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The Creed family sat at their dinner table. Ellie between her mother and father and Gage across from them. Gage grabbing handfuls of his spaghetti and shoving them in his mouth, smearing tomato sauce all over his face. Her parents cooing and laughing as he did so. Ellie huffed and decided she was going to get a perfect forkful. Twirling the noodles just the way her dad had showed her. Maybe if she showed them how neat and grown up she was they’d pay attention. It slowly dawned on her however that what she was trying to wrap around her fork was no longer spaghetti, but wriggling worms.
Ellie screamed and pushed her plate away. Looking up only to find that the red sauce on Gage’s face was no longer light red and runny. Instead it was dark and clotted. Not sauce at all, but “Blood! Gage has blood on his face!” She shrieked.
Finally her parents turned to her and she saw their faces were emaciated. Merely skin clinging glue tight to the bone. The eyes empty dark sockets in their skulls.
“Why don’t you join us Ellie?” Her mother asked sweetly.
“Yes. We miss you so much.” Her father smiled a ghastly smile.
“Ellie play!” Gage cawed happily, splashing his hands around in his macabre dinner plate.
Ellie jumped up and backed away from the dinner table in such a rush she knocked over her chair and nearly tripped on it. Bolting to the front door only to find her pathway blocked by her beloved cat. Church sat on his haunches staring up at her, but it was wrong. He was wrong. His neck was bent sickly to one side and there was a bubbly red foam clinging to the corners of his mouth. He meowed and it was gargled.
She could only scream. She screamed and screamed and-
Woke up screaming as loudly as her small lungs would allow. A sheaf of sweat covering her entire body. Eyes wide and scanning rapidly around the dark room. Breathing in shuddering gasps. Trying to calm the racing rabbit of her heart as she waited.
Waited for her parents to come check on her. Her mom would tuck her in as her father gave her a kiss and got her a glass of water. They’d let Church into the room and he’d curl up by her feet and purr. Soothing her in his own way. As she was just about to fall back asleep she’d hear her mother reprimanding her dad. Telling him once again that it had been a bad idea to have Judd show them the-
“The pet cemetery.” She whispered to herself and her panic stopped in one beat. An icy hand crawling up her spine.
It all came back. Her parents wouldn’t be coming in to settle her back in this night or ever again. They were gone. All of them. And they had been for several months now. Everyone she loved, even her cat, were all gone.
Not gone.
Dead.
Her grandparents may be good caregivers, but they weren’t her parents. No matter how loudly she continued to cry or even scream they would not come to comfort her. Even if she got herself out of bed and crawled into theirs her grandfather would pick her up and carry her back to her room. In her child’s brain she didn’t fully understand why they were so… cold.
Instinctively she reached out her hand in the darkness towards the foot of her bed.
Nothing.
Ellie frowned. Where was -
“Church.” The name left her lips with a tremble. Hitting her like rolling waves.
It was strange. The death of her parents certainly hurt. The death of her baby brother had devastated her. Left her nearly inconsolable. Perhaps the fact his death had come some days prior to her mom and dad had left her numb to the possibility of more tragedy. But that could not be because Church had died with them. And it was this death above them all that she could not reconcile. Something would not let her move past it. The pain was the same as the moment she’d been told.
She remembered the tantrum she’d had over the injustice of the lives of cats. Her father calmly explaining that they led short and violent lives. But that even so, Church may still live till she was in high school. Perhaps longer.
He’d lied.
Her cat was now God’s cat.
And just like her grandparents He would not change that no matter how hard she cried or loud she screamed. But she cried anyway. Heart breaking more with every new sob.
Years passed by her, but that pain neve dulled. Cats came in and out of her life, and their passing always stung. Never like Church though. A simple thought of whom would cause her chest to clench. Perhaps in that way he had managed to stay her cat after all.