New Fiction: Magic (Part I)

Sarah was deep in that twilight place between wakefulness and sleep when she felt the cat jump on her bed. She felt it walk around the bed and finally curl up behind her in the small of her back. The room was cold, and she pulled the down comforter up around her ear before she suddenly awoke fully, startled awake.

“I don’t have a cat,” she thought.

There was a hesitation of a moment or two while she thought about she should do, and then she reached out gingerly for the bedside lamp, feeling her way around in the dark, and finally flicked it on.

There was no cat on her bed.

But there was an indentation on the comforter. Sarah put her hand on it and found it warm. She touched other parts of the comforter for comparison, and then looked around the room. The door was closed and the room was mostly empty. There was a stack of sealed packing boxes against the far wall. The closet door stood open and the closet was empty. The only furniture in the room was Sarah’s bed and the lamp, which stood on another packing box.

She climbed out of bed and crossed the room, turning on the overhead light. The light was brass with a frosted glass shade that hung on chains in the middle of the ceiling’s big plaster medallion. When she first came to look at the place, her landlord had told her it was original to the house. It had been a gas light and was now wired for electricity. He explained how he had both renovated and restored the old Victorian at the same time, building in modern convenience while he lovingly replaced and fixed the antique details. He had found the gas lights in the basement, he said, and had created a workbench where he restored them, replacing them room by room, working in the evenings after the plumbers and plasterers had left for the day.

She opened the bedroom door and walked out into her flat, fumbling for the unfamiliar light switch. As she groped the wall, she felt the cat rush out of the room, brushing against her legs as it left. Once the light was on, she scanned the area. From where she stood, she could see all of her little one-bedroom flat. Her couch sat haphazardly in the middle of the living room, surrounded by more packing boxes. The coffeemaker was on the counter, set to go off in the morning. She peeked behind the couch. Nothing. There was nothing on the other side of the kitchen counter either, in the little dining area in the bay windows. She stood in the windows and looked down at the quiet street, wondering what to do next. A black cat darted out of the shadows near the front door of her building, and dashed across the street, the light from the streetlamp shining on its back.

Finally, realizing that there was nothing she could do but go to sleep, she went back into her new bedroom and closed the door. She climbed back into bed and snuggled into the bedclothes. She took a final glance around the empty room before turning off the lamp.

“How can there be a cat?” she thought. “Especially a cat I can’t see?” There was certainly no place in the apartment for a cat to hide right now.

“Maybe I dreamt it all,” she thought, and then sneezed violently three times in a row, remembering that she was allergic to cats.

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You can read the entire series here.