My Little Family

‘Onyx!’ the firm yet tender voice bounces off every wall of the huge empty house, soon followed by the faint thud of a bowl touching the floor. She stands there for a couple of minutes, waiting for her cat to appear for dinner, but no cat sets foot in the living room.

‘It’s okay, you eat when you’re hungry,’ she murmurs.

The cat is gone, he is gone. Everyone she’s loved – everyone she’s had – is gone. She’s on her own now. But the cat must be here somewhere, he’s probably just playing hide and seek with her. There was no carcass after all. Not like in the case of her beloved, who had become a corpse on the couch by the time she got back from her late-night walks. It’s been thirteen days now since the last time she saw Onyx and twenty-two since the death of her husband. She seems to be more concerned about the cat though, and as for the death of her husband, she has long come to terms with the idea of mortality. It didn’t seem real – maybe because she didn’t see it happen. She didn’t cry, didn’t even shed a tear. His mundane belongings are still all over the house, but she refuses to look at them. Her chest feels heavy, almost suffocating, yet not a single tear ever appears in the corner of her eyes. Still, she hadn’t expected to lose her young and apparently healthy cat so soon, and her gut tells her he’s still around somewhere. And so, every evening at exactly six p.m. she takes the shiny white porcelain bowl with Onyx’s name engraved on it in jet-black letters, fills it with the stinky and awfully expensive cat food, and keeps calling for the animal that never shows up.

She is about to turn off the lights and head to the bathroom to have a nice warm bath when she notices something outside in the garden. It’s dark already, all the woman can see are two gleaming orbs, like the headlights of a car on a dark, foggy road. She blinks a few times to make sure they’re really there. They are.

‘Onyx!’ she cries out in delight and runs to the door. Before she even saw the body those eyes belonged to, she knew it was her beloved cat.

‘Where have you been, sweetheart?’ the woman asks softly and takes the animal in her arms. Onyx responds with a contented purr. ‘Come, dinner is ready!’

The cat slowly approaches his bowl and starts eating. He doesn’t seem hungry, she notes. Onyx munches calmly on his food, as if he hadn’t skipped countless meals in the past two weeks. She waits for him to finish dinner and puts his bowl in the sink.

After taking a bath, she makes her bed in the guest room and sits down with a book in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. She hasn’t slept in their bedroom since he passed away, for the silence and the empty side of the bed terrify her at night.

The following morning, she wakes quite early, even though it was already past midnight when she finally fell asleep. She goes to the kitchen and calls for Onyx.

‘Come on, breakfast time!’ her voice travels through the big house and Onyx responds with a meow from the stairs. ‘Good morning!’

In the sink, she finds a plate and a mug just as she’s about to pour fresh water for the cat. That’s strange, the woman wonders, for she doesn’t remember leaving anything there last night.

‘I probably forgot about it,’ she mutters. She wouldn’t be surprised; she often forgets things, and especially after a few drinks, it seems completely normal.

She only starts to get concerned on the seventh day. That morning, when she finds dirty dishes again, she knows beyond doubt that she hasn’t drunk anything from that mug. Is she losing her mind? Or did she lose it already? She knows living in this big house alone will do her no good in the long run. She will go entirely mad.

‘I wish you could speak,’ the woman says to Onyx. The realization that the cat can’t talk back makes her feel like a freak, talking to herself all the time. She keeps speaking to him, regardless, for she has a feeling that she’s being heard. Understood even.

Two weeks had passed since Onyx’s sudden reappearance. The reunion filled her with an almost unreal sense of joy, and the crushing weight of loneliness seemed to fade away. Ever since she was a little girl with one true friend and a couple of imaginary ones, her greatest fear had been being left alone. Her marriage seemed too beautiful to be true, yet the woman had to accept that there really was someone who loved her unconditionally.

Still, even in her joy, a small flicker of doubt lingered at the edge of her thoughts. Something had changed. At some point, she even considered that this was not her cat but someone else’s – he just eerily mimics Onyx. Is it even a real cat? She knew how stupid that sounded, but asking such questions seemed more rational to her as the days passed.

The woman is convinced that the noises she keeps hearing are not from a cat. They just can’t be. What kind of cat, she wonders, uses the dishes, opens and closes doors, and when did he get so heavy that the stairs creak under him? For she has heard the stairs too, that damn fourth step. Dread lingers throughout the house wherever she goes. Perhaps it’s all in her head.

One rainy evening, Onyx doesn’t appear for dinner, no matter how many times she calls for him. Panic coils in her stomach. ‘He’s gone again,’ she whispers. She hasn’t left any door open; the cat must still be inside. In her escalating worry, her mind races over the upsetting realization that Onyx seems to roam the house on his own.

The cat is nowhere to be found. He is not in the guest room, the kitchen, the living room, or the bathroom. Not even outside, in the garden. She must go upstairs. The silent and empty bedroom she hasn’t set foot in for weeks is up there too, and she feels a chill at the very thought of approaching it. Still, Onyx is more important.

She carefully moves up the stairs, the fourth step creaking beneath her foot. ‘Onyx!’ she calls as she reaches the top of the stairs, her voice trembling slightly. Only silence answers at first, too heavy in the air, the kind that makes her heartbeat deafeningly loud. Then she hears the faint meow from behind the closed bedroom door. As Onyx’s voice breaks the stillness, a shiver runs down her spine.

‘How did you get in there?’ she stutters. Her pulse shoots through the roof as her shaking hand reaches for the handle. Slowly, she pushes the door open an inch and peers into the dimly lit room. When the scene finally makes sense in her mind, she freezes. Onyx is curled up in the armchair, purring softly. But he is not alone. There’s just enough light in the room to make out a shape. A shadow. A man. The words leave her mouth automatically, but through her racing heartbeat, she can’t hear them.

‘It’s okay, you eat when you’re hungry,’ murmurs the woman as she turns around and leaves the bedroom behind.