The Cat's Eye

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Chapter One

Kiara was at school one uneventful morning drooling on her desk. She was unimaginably bored. The other students watched the math lesson with sleepy expressions. One Kindergartener was even asleep on the floor. Miss Flower, the teacher, continued on, not noticing the children snoring in their hands. I will call Miss Flower Lily, because Kiara constantly called her teachers by their first names, and Lily was Miss Flower’s first name, after all. Some teachers would have thought this disrespectful, but after the first month with Kiara in her class Lily admitted that she couldn’t tell the difference between the two names. They both were for the same purpose, so Kiara didn’t ever imagine that it could be rude.
Lily finally looked up when the phone rang. Suddenly everyone in the room was awake. In a flash Lily was at the phone and she whispered, “Hello?”
There was a long, terrible pause in which Lily’s face lost all its color. She gasped, put her hand to her heart, and took a deep breath.
“Okay. Do you need Kiara back right away?”
Kiara sat up, her eyes wide.
“Right. I’ll call a bus. Thank you, Robert.”
The children stared in silence. Lily hung up, drew her stool, and just breathed for a minute, still clutching her heart. Finally Lily picked up the phone again and called the bus driver. His protests could be heard across the room, but Lily snapped something at him and he went silent instantly. “Okay. I’m coming,” the bus driver whispered. Lily hung up and motioned to Kiara to gather her things.


Kiara slowly walked away from the protesting classroom (“I want to leave early TOO!”) and toward the bus waiting specially for her. Kiara’s house was far away, and Robert was too busy at the moment to pick her up from school. The bus driver shot Kiara a pitiful look before he motioned Kiara to sit down.
Her mother had been acting a bit queer for the past two weeks, but this was ridiculous. Why was she leaving school early? She wasn’t complaining, though, Kiara told herself. She would gladly take the rest of the day off from school.
When Kiara arrived on the doorstep, the door flew open and there stood her mother, Charlotte. Charlotte fell to her knees, grasped the leg of Kiara’s trousers, and then started sobbing all over it. It took Kiara about two minutes to recover from her shock. Then, gently, she nudged her mother inside and shut the door. “What is it? Has there been a car accident, Mom?”
“No, Kiara, good heavens no, much worse that that, precious girl, but don’t worry your sweet head about that.”
Charlotte recovered herself and wiped her eyes on Kiara’s pants. She took a deep breath, stood up, and slowly walked toward the couch in the living room.
Kiara followed her. Robert, Kiara’s father, entered the room and plopped down on the couch so that Kiara had her parents on either side of her. Kiara prepared for a conversation.
“Charlotte,” Robert said softly, “Are you well enough to discuss what happened?”
Charlotte waited a minute before answering, “I can try, but should Kiara really need to know?”
“Yes,” Robert replied.
There was a long moment of silence.
“What happened, Mom?” Kiara whispered.
“I can’t say much,” began Charlotte, taking a deep breath, “But your father and I have been aware of it for some time. To make a long story short, I’ve been assaulted. Kiara, do you know what that means?”
Kiara shook her head.
“That means I’ve been attacked. We know who the attacker is, and the police are working on it, but this one is very sneaky. I’m not even sure what he is, Kiara. I wanted to warn you not to trust any strangers, even if they appear friendly, because he had even deceived me, and I’m naturally a suspicious kind of person. His name is…his name is…”
Charlotte broke off. She couldn’t say it. Robert grasped Charlotte’s arm and warned her not to try too hard.
“You’ve said a lot, Charlotte. Thank your lucky stars that you could say that to Kiara in time. Don’t try too hard to say every detail.”

That night, Kiara sat staring out of her bedroom window, waiting until she was sleepy. Kiara looked down below by the garage door and saw a bit of a haze appear there. The black haze hovered for a minute or so before forming itself into some sort of a shape with a long tail.
“It’s a cat!” Kiara gasped.
The mysterious feline was about twice as big as a regular cat, with an entirely black body. It stretched, yawned, and then began to groom itself. To Kiara the animal seemed fascinating. It was so big! Kiara bolted downstairs to meet it, even though it was nearly eleven o’clock at night. Kiara unlocked the front door and only hesitated briefly before she was through it. Cats didn’t show up often, and especially not out of thin air.
Kiara trotted up to it, gently, so as not to scare it. She didn’t have to, however, she realized later. The cat was coming slowly to her so as not to scare her off. Its bright red collar peeked through the mass of black fur.
“How do you do,” it said.
Kiara stopped in her tracks. That thought had gone directly to her head!
“I’m fine, thank you,” Kiara replied politely.
“No, that’s not how you do it!” it snarled. “Think them to me. I don’t want to be overheard.”
“How am I supposed to think it to him?” thought Kiara.
“Yes, that’s how you do it. It’s not so hard. Let’s try again. How do you do?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” repeated Kiara in astonishment.
“Good. You learn fast, just like your mother.”
“You know my mother?”
“I know her surprisingly well,” he snarled. His fur bristled for an instant, and then he remembered to calm down.
“What’s your name, kitty?” thought Kiara, trying to look at his collar, but his fur was in the way.
“Hm? My name? Well, my name isn’t Kitty, if you’re wondering. People call me Boss.”
“Boss? Like ‘Boss’ when you’re in charge?”
“Precisely,” Boss replied, flashing his white fangs with a grin.

They talked (or thought) like this for so long that Kiara was unaware of the passage of time. At exactly 12:12 Boss yelped with glee, jumped ten feet in the air, and landed noiselessly. Robert yelled for Kiara and Kiara ran inside without another thought.
“Kiara!” Robert yelled again.
Kiara rushed into the bedroom, then froze.
From what Kiara could see, Robert had pinned Charlotte to the floor while she lay there writhing and screaming in terror. In Robert’s other hand he held a blood-red collar. This wasn’t what stunned Kiara; it was the name embroidered on the collar:

BOSS

The black haze appeared behind Kiara again, and as Kiara turned to look at it, it shaped into Boss once again. In this way Kiara learned that Boss could teleport from place to place. He growled deep in his throat when he saw the collar.
“I thought you had your collar on,” thought Kiara to Boss.
“I do,” he answered, growling even louder, “That’s my second one. Where did he get that?!”
Robert yelled; the collar had turned white hot. However, he somehow got it on Charlotte, then he let go and blew on his hands.

Charlotte seemed to have recovered herself. She sat up and stared straight at Boss.
Boss’s growl turned into a snarl.
“You.”
“Hello,” Boss whispered, this time speaking out loud. His fur bristled.
There was an odd moment when Kiara realized that Robert could not see Boss. He grabbed a broom and sniffed, trying to find him.
“Fool!” Boss shouted. He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, Robert, if only you could see yourself! You look like a complete idiot…”
Charlotte snatched the broom from her husband and whacked Boss hard on his spine. Boss cried aloud in pain. A trickle of black blood dripped once on the carpet. Kiara gasped, caught Boss up in her arms, and ran down the stairs so fast that she was out the door in two seconds.
“KIARA!” Robert roared, “COME BACK WITH THAT CAT! DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE IS?!”
Kiara ignored them. She was wild with panic. How could they do such a thing?
Boss whimpered painfully. Kiara’s heart had simply melted with pity.
“Oh, Boss,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry that my parents were mean to you.”
Kiara ran all the way to the park, where she finally stopped to sit down and cry. Boss sighed softly in Kiara’s lap, and chuckled.

Everything was going according to plan.

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