I think of a soft bunny rabbit, which is prey to the fox and the hawk.

Chapter 10

The first day of the renovation is uneventful, other than me trying to pretend that I am unaware of the guys working on the guesthouse. Most of the time I just spend going from room to room, trying to act casual. Now I am reading a book. Now I am “washing the dishes.” (There aren’t any dishes.) Now I am contemplating the universe in this wingback chair. I’m trying to look like a respectable person. Not a freak.

When the guys finally leave, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief. Why? I have no idea. They weren’t paying attention to me in any way. Not once. There really was no reason for me to enact this charade of being a person all day.

I wonder if this is specific to me, or if everyone feels this way at a certain point. Are we all just sitting around pretending to be normal? Pretending not to go through a thousand different emotions in the span of half an hour? I really can’t be the only one feeling this way. I mean, I doubt I can be. I hope I can’t be.

I have a very serious night planned involving the wearing of sweatpants and watching Ancient Aliens. It is impossible to ponder any earthly issues when clearly we are all descended from the Anunnaki tribe. Don’t you see? All of a sudden we were given democracy and harvesting from some extraterrestrial force from above. Otherwise, how could Homo sapiens possibly have been the one form of the human species to survive? We weren’t even the biggest! Our brains weren’t even the biggest!

These are the things I lovingly contemplate in my daydreams.

Also, maybe I can convince myself that whatever it was I definitely did not feel last night was, perhaps, just some sort of alien life-form. A being from somewhere near Orion’s Belt. Perhaps a star traveler from the Gemini constellation. Nothing to worry about. Just studying. Taking notes to bring back to the mothership.

All of this is going swimmingly until the sound of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists on Netflix is interrupted by a subtle noise coming from somewhere near the back of the house, behind the pantry.

A scratching noise.

I hit mute, cutting off a very fascinating theory about the first man called “Adamo” by the Sumerians, created by the Anunnaki as a slave race to mine for gold. I am in the middle of reminding myself to rewind this particular part of the show when I hear it again. Subtle. Scritch scritch scritch.

Not like the sound you would imagine from, I don’t know, some sort of monster outside the house trying to get in and eat you. Just a little scratch. Perhaps, maybe, a cat. A sweet little cat just trying to make itself known. Maybe hoping for a saucer of milk.

These are the fluffy warm rainbow thoughts I force myself to think as I follow the sound out through the hallway, through the kitchen, and to the pantry. The pantry is just a little tiny white room off the kitchen, stocked with cans on the shelves, a broom, a mop, and a few cases of bottled water. Why there would be a cat in the pantry is beyond my grasp and, of course, there is no cat in the pantry.