Felix

“I haven’t been dead for very long,” she told them.

They did not answer her.

This was the fifth time they had not responded. She began to wonder if they ever would.

Again. She would try again. What other option did she have, really?

“Becca?” She reached out a hand, intending to rest it on Becca’s left hand where it rested on Felix’s thick fur. Instead, her hand passed through, dropping through the bones of Becca’s hand and continuing into Felix’s warm flesh.

“Ew.” She jerked her hand back, massaging it with her other, glad for the physical contact.

Was it physical contact? Was she merely imagining, remembering, what touch was?

Becca and Felix remained content on the couch, neither even flinching at the hand that had moved through them.

Becca maybe made sense. Humans were not generally known for their awareness of what they could not directly see or observe. And Becca was not one who ever expressed a belief in ghosts.

Is that what she was?

Felix, though. Felix should have felt her, right? Cats were supposed to be messengers, a connection between the living and the dead, or something, right? How many times had Felix lost his mind in the hallway, jumping and leaping at something that no one else could see? He should be able to feel her, feel the hand that had spent so many hours smoothing over his dark fur.

Maybe she wasn’t dead, after all. Maybe Felix couldn’t see her, couldn’t feel her, because she wasn’t here at all. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe she was sleeping soundly in their bed while Becca and Felix started their usual morning routine of coffee and snuggles on the couch while she got an extra thirty minutes of sleep.

Maybe she would wake up, could make herself wake up if she tried hard enough.

Maybe she wasn’t really sprawled at the bottom of the basement steps, an unpleasant surprise waiting for Becca to find her.

Her hand drifted up, moving to her neck, finding that tender spot above the bone that marked the top of her back. The bone that was sticking out further than it had been two hours ago. Her fingers moved over the bone, finding its boundaries, exploring the hollow above it. That seemed like a space that should be full of something, a space that should be connected to something.

She flinched as her fingers moved too far, prodded the fragment of nerve left behind.

She stood, looking down at Becca and Felix in their sleepy morning bliss. She turned to the kitchen, moving through to the mudroom and the steps that led down into the dark. It wasn’t dark down there now, she had turned on the light earlier at the top of the stairs, unwilling to navigate them in the dark, worried she would trip and fall. That was almost funny, wasn’t it?

She stood at the top, looking down at herself.

She was not asleep.

She was here. And she was there. Her body in one mangled piece, but her spirit split away.

All for a can of coconut milk.

She had intended to surprise Becca with her favorite, ridiculously rich, French toast. A quick jaunt down the stairs to fetch the coconut milk. She must have tripped, slipped on the worn wood.

She closed her eyes (that she realized weren’t really seeing anything at all) to better remember her trip down the stairs. The light on, her hand on the rail. Felix’s tail brushing her bare shins.

Felix. She had tripped over Felix.

She moved back to the living room, back to the room where her murderer lay safe and secure on Becca’s lap.

Felix opened one eye, dropped it closed again in a slow, lazy blink.

He had felt her before, she thought. He was ignoring me.

Felix’s lips curved, arcing into a smile.

He began to purr.