Becoming the Story (9 page)

“I am going to encourage you to question
your own thoughts and what others have told you. By the end of your
training, you must question me as well. When you have tested your
most basic assumptions, subjected them to the uncompromising light
of logic and even been 
brutal
 to them, you will
look at what remains and 
may
 catch a glimpse of
the truth, which is hard won, but the greatest treasure there is.
And when that happens, you will change, and your life will change
too.”

Katy sat still for a long moment. During the
speech, she had been clutching the book
Principia
Mathematica
 to her chest. Now she lowered it to her lap,
sighed, and shook her head. “Okay,” she shrugged, “What choice do I
have?”

The doctor grabbed a prescription pad from
the desk, withdrew a pen from his shirt pocket, and began to
scrawl. “You will need to purchase a scientific calculator, a book
of annotated writings by Aristotle, and a book of graphing
paper.”

“Graphing paper?” Katy looked at him. “Why
on earth would I need graphing paper for a mental illness?”

He stared at her with eyes full of
unblinking candor.

“Okay.” The word was almost a whisper. “But
this is running up a bill.”

“If the 2.99 cost of graphing paper presents
an insurmountable challenge for you, I heard the office supply
store down the road is having an excellent sale.” He withdrew a
sheet of paper from his desk. “Coupon?”

Katy stared at the coupon for a long moment.
Then she sighed and took it. Was her whole life really just a
fiction she had told to herself? She had nothing to say and felt
heavy, like she could barely contain her own weight.

The doctor ripped out the prescription and
handed it to her. “Next week, same time?” he asked.

Katy thought about her life at home, all the
insanity, the moods, the uncertainty, the fear, a life forged from
bad decisions. Beside all that, a little math did not seem so bad.
“Yeah, okay.” She rose and took the prescription. “Next week.”

“Very well. You can pick up the schedule for
the course work at the table next to the front door.”

On her way out the elderly man who had
opened the door was sweeping the floor in the foyer. When he saw
her, he lifted his head in mild surprise. “Ah, I see that you are
leaving.”

She picked up one of the schedule sheets
from the square table beside the door. “Ever heard of the words
hello or goodbye?” she said. “Some people find them useful.”

The man stared silently at her.

She shook her head, folded the schedule, and
stuffed it into her purse. When she opened the door, the sun-warmth
struck her face, and she had a thought. After the agony of
betrayal, after years of questioning of her self-worth, after all
the phobias and destroyed relationships, it turned out that maybe
it was all for nothing.

All for nothing
. In the office, this
revelation had been a nightmare. But now the words “all for
nothing,” said to herself again and again, were like a song, tragic
and melancholy, but also lulling.

There was no good reason to think her
husband had ever cheated. No proof. No logic. What had the doctor
said? She had affirmed the consequent. She had been doing it all
her life.

She expected tears, but none came. Instead,
her tense muscles yielded to the warmth of the sun and the lulling
song inside her head. She stepped outside, shut the door behind
her, and raised her head, startled to see that the sky looked bluer
and clearer than it had in years.

Once every thousand years, a cat asks itself
a human question. In the case of Muffins, who was cleaning between
her toes with her tongue, the question was, “What is the meaning of
it all?”

She had cleaned her front toes the day
before, working hard, and they had somehow gotten dingy again. How
many times was it going to take to get them clean for good?

Once every thousand times a cat asks a human
question, the universe answers. It had been a while since the
universe had responded to a cat, so maybe that is why Muffins
became human that day.

It was January and dark outside. She had was
stretched out before the fireplace to ease the chill coming in from
a crack in the broken window pane. As she was licking the gaps
between her toes clean, she had a new thought:
Ow!
At first
she felt the burning scratch of her tongue, and she looked to see a
stretch of raw pink skin where her fur used to be.

She stopped licking. Her front paw was a paw
no longer. She had an expansive, flat palm with fleshy fingers
instead of claws. She held them up to her eyes and flexed them, and
stared at them in disbelief.

Meanwhile, the air was pressing down on her
like lead, but she tried to stand anyway because she felt she
needed to do
something
. She swooned and clung to the brick
mantle for support. It was a different kind of standing, anchoring
herself with her hind legs and stretching herself tall and
vertical, but for some reason it felt natural, like she had been
doing it all her life.

Desperate for reassurance and possibly a
scratch on the head, she made her way into the room where Evie, her
servant, usually slept.

Evie was not there and Muffins remembered
that she had gone out. Muffins caught a glimpse of something silver
on the wall. She leaned toward it for a better look. Inside the
guilt-framed “window,” a strange creature emerged, a girl with
golden hair and a delicate nose, large green eyes, and long
eyelashes.

When Muffins stared at the girl, the girl
stared back curiously. When in surprise Muffins pulled away, so did
the girl. Muffins had no real concept of the word “reflection,” but
it was not hard to recognize that the girl in the mirror was
somehow Muffins, or at least her mocking twin.

In either case, the sight alarmed Muffins
and she stepped back. After recovering she continued her
self-examination. She glimpsed the upper curve of her breasts and
the blush on the apples of her soft, firm cheeks. She pulled her
lip down and examined her bottom teeth, a white and even row of
them. Even as a cat, she had never seen her teeth before, although
biting was something she did every day.

She recognized the form of the girl in the
window. Evie, her feeding servant, resembled the golden haired
creature, but only roughly. Evie was plumper, with a round face and
greying hay-blond hair, and an emerging network of thread-like
lines around her mouth and eyes.

But there was another big difference between
Evie and the new Muffins. Evie always had most of herself covered
with a kind of loose second skin made of pastel colored linens.
These “skins” changed from day to day, so they must not have been
stuck to her.

Muffins looked in the direction of the open
closet and saw multiple “skins” that draped from hangers. Muffins
did not care about wearing covering per se, but she was ashamed of
her hideous new form. She missed her glossy coat of fur and the
more hidden her new, raw, pink skin was, the better.

She selected something violet and floral and
slid it over her head. It was far too big for her, and folds of
cloth hung loosely at her sides. She did not bother with shoes. She
did not think of them.

Her furless shame hidden, she took a deep
breath and looked around. She glimpsed a glass vanity table and
found on it an assortment of things that glistened and sparkled,
ornate bottles among them.

She picked up one of the bottles, purple and
fat with a narrow neck. It was open, and a strong floral smell came
from it. She had noticed that, until now, she had not
smelled
anything since her transformation, but the scent
that came from the bottle was bold. She had seen Evie dab it on her
neck so Muffins tipped the bottle and spilled a little above her
clavicle, just a drop at first, cold and sweet. She liked the smell
so much she splashed more of it on herself.

In addition to bottles Muffins saw an open
cabinet full of sparkling things, long loops of golden “string”
with stones brightly colored and almost translucent. When she was a
kitten, she could not resist shiny objects or string, and it was
hard to resist them now.

She grabbed a chain which to her was the
Holy Grail of twine, shiny and good for dangling. This one had at
one end a golden cross shape with a red oval stone set into the
center. She held the “twine” up and batted at it a moment, but she
did not have as much fun as she thought she would. Still, she liked
it and slipped it in her pocket with a sigh.

She missed her sharp sense of smell. It was
like a giant swath of experience had been taken from her. She took
the bottle of scent and inhaled it again. The fragrance reassured
her and she wanted to have it with her, always, but was afraid it
would spill. She saw the cap not far away.

After a moment of fumbling, she figured out
how to snap the cap on it, and she slid the sealed bottle into her
pocket. She liked having pockets. Now she knew why people wore
clothes.

Aside from her discovery of shiny and
fragrant baubles, she was enjoying the delight of her new,
consistently elevated perspective. At her new eye level was a new
kind of window. From inside its frame, the pale face of a man
stared at Muffins. Or seemed to.

The portrait had an uneven texture. The man
featured in it was immobile, and clothed in something luminously
white and draping. His eyes were a deep honey brown, soulful and
compassionate. His smooth and shiny brown hair fell below his
shoulders. She placed her palm on the face.

She sniffed the man. The smell was not warm
and alive, but harsh and toxic. She concluded that he was not real
and lost interest.

Her stomach began to feel hollow. She
thought of her plastic food dish which rested in front of the
fireplace in the living room. She moved toward it, saw it with
delight, and fell to her knees. It did not even occur to her to use
her hands. She stuck her face into the pile of kibble directly and
munched.

Her teeth zinged from the fowl taste and she
coughed out the meaty abomination in disgust. Someone must have
changed it because before, the food had been, if not flavorful, at
least not repellent. She wiped her lips with violent revulsion,
trying to remove every trace of the vileness.

She lapped up some water next to her food
dish, but the water was dirty and stale-tasting and had bits of fur
floating in it. It was clear that she could not stay, or she would
starve.

Something soon occurred that made her
resolution to leave inevitable. As she was gagging, Muffins heard a
rattle and the main door swung open.
Good
. Maybe her servant
that called itself Evie would refresh her food, which had obviously
gone bad. She rushed into the living room, prepared to rub her
cheek against Evie and purr, which had always gotten attention
before.

But instead of welcoming Muffins with the
usual gentle and coddling voice, the woman stared at her at alarm
and dropped the plastic bag in her hand. “What are
you
doing
here?” she said. She backed away. “Is that my dress?” She clutched
her purse close to her chest.

Muffins was frightened too and tried to
summon the vocalizations that had always charmed before, in
particular a sort of “flirrrp.” Instead, something unexpected came
out. “I-I am sorry. Please. The food. It tastes spoiled. I need
help, or I shall starve.”

Muffins was shocked to realize she could
speak a new language and a little embarrassed. She covered her
mouth and began to tremble. At first the woman gave her what was
almost an expression of sympathy. But then her gaze dropped to the
dress. Her face hardened. “Get. Out,” she said, “Get
out
before I call the police.”

Muffins had never been spoken to in so harsh
a tone, not even when she had once jumped on the dining table and
accidentally shattered a porcelain pumpkin. Her teeth began to
chatter so much they hurt. She fled through the door where the
woman had entered. Gasping, she entered the darkened streets.

The cold rocks were jagged on her bare feet,
in a way that they never had been before. They hurt with pricks and
stabs. Not helping matters, the night was alive with mysterious
sounds, hoots, skittering, and chirping noises.

To calm herself she dug out the ornate
bottle of scent and inhaled it gratefully. But a new step forward
brought a new electrifying stab to her foot. The bottle fell from
her grasp, landed on the pavement, and shattered. The liquid that
emerged formed a fragrant puddle.

She gasped. The sudden clatter had terrified
her and she did not know where to go. Fog draped the blackened
street, making it hard to see her way forward. A dewy moisture
condensed on her face, and she swept it away with her paw. Er,
hand.

Once or twice small, scampering mammals
passed. They were close enough for Muffins to track them with her
eyes, but she was having trouble placing their scent. Oddly, they
seemed to have none. Even more oddly, she had no urge to chase
them, even though she was hungry. They did not look appetizing.

Though she did not know where to go, there
seemed to be nothing to do but walk. After a while, the fog
thinned, enough to see by the haloes of lamplight that she had come
to a street lined with shops and brightly lit, colorful signs.

She did not know what a shop was but she was
attracted by the warmth of the colors and went inside one of them.
Her feet hurt terribly from walking on the small rocks and jagged
stones, so she was happily surprised to find the floor smooth and,
not far away, a bin full of furry slippers.

The “toe” parts were in the guise of various
odd creatures, most of which she had never seen. She recognized a
rabbit and a mouse, but the rest were unfamiliar to her. She
selected a pair of plush mouse slippers with pink noses. A string
bound the furry rodents, so Muffins bit it apart and slid her feet
deliciously into the slippers. She raised one foot, flexed it, and
smiled.