*Ailurophobia is the medical term for fear of cats.
The bunkbeds were a metaphor. Millie’s angry teenage brain had decided this as soon as she saw the room. It was bad enough to be expected to spend a week of her holidays stuck in this stupid cottage in the most boring part of Somerset. Worse that she and her mother were sharing the cramped space with Geoff, the world’s most boring man, with whom Philippa had become so embarrassingly besotted. Even worse still that he’d brought along Gina, his laconic teenage daughter.
But now Millie and Gina, equal in age, opposite in personality, were expected to establish hierarchy by means of beds. Everyone knew that the upper bed was the prize; the occupant of that bunk was elevated, in every sense. They would be free to disturb the loser below with their tossing and turning, their climbing up and down the ladder, their control over the reading lamp clamped to the railings that enclosed their private loft.
The parents left the two girls to battle for the beds, Millie’s pristine wheelie suitcase and Gina’s badge-studded rucksack a barricade between them. Gina was chewing gum and staring at her phone. She smelled of cigarettes, and Millie imagined the smoky residue was already filtering into her own hair, layering itself over the expensive scent of her shampoo.
‘Do you have a preference?’ Millie asked, nodding towards the beds with passive-aggressive politeness.
‘I’ll take the top,’ Gina responded, not looking up, not missing a beat.
Millie inhaled. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Where was the falsely polite volley, ‘you take it – no, you take it’, until one of them missed a shot?
‘Claustrophobic’ Gina said, with a sharp-toothed smile, finally looking at Millie. She gestured dismissively at the lower bunk. Before Millie could reach for the return, Gina had sprung across the room and up the ladder, still wearing her black Converse as she landed on the floral bedding and grinned down from her podium.
Dinner that night was in the local pub, where everything on the menu came with chips and both sixteen year olds were allowed to drink the strong local cider, as their parents moved into neglectful holiday spirit. Absorbed in one another, they barely noticed the crackling hostility between their daughters. The adults were giggling like teenagers by the time they got back, while the youth hunkered down into their resentment like a bitter long-married couple. Millie was glad of the delay caused by the scrabbling for unfamiliar keys in Philippa’s handbag and the heave that Geoff had to give the aged door to get it to open. The cool night air helped her spinning head, and forestalled her dread at returning to the shared room.
Inside, Geoff and Philippa staggered, hand in hand, towards their bedroom and closed the door. Millie sank into the tired sofa, while Gina disappeared upstairs. She turned on the television, letting a comedy show play loudly enough to drown out any noise of her mother’s sex life finding renewal in the room above. They’d eaten quite late, by local standards, and it didn’t seem long before the hands of the big ugly clock on the mantlepiece were approaching their midnight embrace.
Millie glanced at her phone, but the battery was dead. Maybe it was time to risk going to bed. She found a glass in the unfamiliar kitchen, filled it with water, and climbed the steep stairs, releasing her blonde hair from its careful knot and closing her ears to creaking bedsprings from the end of the short hallway. She’d thought ahead, and her washbag and pyjamas were carefully tucked in the corner of the bathroom waiting for her.
When her meticulous facial ritual was complete, albeit with unavoidable holiday-home edits, she changed into her pale pink shorts-and-pyjama-top combination. Her reflection triggered regret at her choice, projecting childishness where she had planned for sophisticated-cute. She gathered up her discarded clothes and headed with resignation to the bedroom, pushing open the door open as quietly as she could. The interior was completely dark, other than a shaft of moonlight making its way through the open curtains. The window was open and a cool breeze filtered gently through it. She peered through the shadows towards the upper bunk: no movement, no sound. Dropping her clothes on to a chair, she felt her way towards the bed. It was deathly quiet. Outside an owl hooted. Nothing from Gina; not a snore, not a breath.
Millie had started to pull back the duvet on her bunk when curiosity got the better of her. She turned towards the ladder, and, as quietly as she could, she put her foot on the bottom rung, then the second, pulling herself up towards the top bunk. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust in the darkness, but then she became sure. The bed was empty. The duvet was crumpled, but Gina was gone.
Millie dropped back to the floor, mind racing. Where could she be? She wasn’t in the bathroom, as Millie had only just left it herself. Surely she couldn’t have slipped down the stairs and passed her to reach the front door, let alone the back door in the kitchen: the small downstairs was open plan and there was no way Gina could have been there without Millie seeing her. Her thoughts turned to the gaping window. The garden below stretched a ghostly grey. There was no obvious way down other than to jump, a not-inconsiderable drop; there was trellising down the wall, but it was aged and rotting, and she doubted it could take even Gina’s skinny weight. She surveyed the lawn, anyway, her eyes drawn to each rustling bush as the breeze rippled through the leaves.
Suddenly she thought she spotted movement and scanned for Gina. The foliage parted, but it was only a cat, which emerged brazenly on to the moonlit grass. It prowled across the garden with typical feline arrogance. Millie watched it, her brain still sorting through the possible whereabouts of her roommate. As she looked down, the cat stopped, then, as though sensing her presence, it turned its head and stared straight at her, its green eyes sparkling. With an irrational shudder, Millie pulled back from the window. Immediately she felt angry with Gina and her unexplained absence. She closed the curtains with a violent tug and marched quickly across to the bed, pulling herself under the duvet. As she fell asleep, she still thought she could see the cat’s gaze searing into her from behind her closed eyes.
In the morning, Millie woke to see Gina perched on the window sill, blowing cigarette smoke adeptly out through the wide aperture. She rolled away and looked at her phone, which was charging beside her pillow. 9.30am. She’d set an alarm to be up and dressed first, but must have slept through it. Gina was already clothed: black leggings, black vest top, heavy black makeup. Millie crawled out of bed, the cider residue resting in an uncomfortable fog somewhere inside her skull. Without saying anything, she located clean underwear from a drawer and selected one of the sundresses she’d hung in the wardrobe. She went and took a long shower, dressed in the bathroom, and gloomily followed the nauseating smell of bacon down the stairs.
That night, Millie went to bed first, her mood shadowy from a day of occasional showers and less occasional arguments. Gina was still downstairs, drinking the rest of the wine from the dinner Geoff had rustled up with an adeptness that sickened Millie for reasons she couldn’t really explain. She fell asleep quickly, listening to a playlist on her phone, but woke during the night to find her headphones had entangled themselves around her face and neck. She was busy unravelling them when she realized there was someone in the room. Millie shot glances into the darkness, expecting to see Gina.
At first, she could make out nothing in the bluish purples of her unfamiliar environment. Then, with a strange horror, she spotted it. The cat was sitting in the middle of the carpet, looking at her. It must have got in through the window, lured, she thought irrationally, by her dislike for its kind. She made some futile shooing gestures in its direction, but it only sat and stared, its piercing gaze mocking.
Millie had always hated cats. She hated their arrogance. Their cruelty. The way they behaved like they owned everything. The way they toyed with their prey. This one seemed to know. She rapidly became convinced that this must be why it had come in, to mess with her head, to assert its power over her. Probably Gina had encouraged it in deliberately, and was now smirking up above.
She shook herself suddenly. She was being ridiculous, lying in bed, trapped in a battle of wills with someone’s poorly-behaved pet. Swinging both feet out on to the floor at once, she lunged towards the cat, with a vision of picking it up and dropping it out on to the patio, trusting one of its nine lives would save it from the fall. The cat seemed to sense what she was doing before her soles met the carpet, and it darted effortlessly away from her, its face malevolent and scornful.
Millie crouched on the carpet, planning her next move. Holding the cat’s stare, she feigned a grab, and, as it anticipated her, she changed direction, flinging her whole body in its direction. The cat was still too fast. It sprang out of the way, and she landed stupidly sprawled on the carpet where it had just been. This time it moved before she did, leaping forward and flicking out a paw in an expert right hook. A claw caught her left cheek and she felt a sharp pain as it tore down her face. In shock, she put both hands to her bleeding skin, and the cat, as though satisfied with its work, swished its tail and bounded towards the window. Before she could turn to watch, it was up and out, disappearing down the trellising into the night.
Millie sat on the floor for a few minutes, tears pricking the rims of her eyes then edging over and down her cheeks, the salt stinging as it made contact with the fresh wound. Miserably, she dragged herself back towards her bunk and clambered in. She wondered that the noise had not woken Gina, then she realized that as before there was no sound of breathing coming from above her. Was she missing again? Millie didn’t care, simply relieved that no one had been there to see her humiliation. She cried into her pillow until she fell asleep.
In the bathroom mirror in the morning, the wound throbbed with an angry rawness, stretching from the corner of her eye almost as far as her mouth. She washed it out indignantly with salt water, trying not to cry again from the soreness, but there was no hiding it from the concerned eyes of Geoff and her mother over breakfast. She lied, trying to convince them that she had managed to scratch herself in her sleep, and backed up her story with light self-mockery at the length of her carefully groomed nails. Geoff gave a chuckle, telling her he thought manicures were one of women’s more ridiculous fancies. Rage bubbled inside her, and she suddenly found herself imagining her sharpened fingers clawing out his eyes. Like a petulant child, she refused to join them on the day’s outing, but sulked on the sofa, flitting between books and Netflix in stubborn boredom.
At least that night there was no sign of the cat, and her misery sent her into a deep sleep. At some point she dreamed of Gina, dressed in one of her skinny black outfits, her lips painted in a deep purple. In the sinister land of nightmares, the girl was leaning over Millie’s bed, scouring her with her green eyes. Millie’s chest was tight, her limbs icy and paralyzed, as though she had been chained to the bed frame. Then as her dream-eyes watched, Gina turned, sprang across the room, and leapt out of the window, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
It was hard to explain why Millie had developed such hatred for Gina. She’d always considered herself quite a generous character, had even managed to tolerate Geoff when he’d emerged on the scene six months earlier. His chumminess had made her cringe, his anecdotes about working at the bank bored her beyond measure, and the sight of his pallid belly when he wandered round across the landing in a towel was nauseating. But, at the same time, she knew that he seemed to make her mother happy. His daughter didn’t live with him, and only visited on alternate weekends, so it had been some time before they had been introduced. It had been hate at first sight, Millie had told her friends afterwards. Gina’s coolness, her indifference, and her constant air of superiority grated on Millie from the first introduction.
Gina had wandered into Millie and Philippa’s home as though she owned the place, opening the fridge to assess the contents with disdain before helping herself to the last of the juice. Millie had caught her in her bedroom soon after, assessing the bookshelves with a look that verged on pity. Gina styled herself as a young intellectual, with the black-rimmed glasses to match. Though she loved to make reference to films, books, even art that Millie had never heard of, she made it clear that she detested school.
Her black jeans on that first visit had been ripped, her black lace top inappropriate and paired with a vintage leather jacket that made her look far older than she was. Her hair on that occasion had been dyed silver-grey, with dark roots pushing through. Millie, wedded to skirts and dresses, detested this affected ragamuffin appearance. By contrast, her own thick blonde hair was expertly blow-dried on all occasions; her every outfit was designed to complement her equally beautiful friends, as they posed for their expertly-composed group selfies. She had convinced herself quickly that she had nothing at all in common with this girl who, she vowed, would never be her step-sister.
The holiday, all seven impossibly long days of it, was doing nothing to improve matters. Tensions became arguments and then arguments dwindled to vitriolic silences. When the final evening came around, Millie sensed relief, knowing this would be the last night she’d have to spend closeted with Gina. Not that Gina had often been there. Millie had taken to waking deliberately in the nights to check the bed above her, and never once had found it occupied. She’d spent long hours lying awake in the hope of catching Gina sneaking back into the room.
In Millie’s mind, she’d come back high or drunk, or stinking of some one night stand she’d tracked down on Tinder. Sometimes Millie had got up and stared out of the window, trying to spot her enemy moving back through the garden. All she’d ever seen in those futile wakeful hours was that hateful cat, sauntering across the grass, and once, a reluctant hedgehog, ambling its way cautiously over the patio towards the bushes, its nose, Millie imagined, atwitch with evil feline smells.
At the final dinnertime of the holiday, Millie and Gina had their biggest falling out to date. Millie was convinced she had found Gina going through her phone, while Gina was livid with Millie for revealing her smoking in the bedroom to her father. They spat barbs at each other over the dining table until Philippa, her patience at its end, lost her temper and broke a plate in the process. Both girls were sent to their room like children, Geoff backing his girlfriend up with calm yet unmovable force. Millie slunk silently into bed and tried to sleep, but her temper kept bubbling into her thoughts, as she pictured creeping up the ladder and the many different ways in which she might hurt Gina, teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget, finally wrest that triumph of claiming the upper bunk from her grasp.
She was still lying there, planning revenge, when she felt movement beside the bed, a soft thump on the carpeted floor. She rolled over quickly, expecting to see Gina, come down from her eyrie to have it out in a final battle. Instead she saw the cat. It was standing, back arched, a few feet away across the room. Without hesitating, Millie grabbed a pillow, intending to fling it at the offending animal, but, before she could do so, it was in mid-air, claws out. To her horror, it landed with a hiss on the bed beside her feet. She held up the pillow like a shield as it advanced, its paws indenting the soft duvet as it moved.
She heard herself release a short shriek, no longer caring whether she woke Gina or anyone else, and tried to fend it off. Still it continued to stalk towards her over the covers. Throwing the pillow to the floor, Millie lunged, and this time she grabbed it, the black fur smooth and slippery under her hands, the cat’s body lithe and sinewy. She hung on as it writhed, spitting, its teeth bared. One claw caught her bare arm, leaving a red line, but she did not let go.
A crimson mania rose inside her as she held it, staring into its terrible green eyes. They were big and liquid, filled with bile and a desire to kill. As she returned its gaze, their eyes locked. Suddenly, Millie no longer saw the flailing cat. In her head were Gina’s face, Gina’s eyes. She squeezed harder, then harder still. Her nails pierced deep and triumphant into its terrible silky neck.
Thanks for reading ‘Ailurophobia’. If you’ve enjoyed this short story, you may be interested in my other work. You can download a copy of Bodies : Metamorphoses for free or my debut novel, Camilla, is available in paperback or on Amazon Kindle. My next novel, The Silence Will Sing, is released in September. Join the mailing list to learn more!