The Cat Came Back

Everybody makes such a big deal out of dying. Well, I’m here to tell ya, it ain’t no big whoop. Dyin’s the easy part, or at least it sure was for me. Nothin’ to it, I could-a done it standin’ on my head.

Being dead. Now that’s a horse of a different color.

I don’t want ya to get the idea that I’m some kind of expert or something, but this story is being told from a first-person point of view. I been there, or I guess I should say I am there. No shit. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’. Heh, heh. A little dead guy humor there.

When I was alive I used to spend a goodly amount of time wonderin’ what it would be like. I mean, lots of people say they know what lies on the other side of the great beyond, but I always figured that was just so much bullcookies. Nobody knows. Outa all the preachers an’ prophets poundin’ pulpits, kickin’ ass and takin’ names, not a single one of ’em has ever been there to see for hisself. “But it says so in the Good Book! Heaven and Hell!” they shout and bang the bible. Yeah, right, and I had a book that said Superman could piss into the wind and not get wet, but that don’t make it so.

Still, ya hear tell about these folks having outta body experiences after car wrecks and such all the
time. And I had a friend what was in a supposedly haunted ceramics room in school one time. He swore an unmotorized potter’s wheel just started turnin’ all by it’s lonesome, and I believe him. He was genuinely scared spitless that night. Vampire and werewolf stories are as old as humanity itself. The undead. Frankenstein. The Egyptians preserved the bodies of their deceased, ’cause they figured they’d be needin’ ’em later when they came back. There’s a lotta weird stuff in the world that even the Einstein Boys down at Harvard can’t explain. We tend to discount the ghost stories we hear ’cause it makes the world seem safer not to have Aunt Gertie’s spirit takin’ up residence in your closet, but that don’t mean she’s not in there rearranging your underwear and stealin’ your socks.

Now me, I always thought I’d buy it in a car crash. You know, a 20¢ pin snaps in the steering column someday on a winding country road. Fireball in the night sky. Very romantic.

But it seems Molly saw my demise in a little different way.

We’d been married about six years and was doin’ OK, I guess. Had a nice little house, a cabin on a lake up north, a new Taurus in the garage and that was good enough for me. But like the Rolling Stones said, satisfaction came hard for that girl. Molly wanted more; always a new pair of shoes away from happiness.

And then lightning struck.

9, 15, 56, 34, 29, 38. My birthday and her measurements made us rich, courtesy of the state lottery.

Silly me. I thought we had it made. Even she couldn’t spend 42 million dollars in a lifetime. Yeah, that last year and a half was the happiest time of my life. We traveled. We partied. We built a new house in the mountains.

I never saw it coming.

It was our anniversary for Pete’s sake, which only goes to show you what a cold-hearted bitch she really was. We’d just finished the cornish game hens and were sitting in front of the fire drinking champagne when my head started to spin and everything got real blurry. It happened so fast. Strichnine would be my guess. She poisoned me!

And there I was, floating in the air above, looking down at my own body lying on the floor, rather amazed by it all. “It’s true!” I thought, and I was so awestruck by the fact that there really was life after death that I wasn’t even upset with her for killing my ass.

But that didn’t last long.

I hadn’t been down three minutes when the door swings open and who should come strollin’ in but my best friend Ray. Molly looks at him and says, “Where you been, lover? We gotta get him outta here!”

But Ray’s playing it cool, sayin’, “Now, don’t get your undies in a bundle, he ain’t goin’ nowhere. We didn’t plan this for four months just to screw it up now,” and he starts to drag my body out the door.

Molly and Ray! Who woulda thought! Obviously not me.

Well, I guess they hadn’t used quite enough poison, ‘cause as he’s pullin’ me down the back steps, I get this really goofy sensation and literally fall out of the sky and land right smack dab back in my body. That hurt too, and now I’m moanin’, and trying to make some sense outta what the hell just happened to me. I opened my eyes, but everything was pretty fuzzy and I still couldn’t move a lick. Ray, he don’t even bat an eye, he just walks over to the shed, picks up a shovel and crosses the yard to where I’m stretched out on my back.

“Sorry, ol’ Hoss,” he says, “I know this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.” Then he put the point of the spade to my forehead, and jumped on it with both feet.

If it hurt, I don’t remember it.

When I woke up, everything was dark and silent as the night. I tried to move, but nothin’ doin’. In
fact after I’d been lyin’ there what seemed like a couple hours I became aware of something that really jerked a knot in my tail.

I wasn’t breathing.

No matter how I looked at it (and I looked at it from a whole lot of different ways in the next few weeks) it all added up to the same thing. I was deader ’n a doornail, and the answer to the all-time cosmic question, at least for me, was that after you cash in your chips you don’t go anywhere. No pearly gates. No coming back as your uncle Benny’s favorite sheep. No tripping around the galaxy. Sorry to disappoint ya folks, you just stay right where you are.

And let me tell you, it’s boring as hell.

You don’t even sleep. It’s pretty much the worst thing you could ever think of.

So, I got really good at playing mental games, I’ll tell you that. I constructed crossword puzzles in my head. I built a new house, board by board. I invented a whole new language.

And time crept by.

Who knows how much? Without any reference to the passing of night and day, it’s impossible to say.
But eventually, I began to notice something unbelievably odd. I was regaining the use of my limbs. No foolin’. It took a while, but what’s time to a dead man? With a little practice I was even able to force air through my lungs and tried singing a song (Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult), although by then my vocal chords were starting to decay pretty badly, and I didn’t much like the sound of what came out. Kinda wet and raspy. I guess the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will have to wait.

It wasn’t long (or was it?) before I was able to raise my arms and confirm what I’d suspected all along.
I was buried in a rough wooden box, about shoulder width and a foot high, and I’m tellin’ ya, it was almost worse to know. Before, I couldn’t tell where I was, some weird kind of limbo I thought, I wasn’t even sure I was still in my body, although it seemed that way. Now I knew.

I remembered what a coroner friend told me, how he’d have to dig up the coffins sometimes. He always thought it was kinda creepy ’cause a few of them would have their silk linings all shredded, like the
people inside was tryin’ to get out. ’Course, I always thought he was just yankin’ my chain.

That was quite while ago. I’m noticing it difficult to concentrate, more and more. I think brain start to rot away, and it affecting me. Bugs and centipedes starting get in too. Damn cracks in wood box. Since feeling come back, I know they boring through flesh my. This really starting to annoy me! But good news! I was able to loosen board in ceiling! I lots of time, and patience always my strong suit. I think not long before I have it off.

Board came off Alright. Lots dirt fall in on me, and now can’t move again. This sucks! I just starting to enjoy being able scratch, and now I’m screwed. But oh, well. Death goes on. Ha, ha. More humor.

Something new. Felt tug on hand. Dog dug me up. Sumbitch chewed off left arm! But dirt loose enough that out I now. Moon bright as sun. Been long time since seen I light! Not stand able, been too long, guess. I work on.

Day pass. Practice perfect make. Finally stand, even walk can fast though not. Damn dog come back. Now missing part right shoulder. I hate dog, but guess I not beauty contest win anyway.

Have plan. Know this woods, not too far, my house old. Shotgun still barn in? Not nine lives, but this cat back!

Molly. Ray.

Guess who coming to dinner?