Miso Soup

Her eyes darted open suddenly. The full moon beyond her windows cast long shadows across the kitchen and desk area in front of her bed. She reached across her body with a half-asleep arm to tap on her phone. 

3:28AM. 

She paused and listened for what had woken her. She swore she heard an angry rattling of the antiquated knob, but it was quiet now. The shadows remained unmoving. She squinted through the darkness of her studio, searching for Miso. Her orange cat was not in his usual sleeping spot on the foot of her bed. 

As she turned over to continue her inspection, she flinched at the sight of Miso directly beside her head. He was sitting on the pillow beside her, staring down at her. His fragile, feline head started to tilt slowly like a clock. So far sideways that the peak of his fuzzy ear seemed to reach the orange stripes at his chest. The usual green glow of his eyes was slowly snuffed out by growing pupils, until the whole of his eyes were pitch black. 

"Miso?" Was she still dreaming? He continued his statuesque gaze into her eyes and began to open his pink, wet mouth as he would to meow, but no sound came out of him now.

Sophia pivoted with a slow, mechanical turn of her body towards the other side of her bed and picked up her phone to turn on the flashlight. But as she shined the light towards the pillow beside her, all she saw was sporadic cat hairs sprinkled across the pink, silk case. She waved her phone around her studio, bending the shadows around her, until the light found Miso sitting by the door. Head still tilted and body frozen in time, Miso continued his ominous stare. Sophia’s hand started to shake and she felt her heart beating in her throat. 

“What is it, Miso? Come here.” She made the puckering sound used to summon him, but the cat was not broken from his strange trance. Sophia laid on her back, turned off the flashlight, and laid her phone beside her. Peering through the darkness, towards the ceiling, Sophia wondered if she was stuck in a dream. The kind you are aware of but can’t figure out how to escape from. 

A light tapping noise pulled Sophia from her thoughts. A steady beat on the other side of the wall beside her. With one long, steadying breath, she sat up from the safety of her bed and grazed her toes on the cold wooden floor. Slowly, carefully, she placed her feet firmly on the ground and began to creep towards the wall, headed towards the bathroom door. 

Without stepping inside, she reached her small arm around the frame of the door and switched on the fluorescent bulb inside the bathroom. The sterile brightness of the light changed the scenery of her entire studio. The shadows changed directions, moving towards the entry door. She blinked rapidly and rubbed her eyes, adjusting to the whiteness of the bathroom. A stain of bright red was creeping across the linoleum floor. She gripped the door frame so tightly she felt a nail break. She carefully stepped inside the threshold. The whiteness of the space clashed hideously with the red now spreading further and around the toilet.

 Miso stood in the corner of the shower and the wall, head coated in the sticky red. His paw was nudging a small, capless tube. It rolled until it bounced off the wall, and Miso nudged again and again. 

Tap, roll, tap, roll. 

The contents of the tube spilled out with each roll and bounce. Sophia realized with relief that the pigment coating Miso and her bathroom was one of her liquid blushes. To Miso's annoyance, she grabbed the tube mid roll and turned it over to read the label on the bottom: Blood Orange Crush. 

Now she was annoyed too. The shadows and darkness made her paranoid. Everything was how it should be, and she wasn’t trapped inside of a dream. And even though the tube was practically empty, she found its cap behind the toilet, twisted it on, and stood the tube up beside its friend group of other blushes on its shelf. 

She took Miso in loving arms and started to clean him at the sink with a warm, wet cloth. He seemed to soften and relax at her touch. She kept looking into his lazy eyes to ensure that they were in fact glowing and green. Once Miso and the bathroom floor were cleaned to the half-assed ability afforded at almost 4:00am, Sophia switched off the light and made her way to the entry door of her apartment to check the knob. Tightly secured and not seeming to be tampered with, she climbed into her fortress of a bed and reached down to the floor to retrieve Miso. Still relaxed and freshly cleaned, he settled onto her chest with a purr. Sophia turned on her favorite sleep sound to prevent any notice of bumps or creaks that might sound in the darkness. With the lull of birds chirping in a rain forest, and the calming vibration of Miso’s purring, she finally found herself closing her eyes and dozing off. 

Her morning alarm sounded off an hour later. With burning eyes and a dry throat, she blinked heavily to see the sun beaming through the crack of her two curtains. No more shadows. Warmth spread across her face. As she pulled her hands from under the duvet to rub her tired eyes, she realized her hand was sticky with what looked to be blood. She forgot it was time to start her period, which may have explained her inability to sleep last night. Her bedding was probably ruined. She’d normally put a pad in her underwear the night before. How did it not cross her mind? 

She sat up with a sure feeling that she would be inconvenienced for the rest of her day. But as she rose to the vantage point of the open layout of her studio, her heart seemed to skid to a halt. Coated over all of the wood and linen and pink silk and ruffles of her home were splashes of red. Everywhere. On her bed, on the wooden floors, on top of all her books on her desk, on the curtains. Dripping onto the floor from the stainless steel refrigerator. Painted over the empty brown bag from yesterday’s takeout on the nightstand. 

She floated away from herself and saw the abstract mess of this space from above. For an imperceptible moment, she wished she could stay here, separated and safe and unnoticed. But as she thought it, she snapped back into her body. Her mouth hung open and her eyebrows rose to meet her hairline. She snapped her head towards the door. It was open, only a little, so little she had to stare and stare to convince herself it was not still locked. 

Where was Miso? The distant sounds of rain pouring, birds chirping, trees rustling did not register to her as she called out for him. She slid off the bed and felt so separated from the scene before her. She was on one side of the world and the apartment around her was on another. She moved cautiously, stepping around the blood and into the bathroom. Her hands braced the walls as if she had to steady herself on a tilting iceberg. 

As she made her way into the bathroom, the liquid smear of blood started to mix with bits of gore leading into the shower. She breathed. Was this the first breath she took since waking up? She stood at the shower now, her nose almost touching the curtain, listening for any sign of life on the other side. She opened the curtain as if a portal to another dimension was awaiting on the other side. 

Her hands flew over her mouth. She was crying, she must have been, because her face was wet and warm. A steady stream produced by her body in a desperate attempt to wash away this horror. On the shower floor, Miso’s hollowed body lay out in a fetal position. It was as if he had shed his skin like a snake. He was sunken and lifeless and surrounded by a thick, grotesque soup of his own insides. 

The mess expanded and smeared the side of the shower and Sophia realized she had been following the trail of blood and bits that brought her here. She turned and followed the path the opposite way. Out of the bathroom, around her bed, and towards the door. She walked this trail without any conscious effort to move. She realized she had been screaming only because of the rawness in her throat. As her feet brought her to the entrance of her apartment, she reached for the knob. 

Pulling it only inches towards her, she positioned one eye into the opening, scanning the length of the hall. The brown oak floors were dusty and undisturbed. Small orange lights above each door illuminated the walls. Doors lined both sides of the hall, leading to the descending staircase at the end. She opened the door a few inches more. Looking down at her feet, toes speckled with blood, she noticed then that the trail ended just where her apartment did. Not a drop of blood beyond. 

But on the floor just beyond her feet, the familiar bottle of blush stood tall, presenting itself to her. Full and shiny with an unbroken safety seal. Slowly crouching down, Sophia reached for it and held it far away as if it might explode. She turned it over in shaking, sticky fingers and read the label: Blood Orange Crush.