TRASH CAT LIT

rj cannon

Listen to rj read their story

Janie ran down the stairs of the old farmhouse, out the door, and to the porch corner. It was the first place she checked that morning, like every morning.

As she approached, she glimpsed retreating blue wings and saw a shiny cigarette lighter on the boards. “Thank you!” she yelled toward the woods past the dead lawn. Snap would be watching, she knew.

Janie got the earring out of her pocket and put it on the porch. It had been Mom’s, but it was sparkly and Snap would like it.

She wanted to take the lighter upstairs to the shoebox under her bed, but Markus would be awake there now. Blegh. He was always in the attic slobbering over his weird dissections and pickled animals. Dad had left early and Janie was old enough now – eight! – that she and Markus looked after themselves.

Instead of going upstairs, Janie put the gift in her pocket and headed to the woods. She thought about how after Mom died she’d met Snap there. He had followed her around, his black eyes always looking for fun. They had started leaving each other gifts and became BFFs.

In the woods Janie found her favorite spot and settled down to read a comic she’d stashed there. After a while she wondered where Snap was. They always watched out for each other, but she hadn’t seen him since the porch. Janie peered into the trees, jay-like, seeing everything. There were lots of boring little songbirds, but no Snap.

Janie headed back to the farmhouse and up onto the porch. In the corner she saw some knotted string. Not something Snap would have left, it was one of Markus’s nasty snares. And there were breadcrumbs on the boards.

She stopped breathing.

Her feet bolted up the stairs and into the awful attic. There, on Markus’s workbench, was Snap. Spread out on a dissecting tray, bloody and open, pins in his beautiful wings. Eyes focused on nothing. 

Markus, scalpel in hand, turned and grinned, “Caught your little friend.”

The attic swayed. Janie started to wail but her throat closed up and she couldn’t get it out. Sobbing, she ran at Markus, beating him with her fists. He was too big. He laughed, delighted.

She couldn’t hurt him this way, so she left, first looking back at Snap, but she couldn’t see him through her burning eyes. She ran outside to Dad’s shed, found the red cans by the mower, and dragged them out. They were heavier than she remembered. She poured the stinky liquid into the dry grass all around the farmhouse.

Janie stood on the ground by the porch corner where she and Snap had traded gifts. She fished the last one out of her pocket and looked up at the attic window. She imagined the grass burning into blackness, then the porch, then the roof, and everything inside.

She sent the spark.

rj’s prompts were: in an attic, bird/s, a burn

rj cannon is a new fiction writer with a love of speculative and horror stories. When not writing, their time is dedicated to the service of a 25-pound silver schnauzer and trying to understand what the trees in the neighborhood are thinking about.