It
was December thirtieth, and the airport was bustling with people. Men and women sped about, juggling suitcases
and children as they walked. Flight
attendants yawned, exhausted from the long flights. The roar of planes periodically startled the
commuters, while pilots looked tiredly over their club sandwiches and longed
for vacations.
Children
waiting before each gate plastered their running noses to the viewing glass,
while nervous mothers took one look at the monstrous plane turbines �" too
close!! - and summoned them back with shrill voices.
No
one saw the cat, long and lean, as it slunk aboard Flight 107 bound for Eastern
Kor. It stalked up the ramp disappeared
quickly into the cargo bay.
Of course,
no one would have thought her to be anything but a cat.
Her
name was Elevine, and she was human. Her
parents had died but a week ago; she had pleaded for death. This, by far, was much worse.
She’d
returned home after the funeral in a gloom. Her father had become ill during one of his
business trips north. Her mother,
worried, had driven him to the nearby hospital.
They never reached their destination. Her father breathed his last in
the car; her mother died of grief. No
relatives were left to console El, and no one was to adopt her. She was forced to give up her dreams of
college to take a job at a bar nearby (an occupation which she had neither the
physique nor the patience for). She quit
after three days �" life in the slums would be better than the boorish
atmosphere she had suffered through at “work” �" and resolved to die.
And
so, she’d gone to bed late that night, wrapped in the colors of mourning. She swallowed half a bottle of pills, laid
herself down upon her lonely bed, and felt her heart slowing…slowing…slowing…
Then
she had woken up in the morning as a cat, sleek and black. Meowing distressingly, she had prowled over
to the bathroom and leapt, light as a feather, upon the sink to gaze at her
face in the mirror �" behold, whiskers!!
She twitched her ears and arched her tail, black pupils dilating at the
movement.
What
had happened? Was it something in the
medicine? Was this a dream? Elevine hung around the house for a day. She had planned to stay forever, for the rest
of her natural life, until the men had shown up. They wore black suits and spoke in loud
voices, tromping up the stairs without bothering to place their shoes
outside. They had spoken of renovation,
of fixing up and selling the house. They
had laughed at her father, mocked him, called him a fool �" and she had hidden
under her bed, shivering, as they walked by and fingered her every
belonging. She could not stay; she had
to leave.
Elevine
had made the two-day trek to the airport by herself, and now she lay on a stack
of rugs in the cargo bay of a plane bound for Eastern Kor. She knew her father had business holdings
there and summer houses built as gifts by happy clients.
Eastern
Kor was the place to be. The people were
genial and the music was tolerable. If
she were to truly die, that would be the place.
The
plane departed, and the parcels within the bay shifted minutely as the craft
shot into the air and ascended; it would land in Kor approximately eight hours
from takeoff. Elevine sank her claws
into the fluff of the stack of carpets she had chosen as a bed, kneading it
just so with her paws before lying down �" she had never understood this odd
behavior of cats until now. The cargo
bay was musty with an odd stench, but it was quiet and allowed for a modicum of
peace. Her paws throbbed sorely from her
trek to the airport, and her eyelids grew steadily heavier. Within moments, she was asleep.
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