A. S. Coomer
looked like twin beams of inadequacy: not quite white, not quite yellow, not nearly bright enough to shine more than a car length or so in front of the sedan. He listened to his grandmother yell at his mother. He did not try to pick out individual words or phrases but, instead, listened to the strange dance the cacophony of an aggravated, exasperated human voice made as it rose, lifted, settled then rose again. He watched the darkness around the small, isolated trailer strengthen as his grandmother turned off each of the lamps in his mother’s bedroom. The dark felt like something he could wrap around himself, steeling himself in against the light, against the probing light of everything he didn’t understand and didn’t understand him or his family. Eventually, Glenn’s thoughts returned, as they often did, to Rufus. He was such a beautiful creature. So mysterious, yet so familiar. When he’d first discovered the cat, he wasn’t sure it was even alive. He’d been sneaking around 124 Main looking for a loose board or weak spot in the crumbling walls, trying to find a way inside. Glenn was sure there was something cool inside the derelict, abandoned house. He’d taken to crawling on his hands and knees up under the porch, hoping to find a hatch or window leading into the basement. Instead, he saw the matted rib cage, just barely moving up and down, of the biggest cat he’d ever seen. “Oh,” Glenn said. “Hey, there, little fella. You all right?” The cat didn’t even lift its head or flick an ear. No sign it had even acknowledged Glenn’s presence. Glenn approached it slowly, knowing full well a wounded or strange animal was something to caution. When he was hovering above the cat, which he saw was skinny to the point of starvation, it still didn’t move or show any sign of attacking or running from him. “Oh, you poor thing.” Glenn reached down a hand and gingerly stroked the cat’s fur, just behind the ears. The cat’s eyes opened, searched blindly directly ahead, blinked several times languidly, then turned to Glenn. He’d never felt anything like it before. A connection as strong and as powerful as a volt of electricity. Those yellow eyes saw Glenn for who he was. They saw his loneliness. His anger. His drive to find the darkness, to shuck the responsibilities inherent in the light. Glenn blinked first. Even behind the skin of his closed eyelids, Glenn saw those eyes, felt
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