He felt himself being swallowed through its skull. His stomach broke from its moorings. His line of sight blurred and he scrambled in hysteria to launch his body from the thing, clawing at its sides.
Beanty felt his feet scrap against the dark smooth shards of it skin as fled in a cowardly panic but it fought back. It tipped over and prepared to give chase but the small cat had launched himself safely under the bed past the metal fly rod containers.
Breathing hard, Babachoolowe glowered in the darkness at the magnitude of the betrayal. Her hands shot under the bed and she lied to him in a singsong voice. He mapped escape routes in his mind and quickly counted the number of his lives remaining. How was it been possible, he wondered. Years of work spent training her. His ingénue had become his angel of death.
He shook his head, steeling his mind against the growing confusion. He was a mastercat able to control and direct his courtiers. He repeated the word softly to himself several times as he caught his breath.
To reestablish the hierarchal bond and as a test of her loyalty, he churtled several commands and demanded she tend his needs. He watched as she moved, careful to hold his tail rigidly in the air.
Awake from his pigeon induced coma, he relaxed from his position atop the large filing cabinet enjoying several long languid blinks. He leapt to the floor, laughing inwardly at the thought of them cleaning the dingleberries he was sure to create after this trip to the box. His mind retraced events from earlier in the day searching for reassurance that he had been dreaming.
He stopped.
She was moving toward him. She began plying him with treats, smiling and calling him by his many names. Buoyed by her submissiveness, he allowed himself to be carried into the bedroom.
His eyes went large and he moved forward as he watched the man wave salty treats in the air and feed them into the evil darkness, one at a time. On the ground, Beanty watched with pitiful amusement, wondering if stupidity or insanity caused the man to feed the thing.
The ruse was discovered too late as the thing came screaming into view and Beanty found himself plunged into darkness. With his head inside the gaping stomach, Beanty jammed his paws against the outside of the deadly abyss and with a prize fighter’s strength, fought against the weight of hands forcing him to his death.
It was sometime before they got the bleeding to stop. In that time, Beanty sat calmly in the door of the bathroom licking bits of their skin from his claws. He had settled on stupidity.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
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