half amused at the inedible nuisance.

When the servant picked my mother up like she was a link of sausage, his fingers pressed into her underbelly and he proclaimed her pregnant. This changed the bloated woman’s mind, for she was with child as well, and saw it as a sign from the goddess of fertility. Against the shaggy man’s objections, and despite the servant’s sullen handling, my mother stayed, survived, and birthed a litter.

One was lost. One was pierced to death by unknown fangs. Another was run over by the servant on his way to barter wheat, its tiny cat bones and innards snapped and crushed by his cart, though outwardly it seemed a whole cat still.

And all that remained was me, black like my mother was black.

My mother taught me how to hunt quiet-quick. She taught me riddles and mistrust, but also sun-sleeping and gentle kills. One day, when the sun was at the center of the world and we were twice as obvious because of our shadows cast, black as we were black, my mother led me past the servant’s legs and into the granary, where we feasted on forbidden, fermented food.

And then we sang! And then we sang!

The baby was born the night my last sibling died, the human infant’s cries drowning out my mother’s piteous pants.

The big humans doted on the small one. The servant was always being made to fetch something for the infant, which was a curious thing, because my mother told me it was incapable of will or thought. Yet it had so many wants, mysteriously interpreted by the woman, no longer bloated, and the shaggy man.

In contrast, they could not accurately understand our needs, even though our limbs and heads were much more expressive compared to the infants’ incoherent tossing and air-grabbing.

The moon came and went, came and went. My mother became smaller and smaller. I knew this because I slept curled up against her as often as she would let me. I craved the warm weight of her pressing me down into the earth. At first I could burrow myself completely into the curvature of her belly, and I would shove my face into her softness so that her striations were my entire world. Then I would put my paws against the borders of my world and knead, knead, knead, relishing the give.

But soon my mother began to shrink. Her belly’s curved cave was no longer big enough to contain me whole, and I began to dangle out of it – a paw thrown over her face; my tail swishing scared to seek hers. I tried to make her wrap her diminishing head and forelegs around whatever wouldn’t fit, but she’d arch her petite length as if lazily somersaulting away from me, and I would try to meow like her, but all that came out instead was

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