The Ones That Go Bump in the Night
an excerpt

Joey may not be the type to complain, but even so, he was a restless spirit, and as soon as he had enough clarity in his brain to notice, he noticed that he hadn’t moved much for nearly four days. Also, the fact that he was in the parlor, one of the vital junctures of the house, didn’t help things. Jones, Cistina, and Lily would run around like how they usually did every day, sometimes sitting to read the paper or to turn on the radio without even asking him. In fact, nobody thought to talk to him unless to ask if he needed anything. And that was just awful.

Even just laying in his own bed at home alone would be better. In that way, he would have been able to wallow in his own misery in the privacy of his own home, but here, everyone had to be there to ignore it. And it would drive him mad.

Completely ignoring all the protests from his body, he sat up as far as he could, and tried to turn to get his legs off of the couch. He pried his tail out from under him, the poor thing completely and entirely numb from all this. Soon, one paw hit the floor, and then a second, and it had been exhausting and horrible. But he wasn’t about to give up right then, because any moment somebody would come into the room and tell him to lie back down to rest. He was just so, so sick of it. He had to get up.

He thought of all the pancakes and bacon he’d been forced through and how much he wanted to stab any of them with the forks he’d have to use. With that as motivation, he put both front paws on the nearby coffee table and pushed up. It felt like something stabbed and ripped at his side, but he continued up anyway. Fucking pancakes.

So he stood.

Unfortunately, standing gave his head so much of a rush, considering he hadn’t stood so much, and he immediately fell down and hit the coffee table. And it was horrible.

Lily came rushing into the room, knowing that sudden noises like things dropping were her job to attend to. It was what she was paid for, after all, though Jones, after what happened last night, had to open the front door. She came in to find Joey sprawled over the coffee table with the most hideous scowl over his scarred face. If she hadn’t known better, she would have been scared of the kitten, but the way Cistina got away with treating him made her know better. He was all hiss and no bite, no bite at all.

She smiled, bemusedly. “Well, umm, what happened here?”

“I hate sitting,” he said.

“Well, that doesn’t really look that much more comfortable,” said Lily. Joey snorted and tried to heave himself up, but he found that every time he tried, there was even more of a shock and a stab to the wound that he simply couldn’t do it.

“Well, yes, that doesn’t look very comfortable at all.”

“I’m not going back to sitting,” said Joey.

“Fine then, I’m going back to dusting,” said Lily, beginning to leave. He could stay that way, if he really wanted to, but she couldn’t see why. She had enough work to do, anyway, without worrying about him.

She was about to leave the room when Joey yowled, “Wait!”

“What?”

“…Help me up.”

Lily came back and hauled him up by his shoulders. Before then, Joey had never really noticed how strong Lily was. She could most likely just carry the scrawny cat, all on her own, if she had really wanted to.

She was about to set him back on the couch when she noticed how bloody it still was, and how she still needed to clean that up. “Wait, do you mind if you have the guest room? It’s upstairs, but I could probably get you there.”

No matter how undignified it was, he couldn’t refuse. “Great.”