Chapter Text
You wake up suddenly. Troubled face of Vida greets you as you come to your senses thanks to Laika's wet lick. You're on your street, not far from your home. Vida (your neighbour) helps you to your feet while showering you with questions. The stupid kind. What happened to you? Where were you this past few days? You breathe in to say something and expel the worried look from their face, but.......... But you don't know. !?!?!
They take out a twig out of your hair... Unexplainable sense of urgency from your subconsciousness makes you politely but sharply cut the conversation and hastily make your way to your home. You lock your door after entering and throw down your backpack there in the hallway. It makes a loud sound, heavy with things you don't remember packing.
You feel all wrong. As if cut out and pasted in the wrong place. Out of context. It almost seems unreal. But your thirst is. You make your way to the kitchen and get yourself something to drink, focusing on the cold sips, you hear your neighbour call on their dog as they return to whatever they were doing. You finish it and get another. The fuzzy feeling lingering under your skin refusing to go away, you feel like you're swimming through the most oily soup imaginable. Even the feeling of your chair against your back feels misplaced.
There's a knock. You're not sure you heard right. You wait a bit to see if there will be another, but there's just silence. To be sure, you shuffle back to your door to check. You open the usually warm feeling wooden door and there is.... Nobody?
You look around to see that unfunny prankster but everything is still. Glancing down, you notice there is a circle of blue flowers and a small wooden box with strings inside. What a weird thing. You lift the items off the ground and look around one more time, your sight catching on the woods right across the street. A sickeningly nostalgic feeling washes over you. You've never been there. Never had a reason to. Your gaze scans the treeline for a bit longer before you return inside.
In your mind you keep returning to the same blank spot, like when you can't remember the thought you just had. After a bit of failing to remember that supposedly important thing, you give up and go to sleep. If it were so important, you'd remember, right?
Sleep does make it better. You feel safe, and all right. like you're where you should be. That is, until you wake up with a sense of duty that there is a cat to be fed and you need to do it now. You sit in your bed persuading yourself it was just some weird dream. You don't have a cat! What a silly thought, you don't even have cat food for the poor thing. You get up and walk to the kitchen, opening a random cupboard. "where would I put cat food if I had a cat" thing. Just to prove how nonsensical it is.
No
No no no. There's a stash of cat food just in the cupboard you opened. The cartoonish cat on the packaging ridiculing you in the eye as you don't understand what is going on. You just stare. This can't be. You went to check there at random. There wasn't supposed to be any! The smell of it irritating you even more as it adds to the reality that there is in fact food for cats yet you don't have one.
Then you realize this isn't a new smell. Not at all, and you know exactly where you met it before - your bag, the one you dropped in the hall yesterday. You already know you won't like what you'll find as you go grab it. You open it and see there is a collar, assumingly for a cat and a bit of that food. You study the collar some more. It was clearly used, that is evident by a small about of fur stuck to it here and there. You don't recognise the cat's name, but the address of owner........ that's your address?!
This is stupid. What is going on? Is this supposed to be some elaborate joke? Why can't you remember where you've been these past few days? Why did you wake up laying on the ground? What is this all supposed to mean?!?!
Your spiraling thoughts get interrupted by a ringing phone. You briefly remember plugging it into a charger yesterday. You take a deep breath and go pick up.
It's your mum's voice. "Oh, Hi sweetie! We were so worried about you when you didn't answer any calls for a few days."
You try to come up with a believable excuse for your absence. You don't want to make her (and dad) worry when you don't even know what happened. "Hi mum! Sorry about that... I-"
"We understand it must be hard for you, loosing your pet so suddenly." She cuts you off. "I know you need some time by yourself, but please just call if you need to talk or anything."
"about the cat thing-" you try to ask. But your mother just bombards you with more words and condolences. Before you can say anything she says goodbye and hangs up.
You compose yourself for a moment from this ambush, but waste no time in opening a photo gallery on your phone. About a million of photos of this cat jump out at you. You scroll for a bit, noticing a timestamps. It's the same when you check your accounts on social media. It's evident you've had this pet for some time. Why can't you remember such an important detail of your life that you've had a cat?
Angry and confused, you set this matter aside for another time and go deal with something else. Your stomach growls and there's a job to get to. And a pile of missed calls from bunch of different people.
Taking in a deep breath, you start by making yourself some breakfast. The toast tastes like disappointment even thou there is nothing evidently wrong with it. "No mater, that happens." you try to tell yourself as you move on to other things. Quickly showering, and then rushing to work while calling back and texting people.
You let yourself be consumed by the hectic rythm of daily life, hoping there would pop up some easy explanation for everything. When nothing gives answer to how or why you lost 3 days of your life (plus supposedly all memories of your beloved cat) you come up with one. When people occasionally ask where you've been, you tell them you spontaneiously decided to try camping. It was awful, your phone died and you messed up your days, that's why nobody could find you. Yeah.
Every time you tell that story your chest feels hollow and ready to shatter. You hate lying. it feels like the worst excuse ever, however everyone just nods understandingly and let it go.
Food does not taste as it should be. Not enough and too much flavour at the same time. Even your favourites are just a cheap rip-offs compared to what you remember. Eating feels like a chore at best. You chalk it up to stress, but something nags at the back of your mind that that's not it.
With some more investigation into your own life and speaking with people that know you, it's undeniably obvious that you indeed were once a cat owner. But what happened? Why you don't have any recollection of that?
And after a week or two or three, it seems like nothing happened. Well, to everyone else at least. Occasionally you get asked about your cat, but your numb expression usually speaks enough so no more questions are spoken.
There was that one time you overheard a conversation about you.
"...do you think they would like this cat toy? I've got two by accident, and I know they have a cat so..."
"Haven't you heard? They lost the cat."
"Oh..."
"yea, pretty sad. They are not dealing with it well. You've heard bout that camping failure, right? Just don't mention anything cat-related in front of them at all."
You play along as you are sure if you ignore the problem long enough it'll disappear. The blue flowers you found that day at your step wilted and got thrown out. That strange box got moved to the bottom drawer of your closet. You also packed away all cat stuff you could find. Out of sigh and out of mind.
Over time, seemingly all returns to normal. Still, there are the little things. Sometimes, when you sit at home by an open window, rustling of the leaves makes you long for something just out of your minds reach.
The other day, Greg (your coworker) wore this green sweater. You couldn't pull your eyes from it. As if you personally knew that particular shade of green.
As if it had a name.
Unfortunately, Greg interpreted your puzzled face as a like and wore it more often since then.
You don't know what it all means and what should you do about it all. So you settle for dealing with what each day deals, focusing on doing anything 'till you're exhausted enough to not think about all that. It helps, maybe. At least you don't have time to ponder all the wrong details and sensations.
There was a mushroom soup today for lunch. Looking at it it felt like it's an important detail. Instead of trying and failing to figure it out, you gulped it down while distracting yourself with a podcast about productivity. Afterwards rushing to whatever duties awaited you. Good stuff.
When you get home, it's already dark. You are exhausted and in no mood for... well, anything. You just want this to pass. Ordering a takeout is almost automatic. As you wait, you think back to when was the last time you really enjoyed dinner. You really can't place it on the time line. So you turn to trying to pinpoint what the food was instead, there is still no certainty in you but there's an inkling it was a remix of today's lunch. (were there tomatoes?) You are not even sure why that's the case. Or what exactly it means.
Your train of thoughts gets interrupted by the arrival of the takeout. You eat and continue with your evening. Once you prepare yourself to sleep, laying in bed and thoughts wandering, you grab your phone and open a photo of 'your' cat. You stare at it and observe the indifference it leaves you with. You've learned to recognise it's features by now, but there's still no emotional response in you (apart from confusion). You should feel something. Anything. That emptiness makes you frustrated. You throw the phone on your bedside stand. Pressing palms into your eyes as you let out an angry sigh.
To calm yourself before sleeping, you grab a book to read. It has a brave looking fairy on the cover surrounded by a bunch of sparkles. A winged magical bunny is displayed running (flying? playing?) around her feet. Dark sharp trees populate the background, here and there decorated with a mushroom or a flower.
Opening the book, you let your eyes glide softly from word to word. Reading in you bed till you doze off to sleep.
You dream. It's not so often that you do. Not lately at least. You are standing in a small clearing. There's some fungi a few steps in front of you. Stepping closer and crouching, you notice how they are spaced - creating a perfect circle. Soft looking red hats decorated with spots of white seem so irresistibly inviting you reach out your hand to pat one. You almost touch it when someone grabs your hand. You look up in shock to see who it is. At that moment, the dream turns to nightmare.
You wake up covered in a cold sweat, breathing sharply. Scrambling to turn on the light and fighting your own body which hasn't fully woken up yet. You haven't had a nightmare in a long time. You are pretty sure still this was even worse that the ones you had till now.
There was this... creature. You remember your head in so much pain, your ears bleeding, and eyes ready to pop out of your head from the pressure filling your head. Details are fuzzy yet in your nightmare you knew it was that creature causing it. With too many eyes and green skin. You still feel a leftover pressure of it's intense stare.
You can't sleep the rest of the night. Next day at work, Greg approaches you, wearing that sweater again. He begins a small talk, asking you how are you doing and such. You can't even register his words properly. Your eyes are fixated on his sweater - You are sure it's that exact shade of green as the creature from your nightmare. All your limbs itch, ready to jump and run while horrified feeling pools in your stomach.
You spit out some lame excuse, not even sure it was coherent and almost break into run as you escape to the toilet. There you take your time calming down. Taking deep breaths, splashing cold water on your face and telling yourself that you're fine. You're fine. Fine. Absolutely fine.
It seems almost impossible at first, but you eventually relax enough to continue on with your day. Paying close attention to avoiding Greg and his sweater. You just need some quality sleep that's all. You repeat this to yourself too many times.
Once you get home and finally lay down to sleep, it does not get better. This time, the dream is almost peaceful, twigs and leaved crunch under your feet as you follow a blonde man through woods. You are not concerned where is he taking you, it seems imperative that it's safe. Soft light seeps through the branches as a conversation is happening between you two:
"Butterflies."
"I mean, what if the inner vector of an apple was double the cost, would still the same stamping apply?"
"maybe metamorphosis the controller while summer could grow?"
"Hahaha, only if the mini birds vote for the magnetic cooking."
At this point the man turns around and reveals the same face from yesterday. Everything else fades away as his black and yellow gaze pierces you while an immense pain starts to rumble in you head and ears and you start to cry.
You wake up horrified and confused. You check your ears to see if they really bleed. Thankfully not. It's just the sensation lingering. You don't even try falling asleep again.
Next few nights are similar. It usually starts with a calm scene, by a warm fireplace, a meadow full of flowers, a mushroom circle, a green garden, a cool shadow over a river, a cabin, or a butterfly sitting on a finger. Sometimes the scenes repeat, sometimes there are pieces of dialogue, or someone laughs - sometimes it's you. Often times it does not make sense.
But it always ends the same. Those black and yellow eyes. They stare at you unblinking. Some nights those eyes have a face, with green complexion, blonde hair and mushroom-like horns. Some nights not. The only thing unchanging are those eyes and the pain that follows.
As a result, you can't really rest at night. To fill the time, you write the dreams down. Hoping if you put it down to paper it will leave you alone. It doesn't work so far.
It's depressing. Basic pieces of your life that you thought to be the base of everything are now not fitting where they used to. As if you've been violated and now your life isn't fully yours anymore. A page got torn out from the book and now nothing makes sense.
Today it starts to rain heavily from the morning. You try going through the motions of the day but your mood is at the point of freezing really. About halfway through deciding you need a little cheer-me-up, you walk into the nearest café. There's a radio playing. With nothing better to do as you wait for your order, you listen to whatever it's playing
A lightning strikes, with thunder following almost immediately behind. Must have been close. Lights flicker but stay on. One of the employees jumps a bit from the surprise and bumps into the radio, moving the receiver as a result.
The melodic tunes get immediately replaced with the grey static. Weakness washes over you. The static, it hums in your ears, in your head, in your mind. You can't hide from it. There's nothing else. You can't hear anything else at all. Can't see anything. You can't think. There's only the constant buzzing. It's under your skin. Crawling, like an insect. It's too much
You black out.
When you come back to your senses, a few bystanders are near you, helping you to your feet. With worried look on their faces, they ask if you're all right.
The radio is back to playing the background melodies it was before. You say you're fine. It's fine. The by-standing saviours dissolve and you don't know what to do. What did just happen?
You continue on with your day but can't focus on anything. Jumping at the slightest things.