Sugar and the Black Cat — a novella
Chapter One…A Place to Start.
Sugar woke languidly from his night-time reverie and felt instantly the depressing heaviness of his current existence. Even his gaunt frame felt weighed down with the ever-lingering pain, struggle and utter futility of being a human being. Sugar was a strange name for an adult male software engineer in middle class Brisbane to have; but he’s mother had nicknamed him Sugar on account to him being the sweetness of her life, so the name stuck. For professional and legal purposes, he used his real name; Mendell Yuria, but to friends, family, and social media, he was Sugar, or Sugs — used only by his best mates.
Before picking up his smart phone from the round oakwood coffee table in his one room studio apartment, he recalled a dream. To be more exact, he knew that he had dreamed throughout the night and that this dream had left a knowing impression on him, but he could not remember any exact detail or scene from this dream. For twenty or so seconds he furrowed his brow and tried to force his mind to remember but an unseen force of concealment kept the dream captive in the wasteland of almost forgetfulness. The sense of it — the deep dark blue hues of emotion this dream had evoked within him while he slept was perched ever so precariously on the edge of his consciousness, making its existence known but revealing nothing of its substance.
“Fuck it,” he said, shaking his head and deciding to forget the dream that he could not remember.
Picking up his phone his eyes widened at the date on the screen: June 23. He clenched his teeth and tried to suppress the rising torrent of emotion, but it was useless to resist, and he sighed out in frustration as the bitter memory of Rachael flooded his mind. He was holding her, kissing her and then whispering…Happy Birthday Baby and then he was listening to her tell him that she no longer loved him and was leaving him.
The happy and the sad memories of him and Rachael danced in his mind with no linear order, and he felt his heart soften with desperate missing, and then harden with vivid anger at the abandonment and rejection of it all. Today was her birthday — for the past four years they had celebrated her birthday together and he had always gone all out for her birthdays. Today was meant to be their fifth birthday celebration together, but she had broken up with him five months ago. She was no longer his partner, no longer a part of his life, but remnants of her and the love and life they had shared remained painfully wedged in his calloused heart.
The clawing of feline nails against the lounge room window, snapped Sugar out of his bittersweet reminisce and he stood, making his way to the window that opened to a small balcony. The black cat had returned for eight days in a row at almost the exact same time each morning. For the first four days he had ignored the cat’s persistent meows and incessant clawing but on the fifth day he had folded and let the cat in. Slowly stumbling to the kitchen, Sugar emptied the last of his milk into a peach porcelain bowl that he had sacrificed for the black cat’s pleasure. The ungrateful feline circled the peach bowl and then hungrily lapped out the cold creamy milk. Sugar watched the black cat with a mixture of curiosity and wariness — he didn’t really like cats, they unsettled him, but here he was giving up the last of his milk to a strange, scrawny black cat.
“I should have kept ignoring you, but I let you in and now I have to eat dry cereal for breakfast,” Sugar said, glaring at the black cat who was looking so well pleased with itself.
“If you had ignored me for one more day, I would have moved on,” said the black cat, cleaning its whiskers.
“Biggest mistake of my life,” Sugar replied, shaking his head.
“The most profitable mistake of your life, because now the work can begin.”
Sugar’s heart halted as his brain caught up with his words and he fixed his gaze on the scrawny black cat that was talking to him. He shook his head dismissing what he had just heard as reality — the cat didn’t answer his questions, he was just imaging what the black cat would say if it could, right?
“I can see by the stunned and confused daze in your eyes that you finally heard me,” The black cat said, in a voice and tone that reminded Sugar of Sherlock Holmes.
A sense of dread washed over Sugar and he shook his head terrified of what he thought was happening.
“You’re a cat,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say.
“Would you prefer I was dog or a snake? I’ve been both before — I prefer dog form myself. But this form is nifty. I like being nifty, and you live on the third flour, so a dog wouldn’t have worked.”
“I need to go back to therapy,” Sugar said, closing and opening his eyes as if this action would dismiss the black cat from the room.
“Yes, therapy is always a good idea.”
“Even my hallucination thinks I’m crazy.”
“Oh, so you think because you’re talking to a cat that you’re crazy.”
“Yes, because cats don’t talk. Cats don’t talk — humans talk, people talk not animals, and not to humans. So just shut up and go away.”
Sugar held his eyes closed for ten long seconds and when he opened them, he sighed in relief at not seeing the black cat. Chuckling in tentatively, he turned to make sure the apparition was gone and jumped backwards hitting the fridge.
“Merely closing your eyes and wishing things different doesn’t make it so.”
“Please go away. I’m having a bad day.”
“You’ve been having a bad day for five months now. Ever since the female with the red bouncy locks left, you’ve been stuck in a void of sadness.”
“How-how do you know about Rachael? You couldn’t possibly know — I see. You’re my subconscious trying to get through to me. That’s all this is, I’ve read about this before. You’re not real.”
“If I agree with your supposition that I am your subconscious, will it make things easier for you?”
“Uh — -a little.”
“Okay then, I am your subconscious.”
“Oh, thank God. I can handle this. If you are my subconscious, you want to tell me something, so just give it to me straight and leave.”
“I can’t lie.”
“What?”
“I can’t lie, even it makes you feel better I must tell the truth.”
“Tell the truth about what?”
“Alas, I am not your subconscious”
“You’re not?”
“No, I am a being separate from you in form and yet a part of you in collective divine energy.”
“Right — so I’m crazy, crazy.”
“I do so despise that word. Your kind like to apply that word to any thought or person that doesn’t fit nicely into your form-based reality. Because you find it so incredibly difficult to fathom that there is more to your existence than what is seen, heard, tasted, felt or proved by your science.”
“Those beliefs keep us sane. We can’t be walking around with imaginary talking animals all day, I’m not a toddler.”
“Those beliefs keep you blind and muted to the wonderous expanse of life and creation and divinity. Now, you may very well have mental health issues, but you’re in good company because all humans do. Most are just too afraid and ashamed to accept it and journey through healing.”
“You’re not going to leave, are you?”
“No. Not until my job is done.”
“Job…are you here to kill me? Are you death?
“You know, I get that one a lot. But no, I’m not death. He’s far warmer than I am.”
“Death…warm?”
“Oh yes. You humans mistake the event of death with death itself. Death is like a friendly face in a strange new place. The decay of your dust sleeve can be painful and horrifying and lonely, but your spirit — the real you takes hold of deaths hand and crosses over into the next chapter of existence — one beyond form and matter.”
“So, you’re here to prepare me to meet death?”
“Well no — I mean in some ways I will but no that is not my assignment.”
“Then what is your assignment?”
“Sugar, I am here to help you live again and to love again.”
“What a fucking anti-climax, I was expecting something real mind blowing, but as you can see, I am living. You can go back to wherever you came from.”
“Granted, you wake up and breathe and potter around in a manner resembling life, but you’ve become a dry husk of who you once were.”
“I am not the only sad, dry husk on this planet — go bother someone who could be fucked with life.”
“So, you’ve given up on life then?”
“No, I’m not suicidal or anything. I just don’t see the point.”
“Because Rachel left and broke your heart?”
“No! Even when we were together, I didn’t see the point of life but at least she was someone to give a fuck about, and she gave a fuck about me until she didn’t. Anyways, I don’t need to explain myself to a make belief cat. I’m not the assignment you want.”
“What if was to tell you that you had fifty more years to live, would you want to live all fifty the way you are now — not giving a fuck about life?”
“Fifty years is a long time so probably not.”
“And what if I was to tell you, you had one more day of life left. Would you want to live it as you are now?”
“Nah, I don’t think so, but then again if it’s just one more day — end it already.”
“The truth my human friend, is that you want to live again but you are terrified of the cost and pain and horror and sometimes meaninglessness of it all, so you’ve opted to disengage.”
“Your big lofty words are not making me feel better, cat.”
“I’m not here to make you feel better, Sugar. I am here to help revive that which is dead within you.”
