The cat's meeow
Hairballs. They crossed Mimi's mind often, because they crossed her tonsils often. She liked to think that if she had a use for a swear word
hairballs
would be a great option. It was species appropriate and packed a punch, rolling off the tongue. That is, if she had the faculty of speech. Which, being a cat, she had not. It would be cool though. Like, for somebody annoying you, or for losing your yarn ball, you could do a hiss, but for something really bad, like a dog barking at you, you could go 'hairballs!' in a very bad ass tomcat voice.
Mimi's current situation surely merited a swear word. She had felt this coming, but what are you going to do? You couldn't meeow to your human 'Listen, every time I jump off the window sill my heart goes
kathump kathump wigga wigga
, I may have a genetic heart disorder.' So there was nothing for it. Just, enjoying every new morning, chasing mice and laser lights and being grateful you were still there in the evening.
Mimi was lying under the shrubs at the corner of the street, waiting for her human to come home on her bicycle. The little human, not the big ones. She did this most evenings. When her human would round the corner, they would lock eyes. And when the bicycle zipped past, Mimi would chase it to the shed. The human on her side of the street, Mimi on the opposite side of the street. Mimi was a smart cat. She never crossed the street. There be cars!
She could feel it, her human was almost there, yes! Oh oh...a sudden pain in her chest.
Kathump kath...ump...
No, no, please not at the peak of her day! Could this not just happen in her sleep?
...Kath...wiggawiggawigga...thump...
Mimi gently rolled over on her side and felt her tongue sinking out of her mouth, control over her muscles slipping away. Oh, there was her human just now. Shame she couldn't chase her to the shed... Her human cycled around the corner and saw Mimi in a, rather dramatic, display of last moments among the living. Now you're probably thinking, but cats have nine lives right? And you would be right. They do! Mimi actually still had a few of them left. She didn't know how much, because cats can't count over three. But several at least. And those lives are great for things like falling out of trees the wrong way, or being run over by cars. But if your heart is just not pumping blood for you, they're kind of useless. Like, you can respawn your character in an active volcano all you want, but it's just going to die again and again.
The shock was written on the face of her human. Mimi could feel a twitch rippling through her body, and after that a stilling..., a relaxing..., a... wait no! Her human was cycling straight at her, all her attention focused on her dying cat. Don't do that! Don't look at me, look at the car! A car approached, fast, and neither the driver nor her human saw the imminent danger. Mimi fought to keep her focus, clinging on to the last moment of her lives. There had to be something she could do, anything!
A crash. A sickening thud.
Hairballs.
__________________________________
Alex sat in front of his laptop. When he looked past the screen he could see out of the windows of his apartment. It was three o'clock at night. Weird time to be awake, you think, but as will be explained shortly, not for Alex. He was awake and happily going about his day, by... OK. So this story may have a lot of stuff in there that could be called romantic, but the start is less romantic. Alex was jacking off. To porn. Something that was pretty common for him. So common in fact, that he had by sheer exposure to on-screen nudity gotten rid of the common phenomenon of porn needle point vision. Like, the thing that happens when you look at a hot chick and instantly lose your peripheral vision. This is important to note, because his laptop was on his desk in front of the window. This meant he could watch porn and still look out of his window. The view out of his window was, if you like old European cities, terrific. So, should his attention lapse momentarily from the on screen nudity, it did lapse in style. He lived on the first floor, but mind you, in America this would be called the second floor. Here, in the inner canal ring of the city, streets had cobblestones, churches were over four hundred years old and the skatepark in front of the stately town hall stood out like a drag queen at a guns and ammo convention. Cast iron street lights illuminated the deserted streets and the narrow bridges over the canal that in a few hours time would house the weekly fresh produce market. And socks, of course. In the northwest of Europe, it isn't a market if you can't buy socks. By a sheer stroke of luck the porn he was watching was not really the type that when busted by, say, your mom, made you go "lalalalala" with your fingers in your ears for the rest of your life every time you thought about it. It was like, regular. Guy, huge dick, girl, big butt, vaginal fucking. Good fucking though. These people were into it. Amateur couple, also a couple in real life. Alex was somewhat of a fan. You could see actual passion there. Genuine porn, that was one of Alex's many preferred categories.
Alex was combining his porn watching with his current two other main activities in his life. It is perhaps a sign that you need a hobby if your main life activities can be combined both with each other
and
with watching porn. They were, in no specific order,
being a landlord
, and
The Project.
At twenty two years old Alex was on the young side to be a landlord, but truth be told, it wasn't really a demanding job. Alex liked to remind his brother that being a landlord means you have to be ready to spring into action at any moment. It's just that the Didriksens downstairs, the only house he was landlording, had in the two years that Alex now em, landlorded, only needed a repair twice. Both times it took the three of them less than five minutes to figure out that Alex was never going to be able to fix a water heater on his own and the job had to be outsourced. But, readiness and preparedness also counted as work.
The Project actually took up a lot of Alex's time. He had this theory that astronomical day length and the human sleep cycle did not match up. This requires explanation. So. Humans just
happen
to live on a planet that has 24 hour rotations. Had we lived on, say, Mars then we would see the sun come up every 24 hours
and 40 minutes.
So, on earth we decided that it would be handy to have a day rhythm that matched a 24 hour day length. But, intuitively, don't these extra 40 minutes just sound a little better? What if we could test what the human day cycle was without giving in to the social pressure of being awake when everybody else is awake? Or the social pressure of our planet that stubbornly keeps revolving at the pace that it does. Alex had decided that he himself was the perfect candidate for a field experiment, since he was immune to social pressure and his job did require him to be always ready, but not necessarily awake. After two weeks of following two strict rules: go to bed when you feel like it, get up when you feel like it, Alex had established that over the course of seven earth days, or one week, his body liked to have six waking and six sleeping periods. This heavily indicated that the preferred day length of the human species... well, only Alex so far but maybe this would spread, was on average 28 hours. If humans could teach themselves to be able to work, chill and sleep in both day- and night time they could live according to their nature. True Nature, if you will. This would make the world A Better Place. Alex worked on his project for 24 hours a day, or ahem, 28 hours a day. He was basically chilling and watching porn for science, while also having a job as a landlord. Damn, put like that he was a busy man, and since it was for science, also a good person. There are perfect examples, by the way, of animals that display the very behaviour that Alex is researching. They are opportunistic with respect to the hours of the day they use for sleeping or foraging. For example, the roe deer, and more commonly known, cats. They will...
Hang on. Movement on the street beneath his window. It is, weirdly, the mailman. Or upon closer inspection probably mailwoman, on a bicycle. You don't expect mail to be delivered at three in the morning. Also, she rides like a woman possessed, very fast and somewhat erratic. No... no don't take the corner into the alley at this speed, the cobblestones are bumpy there! Alex's body gets up on autopilot, trying to see whether she makes it through the corner there. His forgotten, but still hard cock hooks on the tabletop, comes loose with a jolt as he gets up further, snaps into his belly, which causes it to rebound and neatly hit the spacebar of his laptop. This conveniently pauses the porn video just before the cumshot. Even through his concern for the crazy mailwoman Alex has excess brain capacity to register that that was a nifty trick.
Smack! Oh gods, she goes down like a soccer player being tackled. As if that isn't bad enough there is a lamp post right in the line of her fall. Thud! Without further thinking Alex is off his feet, scrambling into his shoes while hoisting his junk back into his pants. He sprints through his apartment door and down the stairs. Pausing for a tenth of a second to adjust the lock so he can get back in he storms outside and kneels beside the girl. It looks bad.
In his country you're supposed to ask "is the bicycle OK?" after a tumble, but when it's bad, well, you know it's bad. She isn't wearing a helmet and has headbutted the lamp post, judging by the blood streaming over her eyes. Her right arm sticks out at a weird angle.
"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck." Alex tries to figure out what step one is. What is step one? Oh right, call the alarm number. But his phone is still upstairs! Don't panic...
Weirdly, the realisation that he can't call an ambulance and has to figure stuff out himself gives Alex the focus he needs to adapt and overcome.
Possible spinal injury. If yes, don't move the patient. He looks her over. Her eyes are closed, but he isn't sure if she's lost consciousness or not. But she looks... weird. Each part of her body is covered in clothing, including a hoodie, gloves and a face mask. Also, she is sorta lanky. Tall and skinny, with a lot of limb going on. But apart from the arm no part of her body looks damaged.
"Hey!" He prods her in the cheek. "Hey! Are you awake?"
"Aaaah jeez..." she whines, "don't do that again. My head... aargh..." There is something about her voice that is just a bit off. Well, no wonder.
"That would be the concussion. You hit the lamp post with your head. Um, can you feel your toes?"
