Triangles

by Marc Colten

Do you have a cat? Do you hear him at night, howling at the stars as he weaves in and out of the shadows? Does he stare up at the walls, leaping up as if to grab something that isn’t there? It isn’t as cute as it sounds. Not any more.

Cliff was our resident lab wizard; a genius at keeping our electronic gear working. He was given his own workroom, what was left over from the space where all our phone and data lines converged. He had the only key, other than the master in the security office and none of us were welcome. Rumors flew about what secrets he hid in there, the most common being walls of nude pinups. We were all disappointed when someone got a look and saw nothing but a functional workbench and various sized bins of electronic parts. Cliff wasn’t educated, as most of us thought of education, but he knew his stuff. He had a Navy tattoo on one forearm and told us they had trained him in electronic and radio work. He had served most of his time deep inside an aircraft carrier and took the job with our company to supplement his pension. He could never have done the work we did, and I’m not sure he understood most of it, but without him we wouldn’t have had the tools we needed. He kept the test equipment running and occasionally took a bucket of (to me) indistinguishable parts and slapped together something you didn’t even know you needed, but then could not work without. There wasn’t anything else any of us knew about Cliff.

Somehow, once or twice a week, Cliff and I wound up in the cafeteria, complaining about the food. I never initiated it. Usually, he just plopped down at my table and started talking. Either that or he waved me over. I seemed to be the only one who ever had lunch with him and when he invited me to spend a Saturday at his house I realized that he had been sounding me out. The lunches had been a test, and apparently I had passed. I accepted, reluctantly, and for the same reasons that I did not avoid him at lunch; there just didn’t seem to be an alternative. I didn’t really like Cliff, no one did, but I just didn’t know how to get out of it. I followed his directions until I found his house.

He lived in an old farmhouse on what had once been the most unproductive corner of a colonial era farm. All the arable land had long since been sold to surrounding farms, leaving Cliff’s house an island up a long gravel road. From the various tools, ladders and empty paint cans I saw stacked against the stone wall of the building I could see that Cliff was spending his spare time fixing the place up. When he greeted me and escorted me inside I found out the last question I had. He lived there alone, just Cliff and his cat. When I first saw the house, I thought maybe he would have dogs lounging inside or roaming the property, but I never suspected that Cliff would have a fluffy long haired cat as a pet.

Lunch was passable barbecue, prepared on a gas grill that had all telltale signs of one of Cliff’s personal projects, and afterwards we sat in the living room and relaxed with cold beers. The cat lay on the hardwood floor watching us, its body tensed. All the time we sat there, it never stopped watching us. It had been about an hour since either of us had spoken when Cliff, considerably relaxed by the beer, began to expound.

“Frank,” Cliff said, “do you know what I am to that cat?”

The question had taken me by surprise. Actually it had never occurred to me to wonder what cats thought of us. “A warm lap, I guess.”

“You guessed wrong. As far as that cat is concerned, I’m God.”

“Cute thought.”

Suddenly Cliff was considerably less mellow. “I’m being completely serious with you.” He looked at me with a stern expression that I’d never seen at the lab. “I am that cat’s god. This house is his universe. It was here before he was born, and will be here after he dies. ‘From everlasting to everlasting’. Everything that happens in this universe is beyond his understanding and control. I provide all food and shelter. I reward him if he’s good, and, if he’s bad, I chastise him.”

“Cliff, didn’t you ever hear the old Jewish saying ‘If triangles had a god He’d have three sides.’?”

Cliff apparently needed a fresh swig of beer to absorb that one. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that if there was a god of cats, He wouldn’t look like you.”

“Oh, really? What would He look like?”

“Ask your cat.”

“I don’t have to ask him. I know what his god looks like. If I don’t feed him, he starves. If I don’t shelter him, he freezes. I stride through his world, a giant capable of crushing him any time I choose. I dispense grace or punishment as I see fit.”

“Cliff, most people get cats because they seem so cute curled up in their laps.”

“He does that, too. He lies in my lap for hours, but only at times of my choosing, and he adores me. But he adores no one else, for I am a jealous god.”

“This is a joke, right?”

Cliff put his thumb over the mouth of his beer bottle, shook it until the brew boiled up into the neck, and .then he sprayed the pressurized beer over the cat. The animal never moved. It didn’t run away or cry out. It continued to lie in the same spot, its fur drenched with beer, little drops dripping onto the carpet.

“That is really sick, Cliff.”

“Gods can’t be sick, Frank. This is my universe, and in my universe I make the rules. If I say that spraying the cat with cold beer is right, then it must be. It doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong outside this house. In here my actions are the standard of good and evil. You think I’m cruel, don’t you? I’m not. I don’t just punish him for fun. It’s for his own good. Cats are naturally sinful. Left to themselves they would go on, generation after generation, without improvement. It is my wish to improve this cat, and then others.”

“You’re going to get more cats to mistreat?”

“Of course. There’s not much point in being the god of one cat. But it’s not mistreatment. When this cat is properly instructed I shall get others and teach them to follow the true path. In time, I’ll have a race of cats, all subject to me. This one will be the prophet of that new race; the prophet of Cliff.”

“You’ve got to stop drinking so much beer.”

“I’m not drunk. Only those who are not gods need to get drunk. I don’t need liquor, or drugs, or sex, or money.”

“It isn’t right, and don’t tell me that gods can’t be wrong. It isn’t right to torture a helpless animal just to feel like a big man.”

“I’m not torturing him, I’m teaching him to follow the rules I have decreed. For example, he sleeps in a bare box because he’s sinful, while I sleep in a luxurious bed with overstuffed comforters. If he enters my bedroom, he’s punished.”

“While you’re here.”

Cliff laughed. “See his collar? I designed and built it myself. If he goes into a forbidden area, and there are more than one, he receives an electrical shock. Even when I’m not here my laws are enforced.”

“What about the beer showers?”

“What about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the plague? Nothing specific, and nothing personal. He has it coming. It’s his nature.”

“You’re a sick man, Cliff.”

“And you’re a poor guest and I think it’s time you left. There isn’t room for two gods in my universe.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. I put my beer aside, rose and headed for the door. “From now on I’ll see you at the lab, where you’re just an ordinary mortal, like the rest of us.”

“But when you go home, what are you?” Cliff followed me towards the door. Despite his claims of sobriety I could see he was unsteady on his feet. “Just a man, worried about money, trying to get laid. I’ve got godhood to come home to. You’re nothing but a man, Frank, don’t forget that.”

“And you’re a sadist, and I won’t forget that either.”

I left them there, the cat and his god, staring at each other. As I drove home I wondered what I would do when Monday rolled around. I was sure I would tell everybody about Cliff and his cat, but what else I would do I had no idea. Cliff was a tough guy and I wasn’t sure I wanted his sadism directed at me if I tried to get him fired. I wasn’t even sure if the company could do anything based on a second hand account of animal abuse and megalomania.

As it turned out I didn’t have make those decisions. That was the last time I saw Cliff, at least while all his pieces were connected. It was less than twelve hours later that the police came to get me. Cliff had no address book, which didn’t surprise me, but my number had been on a pad by his phone. Whether it was placed there hours before all hell broke loose, or whether he was trying to reach me at the last minute I don’t know, and no one can tell me. I suppose it really doesn’t matter.

It was deeply dark on the road to Cliff’s house. During the day I could not have seen how truly isolated Cliff’s “universe” was but at 3 a.m. there was no mistaking the extent to which Cliff had cut himself off from us mere mortals. I sat in the back seat of the patrol car and I first saw the turning dome lights on the final turn of the driveway. There were five police cars and an ambulance in front of the house. If that wasn’t enough to tell me that something was seriously wrong there were a dozen men in armored jackets roaming the grounds, their assault rifles at the ready.

The interior of the house was a wreck. Furniture destroyed, lights smashed, windows blown out. The detective in charge took me aside and began to question me. I still didn’t know why I had to come back there; why I couldn’t be questioned in my home or at the station the next day.

“You say you last saw him yesterday afternoon. Was he afraid of anything? Was he expecting anyone? Were there any phone calls?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“He never said. I didn’t know him that well.”

“But he invited you to his home.”

That seemed to be opening up whole areas I didn’t want to touch. I mumbled something about knowing him from work and being invited and that it was the extent of our friendship. I agreed that they’d find my fingerprints there when he asked about the empty beer bottles in the garbage. I remember thinking (as stupid as it sounds now) that apparently gods didn’t recycle.

“I see. Were there valuables here, something that might be missing now?”

“I didn’t see any. There was a TV in the living room. Other than I really wouldn’t know.”

“Drugs?”

“He said no. Can I ask a question? What’s happened to Cliff?”

“Didn’t they tell you?”

“No. Is he okay?” Even then it seemed like a foolish question, in the midst of all that debris.

“Anything but.”

“He’s dead?”

“Well, I’m sorry to have to say this but dying was the least of his worries.”

“Can I see him?”

“You don’t want to, believe me.”

I don’t know why I insisted, but I did. The sheets the police used to cover the pieces were already soaked with blood. Cliff had no more use for privacy or dignity so it seemed they had done that for their own piece of mind. I supposed that no experience with horror ever prepares you for some things. Oddly, I didn’t feel sick, just stunned. It didn’t strike me that I was looking at a dead body and I couldn’t believe that bloody mass of tissue had ever been Cliff. There was no connection between what I saw and a human being.

“We think there are pieces missing, but that’s up to the coroner to decide. There’s one other thing. Maybe it will make sense to you.”

I was glad to go anywhere, unless he was taking me to see more pieces. The room was in the back of the house and was wrecked the same as the other rooms, but carved deep in the walls were wide, nearly vertical, cuts or grooves. They started at the ceiling and continued to the floor. I had never seen anything like them before, and said so.

“You were in this room during your visit?”

“For a minute. He gave me a short tour.”

“Those gouges, were they there then?”

“No, I’d have noticed.”

“That’s what we thought. I had to make sure they weren’t here before. It confirms our opinion that some sort of pick-axe was used. We still don’t know why. You’re sure he wasn’t dealing in drugs?”

“He said he never used them.”

“What else did he say?”

I didn’t say. How could I? Besides, there would have been long talks, leading nowhere. I said I had nothing to add and he believed me. He told me I could leave, and returned to his men.

It was on my way out that I saw the cat’s collar on the floor, near the stairs to the second floor. It was an ordinary band of the kind sold in every pet store except there were electronic components attached. It was a competent piece of work, just what you would expect from Cliff. The buckle was still locked. The collar had been sheared cleanly through.

Drawn by curiosity I moved cautiously up the stairs. I expected to be challenged, but all the action had taken place on the first floor and no one noticed me. The rooms on the second floor were untouched and I had no idea what I was looking for, until I noticed a bright red dot of light at the end of the hall. The same kind of box we used in the lab to build test devices stood outside the door to the master bedroom, glowing LEDs marking states and functions that I did not understand. What I did realize was that apparently it was all right for gods to steal from our stockroom. I had no doubt that this box was part of the punishment system Cliff had devised, but the collar had been left behind on the floor downstairs.

The cat lay on the forbidden bed, luxuriating in the soft pleasures of the comforter. He was grooming himself; licking his paws and wiping his fur smooth. Tiny sounds of pleasure came from deep inside him, although I had heard that cats never purr when they are alone. After a moment he stopped and I felt a shiver run through me as he looked into my eyes. For the very first time I looked into the eyes of a cat and realized how different the brain behind them was; how alien. He yawned once and then jumped down from the bed. He looked up at the ceiling, meowed, stretched and then walked past me. Is there anything so silent as a cat, so invisible?

I followed him down the stairs and watched as he walked unnoticed through the crowd of policeman. He crossed the wrecked living room where his former owner still lay and walked out the front door into the night, into the wider universe. Cliff had called him the prophet of a new race. I still wonder if that is so.

About the Author

Marc Colten was born in 1950 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. His was influenced by the Cold War and the divisiveness of the Viet-Nam war. His literary influences were the novels of George Orwell and John LeCarre and the short stories of Saki and John Collier.

©2009 Marc Colten