Andrew woke this morning the same way he did every other: smiling, erect,
confused. He had always listened to other people’s dreams with interest and
jealousy. Sleep, of late, brought dreams, different, he supposed, only insofar
that he had been remembering them. For the last little while his life while
sleeping was full of the activities that he did daily, but he shared them with
another. Now he would wake up in his bed, with a dream fresh in his head, and
the detail so crisp that he knew it was real. Soon enough he would be snapped
back to reality by some indisputable fact that was different than that he
remembered from the night’s slumber. He was out of milk, it was daylight, he was
alone; none of these things would elicit a strong reaction normally, but lately
these things, and some others more subtle, made him crumple and lie sobbing
in a mass, ending only when he got up the strength to force himself to accept it.
Last night he had dreamt of going to the grocery store with the object of his
desire, and returning home to eat spaghetti out of a can. He caught on right
away today, knowing what was real, and what was not. He should have had a
fork in his hand; he looked around him for the fork, and set in for his morning
cry.This latest addition to his ritual ablutions was starting to affect the way that
he could either enjoy or regret the rest of the day, he was losing sleep, trying to
out-smart the unwanted reverie, but it never failed, and his reaction was always
the same. He decided that it was time for a drastic step, though he didn’t know
what it would be.He took a shower and went downstairs to get the paper. He
decided to let his habits take the wheel and drive for a while; he was in no
condition to make any life altering decisions.Custom got the paper, routine
opened it the crossword, tradition put on coffee, convention retrieved his
favorite bowl, pattern dictated that the milk/cereal ratio be 60:40.Staring through
the paper, his mouth kept busy, when he did finally begin to focus on the page
in front of him the first words he read were:“time to get kidnapped by the cat”
They were not a sentence, they were not part of the same paragraph, in fact,
what they weren’t far outweighed what they were. The words leapt from the page
and formed a single notion in his head; he decided it was probably a good idea.
He began making preparations, he was clean, but if he was going to be
kidnapped, he thought it would be a good idea to put on some cologne. Now,
prepared for work and whatever else might present itself, he opened the door
and found a beautiful white and tan cat positioned in the center of the doorway.
He was surprised, but not shocked. “Not the cat that I expected.”Andrew spoke
sweetly, asking if she was lost, but knowing that she was not. Eventually, he
invited her in, she did a coy turn before finally, she deigned to enter. He offered
her everything that he had to drink, and finally she settled on some water,
purring and blinking in response to every of his inquiries. After having a little to
drink, she began acting like she owned the place. She sat on the couch, he on
the chair. She looked bored, but contented, staring at nothing in particular, and
Andrew was rapt in the watching.“This is way better than nothing”As he thought
it, he could swear that he saw a change in expression, as if to say: “Just barely”
on the face of the cat. He got up to put on some music.Soon after, she was
curled up in his lap. A lap, by the way, connected to a body which, by this time,
had missed it’s entire day at work. He stroked her hair and let his thoughts drift
away. “She trusts me,” he thought as they both enjoyed John Coltraine.By and
by, she announced that she would kidnap him, and he was as ready for this as
he had been anything in his life.She stole him away into the dark of night. “How
did this happen?” he wondered out loud, remembering that, last he knew, his
hair was wet, and that it was daylight. Where had they day gone, what were they
doing now? Her unhurried response did everything to reassure him, and he
stopped thinking about it right then, he may have stopped thinking entirely, he
was drifting, his mind was at ease. When he realized that he had never felt like
this before, he looked down, and sure enough, he was being kidnapped.“That
was easy”Now, he realized, the tough part, stay kidnapped. He didn’t want to
outfox his adversary, and make a getaway, he wanted nothing more than to
relax, and allow waves of kidnapped wash away all of the drawbacks, the loss of
freedom, severe limitations on the nature and magnitude of interactions with
friends and family, and needless to say, a disparity in the types and quantities of
food needed to sustain life in the manner that he had become accustomed.At
one point, it did cross his mind how amazing it was that he be carried off so
easily, by such a tiny creature, but the thought left as quickly as it had
comeEntreated to do so by the cat, he dug his own hole, using the tools she
provided to excavate a chasm that, in his mind, he termed “cozy”, but that was,
by any standard, confining, and dangerous. Once she was certain that he could
not escape, she joined him in the bottom of the burrow.They passed the time
snuggling, and attempting to communicate, never letting the rain bother them.
They had each other and as far as he was concerned, that was enough. The
cat got tired of the lack of amenities, and the fact that all Andrew ever talked
about was the hole, and how much he enjoyed being in the hole, how much the
hole meant to him, and how he looked forward to being in the hole forever. Life
outside the hole seemed to stop, and before he knew it Andrew had alienated
every one of his friends by his disappearance, this was not the first time he had
gone away and left everyone guessing where he went.When the cat left for the
last time, Andrew was shocked, he had no idea that she was leaving, that she
was unhappy, that she wanted more, that she was not the kidnapper that she
had made herself out to be. Not long after she left, Andrew pressed himself
against the sides and managed to get a look at the world again, and did not like
what he saw there. He decided that it was in his best interests to stay right
where he was, lest she come back and see that he was no longer kidnapped.
Well, needless to say, one cannot live in a hole without support from outside,
and the final conscious decision that Andrew made was that he would continue
with vigilance, no matter the cost,Years later, when archeologists where daintily
brushing, with mohair brushes, the dust from his crumbling bones, Andrew would
have been pleased to hear their decree, that he was autochthonous, that this is
where he should be remembered, and left undisturbed.