Cats (USC Photo Essay)
[1] It was six a.m. and the Old Lady downstairs just wouldn’t stop screaming, had been bellowing for forty minutes, at least. The Kid had figured the guard tower would be his best chance for some shuteye, the corroded walls and jagged glass providing plenty of opportunity for an ambitious wind to roar and whistle. Listening to that bluster, the Kid could pretend he was just sleeping through a storm.
[2] It was just his luck, though — there was Tomato, perched cross-legged on the top landing, that blissful, vacant look on her face as she carved her cats. He considered going back down to the Old Lady’s cell to smack the biddy around until she shut up, but the last time he’d tried that the Well-Dressed Man had given him some long, shitty speech about respecting his elders, and he didn’t think he could sit through another. Besides, the Lady had some mean claws on her. He’d rather talk to Tomato than have his skull crushed hunting for expired Bactine in the half-collapsed hospital ward.
“I’m up to thirty-two now,” she said when he reached the top of the stairs.
“Thirty-two what?” He didn’t really care, but the wind wasn’t so loud that he could pretend not to have heard.
“Cats.”
“Oh.” He tried to think of a response. He wanted to ask “why?”, but knew she’d just shrug. She seemed to expect him to say more though, so after a beat he asked, “How many do you plan to make?”
“As many as it takes.”
“Oh,” he said again. “Well, good luck with that, I guess.”
[3] Tomato smiled, content, and her hands resumed their gentle scraping. Puffs of plaster burst around the half-formed feline with each rasp of the file, white dust staining her arms up to her elbows and covering the rest of her body in a pale sheen, like she’d fallen off the wall of some crumbling cell and just happened to land in a human shape — a statue carving statues.
[4] There were five of them altogether, alone and imprisoned at the end of the world, survivors of a catastrophe they couldn’t remember. All of them had experienced the same gradual resurfacing from scattered dreams to their present lucidity; all except for the Old Lady. She’d never really woken up, just spent her days locked in a cycle of drooling and screaming. The Well-Dressed Man and the Warden were convinced she’d come out of it sooner or later and took turns guarding her room. The Warden had been the first of them to wake up, and he swore that everyone had been just as bad. She’d been at it over a month, though; the Kid was pretty sure they could just write her off as senile.
Tomato’s hands had stilled; she was looking at him, ready to say something. He’d noticed that before — she rarely talked and worked at the same time.
“I wonder if we’re related,” she said once she had his attention, a caricature of thoughtful. Her head was tipped to one side, lips pursed, eyes wide and bright, like if she stared at him hard enough she’d be able to decode his DNA. The Kid always broke out in a sweat when she looked at him like that. [5] He turned to face the closest window, but that was no help—Tomato had positioned one of her thirty-two cats on a nearby roof, and it stared at him with nearly the same intensity as her.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “I’d rather be related to that crazy hag.”
“Nooo?” she said. “Well, then. Maybe we were on a date. Maybe we were in love—”
The Kid whipped around so fast that he nearly choked when she yelped. She’d crept up close while his back was turned. Now she shifted away, hands limp, head down. He looked to the floor as the cat landed with a soft poof, its white guts rolling out like a landslide. They considered its remains as the dust hovered above the crumpled form, caught in a still moment between drafts.
The Kid tried to think of some apology, some condolence, but all that came out was a dry cough. He felt as if he was hovering too, ready to be whisked out the window by the next gust of air, but the wind had abandoned them. The silence pressed on his eardrums, that painful throb that comes with a sudden change in altitude, and he realized, in that dead moment between the winds, that the Old Lady had stopped screaming [6].
.
.
.
.
“Cats” and photos (c) 2008, Barbara Steele. All rights reserved.
Photos taken at Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia PA
Barb,
Great stuff. The photos are gorgeous, lots of long hallways, stairs, beautiful lighting despite it being a prison.
I liked the characters’ names, nameless names. And the description of that violent moment, when really it’s only a gesture, when there’s a hint of love, and Tomato creeps up on The Kid and the cat falls to the ground, which gives the story a real drama, energy, a sense of intimacy in this otherwise desolate landscape.
I also thought you had a great ending, capturing this sense of silence, the wind abandoning them, and bringing it back to where you began with the Old Lady, this time not screaming.
Great story/images. Thanks! –Katie