#ourspecial

Halfway through the third film, they are seven reels in, and Harry starts to sweat.

“I know,” says the Lieutenant dryly, “that we aren’t simply wasting time for fun.”

Harry is up out of his rusted seat in an instant, the abandoned cinéma echoing cavernously with his pacing.

“The subject chose a flintlock pistol. Small, personalized to look Graadni. The signature said Katya. In the film, when Katya shoots Valery-”

“Detective. Revachol only has so many Occident-made Graad gangster films at hand.”

Some of us lack imagination, Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor, Kim had told him once, mouth curving to soften what came next. That’s what you’re here for.

“If it isn’t real, then why is it here?” Harry jabs his own temple hard enough to jog his hippocampus, the slippery bastard. “I can hear it, I can see it. Why can I see it?”

It plays out so clearly. The cafe, the clocktower, the murder. Stepping in the footprints left by a Graad woman’s fur-lined heels. The old film shuddering on the projector, his father’s heavy hand on his shoulder.

A sigh, never any heavier than Harry deserves. Behind the whitened shield of his glasses, the Lieutenant’s eyes close. Beneath their lids, they move restlessly, laboring. And Harry is ready to sink as deep into his despair as the seventh reel’s bedside death scene will allow, when it abruptly crackles to an end.

Somehow, it doesn’t matter. Kim doesn’t move, concentration furrowing his brow, until - he smiles at nothing, ghostly in the pallid glow of the projector.

I was still living with my mum when we got him, though I was the one paying for rent and utilities and had been for a couple of years. I was in the early stages of organising my move to the town I'm in now at the time, and assumed I'd find a new cat of my own once I'd gone. But she died a few months after he arrived. I was still working ridiculous hours at the time on top of processing the shock of it and dealing with funeral arrangements, and since I just didn't have the energy to give this hyperactive baby the kind of playtime he needed, I thought for a while about rehoming him. Wisely, I chose to get rid of the job instead.