The Move by William Wren

You are in a box. You’ve only a handful of inches to any side—left and right, before and behind.

The world trembles and rumbles. Every so often, it tilts inexplicably.

Faces appear in front of you. Squinting. They are four to five times the size of your own. They coo and murmur. They insert large appendages through slats in the box. Pink appendages. Brown appendages. Appendages knuckled and supple like tree branches, each trying to poke and scratch you.

Voices ask if you’re okay and you want to say, “I’m in a box! How okay can I be?” Instead, you ignore them and hope they go away.

Vague memories from childhood surface. Images of people in white coats who jab and prod and stick you with things that make you sleep. You remember waking. You remember several mutilations. “My God!” you think. “What will they do to me now? What’s left of me to cut and remove?”

Uneasy, you curl your tail beneath your hind end. Fur falls from you like faded blossoms.

Then, all movement stops. After some moments, the box rises and sways. “What now?” you think. “What now?”

The assuring voice that never assures is closer. As the box travels with jerks, the voice mutters without cessation.

Finally, the box sits on what appears to be solid ground. One of its sides falls away and you look out on a dubious freedom.

You recognize nothing. There are no familiar sights. The scents are all wrong. Nothing sounds as it should except for the murmuring voice that will sometimes offer comfort but this time simply annoys.

With wary steps, you leave the box.

Head lifted, nose furiously trying to identify, you turn left and right. Suddenly, a sharp noise sounds behind you and you’re off. You run. You had already spotted the place—the sofa by the wall near the window.

Before anyone or anything can stop you, you’re behind the sofa. It’s cramped but this is good. Experience tells you they cannot get at you here. You are dug in; you will not leave. You can outwait the voice. You can outwait them all.

Soon, the darkness will come and with it all voices, appendages, and boxes will leave, banished from the feline night.

Then, with guerilla stealth, you will lay claim to this new country. With quiet sedition, you will come to own it, as you own all places in which you reside, for domestic worlds are easily ruled by civilized savages.

© Copyright 2016 William Wren. All rights reserved.


w-l-wrenWilliam Wren (better known as Bill) is a writer in New Brunswick, Canada. He has had several stories published previously by the Rose City Sisters. He has one ebook collection of stories on Amazon, Disrupted Lives and Other Commotions. His next ebook will be available soon.

 

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