Sultan, Pretty and Me: Part 1

This is part one of our first ever three-part story, stay tuned for the next two issues to find out what happens next.

I sat, quiet, on the worn couch of my youth, struck full by the simple and extreme beauty of my cat. Sprawled in sloppy grace, white fur glowing in the slanting light of the setting sun, she, Pretty, efficiently washed her downy tum. Unwilling but forced by the moment of perfection, I fell to pondering the undeniable allurement of life. I wanted to deny the thoughts of breath and warmth that her lithe elegance brought. The relaxation – even in such a tendon-popping stretch – reminded me that nature had a lot to offer, that life held more attraction for the simplicity of a cat. I shifted my gaze to the unadorned wall across from the couch. Tired, I had, a moment before, been ruminating on Death’s stark loveliness. So clear as to be in the same room. Not corruption, was Death, but sterile, cold purity; an efficient housekeeper, devoid of emotion.

I do not perceive Pretty’s innocence with the same eyes that looked upon only emptiness. For a pair of seconds, neither pet nor perimeter existed. The wall swam into focus. It showed old care by the neatly spackled and painted-over screw holes. Bookshelves had hung there, taken down when we’d sold our books to get through one particularly rough winter.

Rising from the couch, its springs popping and creaking in ancient rhythm with my joints and bones, I shuffled to the center of the room on fuzzy-slippered feet and turned slowly in a circle. A room so familiar that it was strange: wooden floor, still showing the faint glow of (once) regularly applied polish, had lost its deep lustre; heavy, brown door with its shiny locks; huge, leaded window opening east onto the quiet street below (the main reason for our having picked this apartment); colourful area rug a few feet out from the window; ash-filled fireplace, with the unviewable pictures of a loving past on its plain, wood mantel; couch, the fabric in the front panel showing the shreds and threads of active claws. In the afternoon light, the cheap coffee table (plywood and plastic), empty but for the latest issue of ‘Home and Garden’, looked as out of place as it was. It could hardly replace its predecessor, a glorious antique oak, garage-sale treasure that had lost a leg for no reason I could ascertain. Perhaps it had given up out of despair. The small throw before the door was unhappy from many washings. It bore a few mud stains that shouted constant reminders of my own carelessness. The umbrella stand looked forlorn with only the one navy-blue umbrella to keep it company. A doorway to a small kitchen, once a warm and inviting place full of light and smells and cheery words, broke the expanse of wall behind the couch.

Adjacent, the already-mentioned front door and beside it, the entry into the bedroom – which stood about six feet to the right of the front window. There was a TV that saw altogether too much use. I – we – had never been able to afford cable – forget Netflix: this was a TV, not a...

...glorified computer monitor – and the images on Channel 2 looked fuzzy, but I – not we – found it a welcome electronic mental pabulum that filled my mind and crowded out the memories. I plodded to the bedroom, scuffing my thin leather soles on the floor, there to take up the never-ending inventorying once again. A single glance took it all in. Walls that used to be a light grey, but now were the colour of dust, the colour of soaked-in memories, enclosed me. Faded wallpaper clothed the south wall, showing a few bubbles and more signs of age: water stains in one corner and peeling edges where the ancient glue had released its hold. I remembered going to the showroom and picking out the paper with my new wife. I had wanted wild: a dozen colours splashed on at random; she had insisted on sensible: an open, boxy pattern of plain off-white with alternating grey and gold lines. With time, I had come to appreciate her quieter choice. Now, I wondered if perhaps I shouldn’t have been more forceful: the room felt drab and too quiet.

I forced myself to look at, to see, the too-soft double bed, with its matching dents, the right of which captured my every sleep. Next to the bed, the wood and magenta-velvet chair, one arm cracked from when Leticia and I had dropped it coming up the stairs to this, our honeymoon apartment. (Is that laughter I hear? Or a faulty memory filled with the echoes of old ghosts?) An antique crystal reading lamp – another of Leticia’s few and careful purchases in our budgeted life – outshone the generic appurtenances: dresser, bathroom door, overhead light with one burned-out bulb needing changing. I breathed in deeply. The scents of two lifetimes choked the air; swirling and golden motes of dust reflected a thousand pinpoints of light.

The mirror over the small dresser was flecked with three-dimensional spots where some of the silver backing had chipped away. I could still see myself clearly but wished that the picture it showed might be a funhouse trick of distorted glass and light.

Clicking claws approached. Seeming to feel some of my distress, she rubbed against my legs. I picked her up, scratched absently behind her ears until she began to purr. Still I stared at the worn visage before me. Wondering where it could have come from. The fur ball wriggled with annoyance when I stopped skritching, and I returned her to the freedom of the floor. She scampered out, chasing hallucinations or dust balls or flickers of light.

The glass.

Age lines are romanticised in books and movies. His creased face reflected a wisdom and nobility far beyond his years, and Old, yes, she was, but the lines enhanced extant beauty. No.

The irregular pits and valleys in my face had always been – would always be – billboards promoting the empty end. I knew that Death and its powerful public relations firm put these and other markers up as advertisements for another reality. Eternityland. The last amusement park.

Grey hair is distinguished; white, only pitiful. White and wispy, scattered across the steps of spotted, discolored scalp.

More reminders of a life long gone: the crooked, stained teeth of poor hygiene, from inhaling that special death of the nervous and would-be sophisticated. And not enough visits to the dentist. Such teeth as to give a mortal dentist pause.

For the first time, I realised my chin was what I would have called an ‘old man’s chin,’ years ago, when immortality seemed a given. My sparse, prickly beard grew through over-large pores. When I swallowed, soft wattles of skin flapped, and my prominent Adam’s apple ran up my neck and back down again, reminding me of cartoon gophers throwing up humps of earth as they tunneled. My eyes skittered away from the sight of life’s irrevocable finitude.

By Bob Ritchie. Hailing from California, Bob Ritchie now lives on the lovely island of Puerto Rico, where he discovered, among other things, that wet heat is better than dry. Bob (as he calls himself) is a writer of stories and has penned several things that he believes are good. His work has appeared in Unlikely 2.0, Small Print Magazine, Triangle Writers Magazine, and others; two of his stories were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Neither won. Oh well. Go well. Background Image by Chen Yi Wen