City Hunter

Chapter Two

10/6/70

My heart pounded. What had happened? Had she gone out of her room? No; I hadn't heard the door open, or my mom's footsteps. All I heard was the thumps, and then shattering glass.

I glanced toward the window, which was still intact, then at the floor, which didn't have anything shattered on it. It was like my mom had just disappeared.

I looked back at the door. This didn't make sense. Why had there been not sound when it opened? The door had been closed when I had made my mad dash here. And I hadn't heard it slam.

I walked out of the room. What would I do? I couldn't just go to the police and say, "Hey, my mom randomly disappeared from my house, but I don't know how or why." I mean, I could, but it's not like they would listen to me. The world wasn't like that anymore.

Reaching the woodmetal table in our dining room, I sat down on one of the chairs and rested my head on the fake wood, feeling the cool metal surface on my cheek. My fingers were drumming anxiously on my thigh as I tried to make sense of my scrambled, frenatic thoughts. What to do? What to do? My mom had always been my steady rock, my voice of reason when I lost my temper and started acting irrationally. Without her, I was on my own with my decisions -- and I had never been a very good decision-maker.

Suddenly I heard a sound. A loud clang as something hard and heavy crashed to the ground from the room next to the dining room, the kitchen. I froze, my heart hammering, as my ears picked up the sound of whatever it was rolling across the sterile metal floor for a few seconds before coming to a halt.

There was a discarded kitchen knife on the table. I picked it up, and, as quietly as I could, crept across the room and through the doorway, holding my breath the entire time. I cautiously stepped into the kitchen, and...

A small, skinny brown tabby cat was crouched on the kitchen table, staring up at me unremorsefully with narrow orange eyes. He should have been remorseful. He just scared the living daylights out of me by knocking a water bottle to the floor.

"Oh, you're still here," I grumbled, picking up the water bottle and placing it carefully back on the table, far away from the edge, and putting the knife by its side. "Why are you so annoying, Parí?"

Parí didn't make a sound. He just stared up at me with those pumpkin-orange eyes.

Parí's full name was Parícutin. I had named him after a very interesting volcano in olden-day Mexico that had formed in a farmer's cornfield. I was into geology -- volcanoes in particular -- and when I learned we were getting a cat, I had to name him after a volcano. It was either Parícutin or Eyjafjallajökull -- Eyja for short.

But imagine! Waking up one day having no clue that a huge geological event would happen right outside your window, and then blam -- there's a volcano.   I mean, that wasn't exactly what happened, but still. Having your life overturned in a day. 

I suddenly realized that was pretty much what had happened to me.

Wow, Melissa. Self-pity, much?

Parí meowed, a high-pitched, keening noise that demanded my immediate attention, jolting me out of my thoughts. I was actually surprised he hadn't made a noise yet. Parí was a very demanding cat.

I bent to pick him up. "All right, fine, you can have some attention..." But as soon as my arms wrapped around him, he hissed and flailed, nearly scratching me as he fought to escape my grasp.

"What the -- stop!" I managed to lower Parí to the ground, and he immediately scampered underneath a desk, where he crouched, trembling, in the same position he was in when I found him.

Parí was limping; I noticed that now. His back left leg was moving stiffly and slower than the others. Maybe he'd been hurt by a neighbor cat when he was outside.

I lowered my body to the floor and sat down slowly, holding my hand out to him and blinking gently to show him that I wasn't a threat.

Parí didn't move.

After a few minutes, I sighed. Stupid stubborn feline.

I crawled toward him and gently maneuvered my hand to the side of his head. Parí reluctantly let me scratch his cheek, and I let my other hand examine his back left leg. I could feel something there... maybe some missing fur...

Still scratching his cheek as not to disturb him, I glanced down at Parí's leg and gasped. He hadn't been scratched, or bitten. He had been burned. No -- branded. "Oh, you poor thing," I whispered, cradling Parí.

It was a symbol of some sort, looking almost like an abstract crown with a star at the center. Who would do that? More importantly, why? What would someone have to gain from branding a cat?

Maybe it had something to do with my mom's disappearance.

I grabbed a notepad and pencil from my pocket with one hand and sketched the symbol down.

-~<*>~-

I had never seen that symbol before. But maybe my mom had.

My eyes caught on something else beneath the symbol. Another brand. This time a word.

Opalesca.