The day that Felix killed Annette was the day I lost faith that everything happens for a reason.
Mine has been an existence hard for those looking in to understand. Many people would consider it solitary, but I know better; I have had my friends, have loved and been loved with an unconditional peace that you would be unable to comprehend. I have lived not for myself, but as a caretaker to my charges. Those friends were the most important part of my life, until the day Felix killed Annette, and everything changed.
People are transitory. They mean well, intend on never leaving, but we are not in control of our own destinies, and it is only a matter of time before fate takes them. My mother went when I was seven. She told me she would always be with me, but of course that was only what we say to comfort crying children. She was not there. My father and brother left during the second Great War; one to the killing fields, the other to a world of his own, where fathers do not bury their golden children.
I might have been lonely, but I had my friends, the family I accrued and collected. They brought me comfort in the simple simpering heat of my adolescence, gave my life purpose through the childless, nurturing years of my adulthood. When George Feallow kissed me under a willow tree they cheered my luck, and when he left me for a pretty girl in yellow lace they never once asked me what else I had expected. It’s true they couldn’t pick me up at the hospital when I had my eye surgery, or hold my hand when the doctor told me it was shingles. But nor did they judge my tears, and their presence was the only salve my wounds every needed.
I met Annette in a curio shop just off the main road on a rainy day in March. I had no intention of finding anyone new for the apartment; I had just rescued Lulu, a darling china ballerina, from a scrap bin, and she was still finding her place. It doesn’t do to introduce too many new friends at once; the rest have their feelings hurt. I only ducked in to save my paperback from the deluge. But as soon as I saw her I knew she was a kindred spirit. One delicate pink ear peeked out of her straw bonnet, and in her hands she held a bouquet of roses. Her smile was inviting, and when I picked her up I heard her voice, clear as a summer day, and knew we would be fast friends.
Felix was a harder case. I caught him the alley, fighting with Ms. Champagne. He had a notch out of one black ear, like a cartoon kitty, and his bright green eyes were wary. Instead of shooing him away I brought him food in a little blue dish. It took three weeks before he would come into the apartment, and another year before he would stay for any length of time. He’s gotten a nasty scratch in another fight, a lighting bolt where hair wouldn’t grow from his back paw up his stomach. Once he was brushed and well-fed he looked like a different creature, but he never lost the wariness in his eyes.
I was trying to take a picture of him. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe it was too soon. He was lying in the sun with one paw curled around Molly, my hand-made leather horse, and it was such a picture. I snuck in close and snapped a few shots, but there was a spot of shadow on his nose that I wanted to clear up. So I turned on the flash.
He bolted. Ran for the window but it was closed, so he careened past on the windowsill, knocking everyone off their perch. I had set them all up to get some sun. A few fell on their sides, but Annette and Clarence tumbled to the ground. Clarence broke an arm, but Annette… Annette… shattered.
Felix doesn’t even seem to care. He’s sunning on the kitchen table like he was just a naught boy, like he ate my plants and threw up on the carpet in the den. He doesn’t seem to know he killed her, and I… It is my fault, isn’t it. I have made people of my friends. And people are transitory. They mean well. But it is only a matter of time…
Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.