Toby

Toby

I didn’t know who the orange tabby belonged to, but when I saw him I wanted him to be mine. He came up to me as if he knew me, started rubbing against my legs and meowing, like I was supposed to be his owner. I had noticed this cat following me for a couple days, but this was the first time he had finally come up to me. I looked around; making sure no one was watching me, grabbed the cat and ran into my apartment. I had just gotten home from shopping when this cat had run up to me. I held the cat up to my face looking into his yellow eyes; all of a sudden thoughts of my ex, Toby, came into my mind, stills of our life together flashing through my mind like looking through a photo album.

“You shall be named… Toby! Yeah… that is a good cat name”. Toby meowed again, as if in approval and I shook my head to get the images of the human Toby out of my head. It had been a long time since I had last owned a cat; and in fact that cat wasn’t even mine but belonged to human Toby when we had lived together. I sat on my couch, petting Toby, enjoying the purrs that were coming from his throat. “Well… I guess I should go get you some food, even though I just came from the store… I guess you need to eat as much as I do… I say ‘I guess’ a lot, don’t I?” I looked at Toby as if expecting an answer, when of course one did not come; I let out a sigh, set him on the couch and got ready to leave. “Alright Toby, I will be right back… don’t miss me too much now!” Toby seemed to have a smirk on his little cat face as I stared at him for a moment longer, getting lost in his cat eyes. I shook my head, looked around my apartment and saw that it was completely trashed; pictures torn up, my bottle collection smashed on the ground, books knocked off the shelves with the pages torn out. “What the hell?” I looked at the clock and saw that two hours had passed and I had no recollection of what had happened during those two hours. I looked at Toby, sitting so innocently on the couch, as if he had done nothing.

“Toby! Why would you do this??” I went to grab him then noticed a torn piece of paper in my hand. I looked closer at it and saw it was a page from one of my books. ‘What? Why would I have this in my hand if Toby trashed the apartment? I must have tried to clean up during that random black out I just had…’ I threw the torn up page on the floor, grabbed Toby and smacked him on his nose. “Bad Kitty! You don’t mess up my apartment!” He hissed at me and dropped from my arms, obviously not very happy that I had punished him. “Well, I better start cleaning.”

That night I fell asleep pretty easily, even after all the stuff that had happened that day, but had terrible dreams. They were all about Toby, about our relationship, about what had happened to him. I was tossing and turning all night and at one point woke up with a scream, remembering that night. After that nightmare, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep and lay in bed until the sun starting streaming through the window. Finally I got up and then noticed that my right arm was hurting. I thought it was just from sleeping on it wrong, but when I looked down I saw blood slightly dripping from a long scratch. “What the hell? Now what?” I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to clean up the blood. “Why would Toby do this?” I looked closely at the scratch and saw it was a vertical slash on my wrist. It had only bled a little, thank goodness, but it still hurt. “How the hell did I not wake up when he did this?” I washed the excess blood off of my hands then noticed how dirty my nails were. I used a nail file to clean them out and what looked like skin came out of one of the nails. ‘Did I do this to myself? No way I could have… it had to have been Toby’. I went to go find the cat again and when I was able to find him, I scolded him again. “No scratching Toby, it’s not nice!” I looked into his cat eyes and once again was hypnotized by them; they looked so human…

I shook my head and looked around the apartment; the sun was setting? What? I looked at a clock and saw that it was nearly five o’clock. “What the hell?!” I shouted out loud, “I lost a whole day? What just happened?” I looked around the apartment, trying to remember something that had happened during the last 11 hours of the day, but could remember nothing. I sat on the couch and saw a box sitting on the coffee table. I brought the box towards me and saw that they were pictures. I let out a gasps when I held a few of them up, seeing that they were pictures of human Toby and I, but in all of the pictures my eyes had been burned out. I let out a little scream when I noticed Toby sitting right next to the box, staring at me. “What on earth is going on?!” I asked Toby. He titled his head a bit at the sound of my voice, meowed, and then jumped off the table. “Well you were no help”, I muttered, staying on the couch because I didn’t know what else to do. Looking at the pictures, my mind started filling up with thoughts of human Toby again. I thought back to that night, to his pleading eyes, asking me to help him, to save him. But I hadn’t been able to. I blinked and noticed that I was now lying in bed again and it was ten o’clock at night. “Well apparently it is my bed time.” After the past couple of days, I didn’t think I would be able to fall asleep, but it happened quite easily. That night I dreamed again of human Toby, of the screaming, of the baseball bat. These weren’t just dreams either; they were the worst nightmares I had had since that night. I saw all the blood again and his eyes looked more pathetic then the night it happened. I shrieked myself awake almost braining myself on something I was holding in my hand. I looked down and saw that it was the bat from that night. “No… no no no no no… how is this possible? I thought I burned you. How are you in my hands right now? No… this can’t be happening.” I threw the bat off the bed, not noticing Toby sitting on the bed next to me, with almost a smile on his cat face. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands and saw a huge cut down my cheek. I started crying then, washing my face and noticing chunks of skin in my fingernails. Why was I doing this to myself? I kept muttering “no” the whole time I was cleaning, hoping it was stop whatever was happening from happening.

Once I was cleaned up I grabbed Toby, hoping for some comfort, and sat on the couch. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bat and the cut on my face, like the one he had given me that night… “Oh Toby… what is going on with me… I had to do it; he was going to kill me!” I looked into Toby’s face again, but this time his eyes were the same dark blue color that human Toby’s were. I screamed again and threw Toby off my lap. “No! No! You can’t! You just… can’t! I killed you!! I killed you! You are dead!” I couldn’t stop screaming and I couldn’t stop seeing human Toby’s face as I hit him in the head with the bat. His dark blue eyes as he looked up at me and tried to grab me, scratching my face instead. His head as I beat him again and again with the bat. His hands as they were the last thing to go under the water where I had dropped him. I started scratching at my eyes, trying to get the images out of my head. Toby the cat was staring at me, those dark blue eyes never leaving my face, what looked like a grin on his face. I didn’t want to see Toby anymore. I didn’t want to look into those blue eyes again; I knew he had come back to kill me to take his revenge. “No! No! I won’t let you! You are dead! No!! You can’t take me! You can’t kill me!” Toby’s laughter filled the apartment and I screamed at the top of my lungs, trying to drown it out. “NO!”

A few hours later the cops knocked on the door, trying to find out what had caused the neighbors to call them to report a noise disturbance. They didn’t hear anything, no parties were going on, but they had called so the cops had to check it out. When no one answered their knock, John, the cop in front, tried the knob. When it turned in his hands he looked at his partner, shrugged, then pushed the door open.

“Hello? Anyone home? We got a noise complaint about your place and wanted to make sure everyone was OK.” John cringed as an acrid smell hit his noise. “Something isn’t right here, Steve.” John unlocked his gun and kept his hand poised by it, just in case.

“Hello! Anyone?” John located a light switch and flipped it on. He heard Steve let out a little gasp. “What is it Steve?” John looked in Steve’s direction and saw in the middle of the room a young girl with both of her eyes scratched out and her mouth open wide in an ugly scream. Her hair was completely white and sitting on top of her was an orange tabby. The cat seemed to be licking the blood out of the girl’s eye sockets. John let out a disgusted noise. “Steve get the damn cat off her while I call this in.” Steve went over and grabbed the cat, looking into it’s yellow eyes. “You know, it might just be me John, but this cat looks like it’s smiling.” Steve continued to stare into the cats eyes while thoughts of the little girl he had buried in his basement came to mind. “I think I will keep you… and I will call you Betsy.”