The Comic Cat

The Comic Cat (498 words)

The librarian had found out the cartoon’s cat grim secret. But no one had believed her. Not her boss, not the police and most heartbreakingly not her fiancé. Everyone tried to assure her that the cat’s relation to the disastrous news was based on pure chance.

Yet that ominous cartoon character had accurately foretold another disaster again.

The world’s third greatest ocean liner had sunk with an immense number of casualties that had shaken the globe. She remembered yesterday’s cartoon section with the cat sitting at the rim of an inflatable pool, pressing a paw on a belly upped toy ship into the water. Its presence was evident yet easy to miss in the mayhem of the other characters fooling around.

But no one believed her.

XXX

An unusual summer heat penetrated the building even as the air conditioning system worked at full force. The librarian loaded the home page of the Italian embassy for the hundredth time. A great earthquake had hit Italy in the morning hours. Her fiancé was there visiting his family, preparing for their upcoming wedding in the Italian soil. The news came at 10:00. His name was on the early list of the victims.

A sudden recollection flashed in her mind. With eyes blurry with tears she fetched yesterday’s paper. The cat was there sitting on a washing machine. Among the turmoil of turning clothes she saw a boot sticking to the center of the glass.
For the first time the cat was looking out of the picture at her… with dark knowing eyes.

The day after, only one thing mattered to her any more. Starting a blog to tell the word.

XXX

Two weeks later she was correcting the final draft of her first entry to her blog, when someone asked for the yesterday’s edition of the local paper, which was already in use.

“Why is the earlier edition so popular?” she asked her assistant.

“Yesterday’s comic. They had to print an apology for it today. Here, I think I still got my copy.”

She brought out a page from her drawer and handed it to the librarian who looked as if she couldn’t recognize her.  Someone screamed somewhere in the adjacent park.

The Sunday edition of the comic was divided by three parts. The first panel was the close-up of the black cat looking directly at the reader. In the second panel it was missing an eye, its socket a mesh of blood and gore. In the third both eyes were out. A famous proverb hanged in a thought bubble above its head.

More screams came from both sides of the street. But the librarian didn’t hear anything.

The thought bubble said: "Curiosity killed the cat."

A girl at the end of the hall screamed. A high pitched shriek of anguish, loud enough to send the man sitting next to her off his chair. In her hands were her eyeballs. Behind the librarian, her assistant clutching her eyes started to shriek, too.