Hidden

Within porcelain

I awoke late the next morning, finding myself sprawled under a loose white sheet, her body entangled through mine. A ceiling fan spun in silent observance, pushing enough air to take an edge from the humidity. My head spoke of alcohol, yet the true headache—the one I still endure—would not arrive for days.

My mind raced to play back the hours before dawn. I remembered little, the whole thing a haze of the unreal. (This is, of course, entirely untrue. The night was etched raw in my mind, but the specifics—those details of how our bodies entwined—will be spared. Note how I do this, L. Note how easy it is to spare such from the other.)

“Morning,” I managed, my throat dry.

Nin’s head moved from my chest. “Finally!” she said, kissing my cheek and sitting up. The sheet fell away, exposing a body lean and tan. I pulled at her, wanting her back, my hand around the curve of her hips.

“Later, again, I promise,” she teased. “I’m hungry. And sweaty.” She lowered her gaze, offered a demure look. “I’ll shower. Then we eat.” She sprang off the bed and padded towards the bathroom; soon enough there was the sound of water, her movement beneath it.

I stumbled out of the bed and found my clothes in a pile on the floor. I threw on my shorts and looked around the room. It was a bedroom and living room combined, connected to the bathroom at one side and, at the opposite end, via a beaded curtain, a small kitchen. A single window let in shafts of bright daylight. I picked my way around Nin’s crumpled dress and fingered the beads aside. A bottle of vodka was on the kitchen table, next to it a packet of nuts and a half-melted candle. Details flooded back. I smiled. Two nuts were buried in the wax, like a small archaeological scene.

I let go of the beads, returned my gaze to the bedroom. There was a bookcase beneath the window, containing several rows of books. Had my brain been capable, I might have thought that odd, but I didn't think then about the books. It was the thing on one of the shelves that caught my attention. Positioned next to a bamboo pot plant was a small ornamental cat. At first I took it to be one of those beckoning Japanese cats, the kind you find in all manner of shops, though it wasn’t like that at all. It was ornate enough, but its features were in places poorly defined, the tail and paws mere suggestions of a form. It looked to be made of porcelain, and its eyes, two black beads, stared right through me.

I didn’t like it. I couldn’t explain why, but I didn’t like it. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prick and I flinched, looking to my left. Nin was standing there in the bathroom doorway, water dripping from her hair. She was scowling. Except… she wasn’t there at all. I could still hear her movement under the shower.

I shivered and turned back to the little cat. For some reason I found myself picking it up and placing it on my palm. It was no bigger than a sparrow, but it felt heavier, denser somehow. Turning it—carefully, for I had a very real fear of dropping it (and oh if only I had dropped it; oh the game of ifs…)—I looked at it closer. There was a tiny blemish on what was meant to be a paw, a grey scratch that ran in a short line, almost like it had been broken and then glued back together. Something about it unnerved me. Frowning, I returned the cat to where it belonged and stepped away.

“You want to make coffee?” Nin called from the shower, making me start.

“Sure,” I shouted, almost following with an idiotic “where?” and “how?” but my brain stepped in and did its best to spur initiative. I moved into the kitchen, hearing the beads jingle as I brushed them aside.

I scanned the shelves and counter, looking for coffee. I realised then that my usual hangover desire for caffeine had not yet made itself known. Instead, there was a low buzz and a heart rate that remained a little too high—a decent percentage of vodka still coursed through my blood.

I filled the kettle, located a coffee plunger and unlidded several containers until I found the darkened grounds, scooping out several heaped teaspoons. As I was doing this, my eyes landed on something else that gave me pause. On the shelf in front of me was a thick book. There was nothing inherently odd about this—the black and nondescript spine was squashed between a number of recipe books—but it was what was jutting out of the top that bothered me: it was a Polaroid, its border white and glossy. Enough of it was showing for me to make out the image.

The kettle finished with a click.

I yanked the book out and set it on the counter, ignoring the kettle, opening the book to the page with the jutting Polaroid. And I stared. A breeze wafted through the open kitchen window. I had broken out in a sweat. A distant part of me was aware I could no longer hear the shower. 

I leafed back from the open page, fighting the desire to return the book to the shelf, to rid myself of whatever it was I was feeling. I was looking at a photo album. A book full of photos. A book full of photos of just one thing: the little porcelain cat. Except that wasn’t quite true. Each picture was different. As I fumbled the pages, I noticed discrepancies. The eyes on this cat gazed down, not ahead. This one was larger. This one had more of a tail. Even more perplexing—disturbing should have been the word—was the pencil mark beneath each. A name, a month, a year, written in small, neat writing. Writing that was far too neat for a man’s hand.

Flipping the album to the front, I looked at the date on the first Polaroid. Then I snapped the whole thing shut, shoving the book back onto the shelf and positioning the loose Polaroid—the one that showed the cat from the bedroom, the very one I had placed on my palm, bearing no name or date—back to what I hoped had been its original spot.

A decade. A decade of cats?

What?

“How’s the coffee coming?” Nin shouted, now from the adjacent room, seemingly from another world.

“Cooking along just fine,” I blurted. The words weren’t right, but I didn’t care. I glanced through the beads. She was facing away from me, towelling her hair. Had she seen me holding the book? With an unsteady hand, I gripped the kettle and poured, the water steaming into the plunger. I slowed my pour along with my breath, trying to shake off why I even felt so strange. So what? She collects them, or makes them and sells them, giving each a name, and this is just her record of it. That’s it. No bother here. Just your average book of porcelain cats stored in the kitchen. That’s all sorted, then.

Turns out, instinct is there for a reason. (Not the first time I’ve failed to act on it. But you know that, of course.)

I finished pouring. The scent of coffee began to reach my nose. With it came some sense of reality.

*

“You can have it,” she said.

We were sipping a second cup of coffee. Nin had cleared the table and made eggs. Food and caffeine and a return to the easy talk of the previous night had all stilled my unease. I was beginning to question whether anything had ever felt amiss.

I raised my eyebrows. “Have what?” The kitchen door was open. I could hear the lapping of the waves.

“The cat. My little cat.”

Like a tide pulled by an invisible moon, the unease returned.

“I know you picked it up,” she continued, standing to clear away the plates.

“You know I picked it up?” I tried my best to sound confused.

She nodded. “Every morning I stroke my lucky cat, but this morning it was looking the wrong way. I know you stroked him too.” She smiled. The tone wasn’t accusatory. It was… I don’t know. Sensual, maybe.

I stood. It seemed the correct movement to make. “Sorry, Nin,” I broke into honesty, “I saw it when you were showering and—”

“Oh, no apologies.” She walked over, wrapped her arms around me. “Perhaps the luck it brought was in bringing you. And so I, in turn, gift it. A memory of me you can take home.” She kissed me, her arms unmoving.

“I might have enough of those already,” I managed with a smile, and I pulled her close.

In my mind I broke away, my eyes glancing through to the bedroom. The curtain was tied back and I could see the cat. It was still there, gazing towards its far-off and unknown land. I took one final glance before my eyes shifted back to hers.

“I couldn’t,” I said, swallowing. Something felt deeply wrong with all of this.

“You don’t want it?” Her bottom lip curled down like a child.

“I just couldn’t. It’s yours. If it’s lucky, then that’s even more reason why.” As I spoke, she pressed her body into mine. I was weak, unable to resist the feel of her skin. “I couldn’t possibly, not if it’s lucky,” I found myself repeating in whisper, all before her lips were too close and her hands were where I wanted them to be.

*

Later, much later, on the day that I departed, the shelf was devoid of its cat.

But I didn’t see that.

How could I have?

Only when it was much too late, when someone else had rummaged and found where that cat had been placed, hidden, and all this horror was set in motion and I was shaking my head and shouting, pleading, disbelieving… only then did I come to realise the role I had played. The role I had been meant to play. But I doubt Nin knows how it ended, or even if she cares. I’m just a name, a pencil mark, a date. Some strange sense of accomplishment, just as with those countless oth—

/

—there is a loud bang as the door is swung open, hinges making their brief scream for oil as the metal bars smack into the wall. The clamour of a thousand angry and weeping voices is set momentarily louder. Two guards stand in the doorway, their foreheads licked by sweat. It is the afternoon, the day’s heat not even close to finished.

The man standing away from the door has dropped his pen. It lies on the floor like a dead cigarette. The papers are still in his hand, pressed against the wall as though it is a table. He folds them in half, his face that of a student caught by a teacher for sharing a dirty note. The others in this soiled space murmur in voices the man still cannot understand. Their faces turn to him as one of the guards enters, handcuffs pulled from nowhere and now around the man’s wrists. The links jangle the happy tune of purpose.

No, he protests. No. Not yet. But I haven’t finished.

His words are as foreign to the guards as their shouts are to him.

The papers fall from his hands as the man is dragged from the room, words of useless protest continuing to spew from his tongue.

The second guard steps in and picks up the sheets of paper. He unfolds them, studies them, looks at each tattered sheaf, the lines of his forehead creasing into a frown. With a low laugh he scrunches each page into a ball and casts them out through the slatted window before bending down and pocketing the pen, his thumb resting over the end.

*CLICK*

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

This is, of course, the conclusion to Within porcelain, which I posted last week. I was going to say that at the top, but I figured if you saw that then you may not read on. To a certain extent this works on its own. To a certain extent. As I noted last week, this is a heavy re-edit of something I wrote over a year ago. It’s been an enriching process to re-write and edit and be ruthless. I’ve carved it closer to where I always wanted it to land, though the porcelain of the words remain fragile.