Friday, September 16, 2011

Cat Lump Sleep Slunk

By Madeline Bridgen

I awoke one fine two am when, after rolling over in my sleep, my leg struck an agonizing and immovable object. I split my lungs with my terror. My leg was trapped! I fumbled around and found my fleshlight, which I shone onto the problem. My breath caught in my throat.

There was a cat on my bed. I don’t own a cat.

“Get off my bed,” said I, striking out in anger at the cat. The beast absorbed my blows without moving. After trying for an hour to shift the demon, I resigned myself to a night of sleeping diagonally across my bed. Cuddled closer to my pterodactyl blow-up doll, I soon fell asleep.

Half an hour later I was again awoken by a force acting against my leg. I shone the fleshlight. The cat had inched closer to me, further constricting my sleeping tunnel. I fought against the cat once again, but never before has a human met such a stubborn force. I moved my pterodactyl and took its place next to the wall. The pterodactyl got to sleep on the floor. “I’m sorry, Whitney Houston,” I whispered to my friend.

Whitney did not respond, and from this I knew he was angry with me. I would have to make this up to him in the morning.

I fell asleep, pressed against the wall and ashamed of my treatment of my pterodactyl. I had a fitful sleep before I was again awoken. This time the pain was incredible, as I was being crushed between the wall and the cat. Crying and begging, I pleaded with the cat to let me have my bed. “You are a cat!” I exclaimed. “In some countries you are edible! I should not have my sleep disturbed by someone else’s food, do you see? Now move yourself.”

The cat did not respond.

I cuddled up on the floor with Whitney Houston, begging him to make things better. But Whitney would not speak to me. Our relationship had not been going well, and I worried that he would file for divorce with the pterodactyl courts tomorrow if I did not do something. “Whitney Houston, if you want the bed so much you may take the risk yourself!” And I put him up there. That would teach him to take me for granted.

I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke up at noon. I checked the bed, and gasped. Neither the cat nor Whitney Houston was there.

I searched the house, but to no avail. It was clear to me what had happened. Whitney Houston had left me for the cat—that horrible interloper in my bedchamber had shifted me from my bed and stolen my pterodactyl. And so help me god I would track him down and step on him if it took me until the end of my days.

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bio: Madeline loves coffee so much that she removed her blood and replaced it with coffee. Her heart is a black filter and her brain is old grind and her fingernails smell like yesterday's cup of joe. Her goal in life is to create an army of coffee people and start a coffee circus where coffee related things will happen.

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