#mwuah!

Opening Up

It sucked coming home so late, especially with all that rain. After, yet, another dragging day of witnessing absolute horrors, coming home, Alex practically dropped their body into the door. Upon finally stepping into their house, they clicked the door behind themselves, muffling the sobbing clouds

Their weird ass cat, Clyde, sat at the small, round, dining table. Its yellow eyes blinked, “How was work?”

“Exhausting.” After closing and setting down their umbrella, Alex let out a sigh, lifting their uniform’s heavy coat off their hunched body and hung it on the thin coat hanger. “Y’know, the usual. Just gotta… sit down… maybe make a cup of tea.”

“Want me to make bubble water on the…” the creature traced circles in the air, “hot thing?”

“Stove? Yeah, actually. I’d really appreciate it..” Alex paused, brows furrowed, “Wait- you know how to use that thing?”

It nodded, “You turn on the knobs and, then the, sttt..circle thing.. tops turn red. I’ve seen you do it before.”

“Hm, yeah. That sounds about right.” They eased their boots off by the door, then made their way to the kitchen cabinets, “Have at it. I’ll get you a pot.”

As Alex reached for and opened the cabinet doors, Clyde tilted its head, “What’s in the rest of those little doors?”

“Oh, the cabinets?” Alex handed Clyde a small, metal pot, which it, then, took to the sink and began to fill with water. “Just general kitchen stuff. Pots, pans, spices…” they spoke over the rain hitting the road and the pot’s wet, metal hum, “Not the tea though. That’s kinda more where you’re at- by the sink.”

Once the pot was filled, it stopped the water, passed the pot back to Alex and then began to pull open all the little doors, “What does the tea look like?”

“They should be in little boxes. One should have a bear on it?”

Clyde squinted into one of the drawers, “keeyy… leee… sty.. all?”

Alex raised a brow, “Does the word start with a ‘C’” they traced the letter in the air.

“Yes.”

“‘Celestial!’ That’s them.”

“Alright.” Clyde sifted through the boxes “Which one you want? Green? Sleep?… Gine grr?”

“Ginger? Ginger sounds nice.”

Clyde echoed Alex’s voice, “Ginger it is.”

“Thanks!”

Clyde huffed, “Don’t mention it.” The box rustled as it pulled out a tea packet. To the side of the boxes, it spots a brown oddity in the corner, adorned with colorful stickers. It pulls it out, along with the tea, “Hey, what’s this?”

Lights sparked on in Alex’s eyes, “Oh! That’s my sketch book!” They snatched the thing from its claws and began to flip through the pages, “Man! It’s been forever since I’ve opened this thing… I used to doodle in it all the time before this… fuck-ass job.”

Clyde scrunched up its face, “Doodle?”

“Yeah! Here, I’ll show you- hold on, le’me get a pencil!” Alex set the sketchbook on the dining table and raced to their bedroom and, soon, returned with a yellow pointy thing and a tiny metal object with holes. Over the trash can, they stuck the yellow stick into one of the holes, shedding off what appeared to be wood, then returned to the dining table to flip the sketchbook to a blank sheet. With the dark tip, Alex began to write symbols onto the page, narrating every movement, “I’ll start with a circle… then some rectangles… dot- dot… maybe some squiggles for the hair- then a neck…” with every soft scratch the tip made on the page, a line appeared. It was like watching magic. One moment, there was a blank page, then, the next moment, “Line, line, box box…” Alex drew an arrow and wrote

Me

“…And that’s me!”

Clyde sat there for a moment with its jaw ajar, “gimme that thing.” It held out its claw, then shifted its eyes, remembering the magic word “..please.”

“Pencil.” With a wide smile, Alex dropped the pencil into those claws, then twirled their hand, “give it a whirl!”

Clyde clumsily situated the magic stick into its four fingers, then began to scratch the page with the tip. Lines turned into shapes and shapes turned into little units of invigoration. First, there was the face, then the horns, the uniform stripes down its sleeves, then the large zipper in the center of its chest. Once blank, this section of the page was now Clyde’s closest replica of its reflection. To top off the illustration, it, while admittedly crude, attempted to copy Alex’s arrow and Me.

Arms crossed, Alex sipped on their ginger tea and nodded, “Nice! That’s actually pretty good for your first time!”

It felt as if some tingling force was tugging on the corners of Clyde’s mouth and from the inside of it’s chest. For some reason, though, it didn’t mind- it couldn’t mind. Dismissing the sensation, however, it looked up to its next subject, sitting across from it, and, once again, scratched at the page, lines flowing more than they did before, now that the pencil was solid in its claws. Once the image manifested, Clyde, again, copied the arrow, pointing to the portrait of Alex, writing:

YOU

Seeing that the page was now full, it dropped the pencil.

“Yeah!” Alex took the pencil and wrote the word by Clyde’s drawing of them.

Clyde shifted its eyes to the previous page and up to the writing stuck up in the corner. It pointed to this mysterious text, “What does this, in the corner, mean?”

“That’s the date,” Alex passed the pencil back to Clyde, “I always jot it down when I finish my drawings so I can look back and know when I drew it.”

“Hm.” Clyde twirled the pencil back into its four fingers, “What’s today?”

“Uhm…” their voice trailed off as they stood up and made their way to their calendar, “1988…January…”

In the corner of the page, Clyde scratched down the year and its closest approximation of the spelling for what it heard:

JANeeuARY

“Today’s a Tuesday… the twelfth!”

TWelth

The tip skating across the grainy texture of the page was an addictive vibration. Clyde flipped the page, then paused, eyes darting around the room for a new subject to draw, eventually landing on the front door. It scribbled down two rectangles, one for the door, then one for the door’s window, through which rain could be seen pouring down from the sky, then, finally, a circle representing the door’s handle. Besides the sketch, it drew an arrow, labeling the sketch:

DOR

“A door?”

“Well,” Clyde crunched its face, “what else am I supposed to draw?”

“Hm,” Alex put their chin on top of their hand, “What’s your absolute favorite thing in the world?”

After a moment, Clyde lit up and began to scratch at the page once more, first outlining several shaky curves, then scribbling in the one at top, and, finally, adding two triangles and a jagged mouth for a face, making a Jack-o-Lantern and, with an arrow, labeling it:

FAVORit thing

“Oh nice!” Alex beamed, “Yeah, I like Halloween too.”

Clyde dropped the pencil and slid it to them, now setting it’s chin on its hand, “What ‘bout you?”

“Oh- shoot…” Alex’s spine pulled them straight soon before they held their chin, “I need to think about this one- hold on…” their voice trailed off until, “Ah! Got it!” They snatched the pencil, twirled the book to face them, and sketched away. With five fingers, as opposed to four, their lines were, clearly, a lot more cohesive, dancing together to suggest depth in what appeared to be a ghost popping out out a TV screen, exclaiming,

BOO!

Alex turned the sketch book back to Clyde, who read the note they left besides the illustration:

I really like horror movies!

“Horror movies, huh?” Clyde looked back up from the page to Alex, “Like that Critters thing you showed me last week?”

“Yeah.” Alex's eyes sparkled, “Oh- and especially- like- the really bad ones. I heard “Creepazoids” is supposed to be awful- I bought it yesterday.”

Clyde scoffed, “You humans are weird.”

Alex smiled, “Wanna watch it?”

There was a moment where the sound of rain hitting the roof filled the room.