This is my belated entry to the most excellent fiction contest hosted by @mctiller. Thank you, MC, for the fun prompt, Writers win 5 Steem! Twenty-four short story contest, September 19 and thank you, @GuyTMartland, for allowing me to take liberties and write my first "Fan Fiction"--this one inspired by your beloved #caturday series.
“We’re headed to Madam Maxime’s at the edge of the universe”
THE GIANT DUCKED THROUGH THE TAVERN DOOR,
nodding assorted greetings to the Friday night regulars. He wasn’t technically a giant at six foot eight, but he cast a long shadow over everyone else in Bournemouth. The four-foot-eleven bartender, Julie, had been bribed into posing for many a social media photo of the midget barmaid with the towering hospital pathologist.
“Well,” Professor Moriarty trotted out his usual lame greeting, “would you look at what the cat dragged in.” As if any cat short of a saber-tooth tiger could have dragged Tom Martin even an inch. As if anyone thought the cliche was funny the first of the hundreds of times Moriarty used it. The giant always smiled anyway--until tonight.
“Hey T-Mart,” Julie called over her shoulder at him while pouring his usual, a dark ale, almost as dark as the tales he penned nights and weekends, horror stories inspired by the lurid things this man saw under a microscope too many hours a day. She slammed the glass on the counter without spilling a drop, and Tom settled his long limbs onto a bar stool. “Rough week, love?”
He tilted the dark ale to his lips and swallowed almost half of it. “Ask The Cat.”
“Oh stop now,” Julie said, one hand swatting at Tom’s comment while the other hand poured more ale. “The things you lay at the feet of that dear little creature!”
“Paws,” Tom mumbled behind the raised glass. “Would you care to see what the creature lays at my feet?”
Julie served a graying, goateed doctor his ale, then faced the giant, her arms folded on the counter, and leaned in. “And what has the wee kitty laid at your feet, love?”
“The wee beast has been writing fictions about me, calling me The Slave,” Tom said, “and to add insult to injury, he has an agent and a publisher and he’s on the best seller list.” Tom gulped more ale. “In his dimension, anyway. Some parallel…”
The concerned stares of all those within earshot gave him pause.
“The wannabe novelist says his cat is writing stories now!” Moriarty crowed with laughter.
“See for yourself.” Tom called up a link via his phone and held it up for Moriarty to see. “Listen to the little chit! He’s time traveling, slipping in and out of parallel universes, and even conducting exorcisms.”
Julie laughed. “You call your cat a liar, but I call him a genius. A cat who writes mysteries and outsells his human slave!”
Moriarty scowled at her while Tom drained his beer.
“Readers have difficulty separating my fiction from real life,” Moriarty read from Tom’s screen. “People actually think I am the protagonist of my novels and can achieve the same lofty feats." He glanced up at Tom. "Ha! Your cat sounds as annoyingly erudite as you do." He revisited the screen: "In a similar manner to Conan Doyle receiving requests about unsolved crimes because people thought he was actually Holmes, I suspect.”
Julie refilled Tom’s beer and pushed it back to him in what seemed like a single fluid motion. “The cat wrote this, did he?”
“So T-Mart says.” Moriarty, peering over the rim of his glasses, aimed an accusing stare at Tom. “I suspect the not-so-jolly but green-with-envy Giant is suffering some kind of paranoid schizophrenia after too many hours a day hunched over those lurid slide plates--slices of death sandwiched between two layers of glass. Bound to drive a man mad.”
Tom stared at his beer, his lip twitching, and he felt a thousand brilliant comebacks jostling in his mind but a shadow in his peripherals robbed him of his wit, and he could only stare at the small rickety stairs in the corner. They led to rooms for rent above the tavern. And that was his neighbor’s cat swishing up those steps. He’d swear it. Those shadowy figures sleazing around the neighborhood at all hours of the night had not escaped his notice.
“My cat,” Tom asserted, “is trying to perform some kind of exorcism. And not just on ordinary ghosts. Oh no, not my cat. He speaks of the more dangerous kind who can cross multiple dimensions.” Tom squinted at the ceiling, picturing the shenanigans of the cats sneaking around above them, unseen. “If we all blow up tonight, you can thank The Cat. He says the energy required to exorcise a ghost from multiple dimensions could be ‘released suddenly with catastrophic effect.’ Read it yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Moriarty howled with laughter. “You are aware, T-Mart, that I have read the DSM-5 manual, and you’re pictured in it next to at least ten forms of psychoses?”
He was still laughing at his own worn-out joke when a chunk of ceiling blew out and landed on Moriarty’s shining head, and the old gasbag fell silent, his head drooping to the bar. The commotion and uproar of a tavern on a Friday night turned into a chaos of bodies dodging debris from the ceiling. "We're all gonna die!" someone screamed, and before Tom could ascertain whether Moriarty had succumbed, Julie grabbed Tom’s arm and settled for a fierce grip on his shirt sleeve, her tiny hand being too small to grip any part of his arm.
“Tom, I believe you,” she said. “And I know a place we can go before this place is annihilated.”
He drained his second ale with a satisfied sigh. “Maxime's?”
Julie grinned. "Your cat isn't the only trickster in town. Come on, hurry, before your cat blows the whole town apart!"
"Hurry up and go where?" Tom asked.
“We’re headed to Madame Maxime’s at the edge of the universe!" Julie replied.
And why not? With or without The Cat, he would do this thing. Tom squeezed his eyes shut and let Julie lead him by the hand through the dust and darkness.
****(Not the End, really, not at all, but that's all for now, folks!)***
====================================================
Tip o' the Hat to Guy T Martland and The Cat's Page
See more here:
The Cat's Page by @GuyTMartland
Follow @GuyTMartland on Twitter for the latest Caturday Updates, e.g.
New #Caturday on its way... This is going to be a long one so buckle up folks!
Come back in a few days and see what happens next. (If you want to. You really don’t have to. You could just go to the pub instead. Might be more fun...)
#AmWriting #sciencefiction #stories
I hereby present: ‘Alma Meta.’
‘Not another cat story?’ I hear you cry.
‘No, not quite,’ I reply.
Free to read here: Alma Meta
#amwriting #sciencefiction #stories #cats #cambridge #fiction #caturday
And follow for all the fun little perks,
including Guy's original photos (shameless appropriated here) and witticisms, e.g.,
Off now to Madame Maxime's.
Thank you for reading!
Keangaroo
because Kean sounds like Kane (not keen, hint, hint)
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Let's Fry Chicken Little nominated for 2015 Pushcart Award
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