Hank was a nice enough guy, but it seemed to him that he was never particularly close to anyone. It wasn’t that he didn’t have friends, or even the occasional fuck buddy. He had plenty of the former and enough of the latter that between the two, it was a rare night he spent alone. But the strongest feelings he had for…hell anything, were for his cat.
The cat in question was a rambunctious cat to be sure, black save for the occasional indiscriminate patch of gold fur. Hank had found Moo Shu as a kitten wandering in a back alley behind a Chinese restaurant. He told people that Moo Shu had gotten his name because that’s what he ordered for dinner that night.*
Exactly why Hank felt a stronger kinship with this cat than with his fellow man, I couldn’t say; my guess is that he felt somewhat responsible for Moo Shu, and by extension, responsible for himself. If he didn’t feel like getting out of bed, his friends would take care of themselves, but that goddamn cat, as he often called him, scratched and clawed and hissed until Hank eventually dragged himself out of bed and got something to eat for the both of them. When Hank would try to play Xbox for more than an hour or so, that little fucker, as he often called him, would jump on the controller and generally be a nuisance until Hank abated and played with him.
When Moo Sho electrocuted his dumb ass by chewing on some wires, Hank slowly withdrew from his social life. There was nothing forcing him out of bed, no one dragging him away from the computer or the TV. In time the only contact he had with anyone was between him and the man delivering his groceries to his apartment, who, according to the name embroidered on his jumpsuit, was named Steve. Hank thought Steve was probably a rapist, and he was right.*
The exact time, I think, that Hank realized how far he had let himself go was when he realized that his teeth were the same color as the pit stains on his undershirts. With this revelation came many more,* and soon it was obvious what he had to do. After scraping most of the grime off his body and down the shower drain, Hank set about the task of finding some clean clothes. After finding some in his dishwasher,* Hank got dressed. Then he left his apartment, took the elevator down to the lobby, waved at the receptionist, and walked outside for the first time in almost a year.
If you said the city never sleeps you’d be wrong and I’d start calling you a dumbfuck tourist. The rats and the smog and the dirt and the grime were all asleep this morning and those who were awake were still in their homes. The upshot of this was that the city almost passed for pleasant in the early spring dawn and its streets belonged to Hank as he walked quietly across town.
A block or three into his resurrection, a small pack of cars drove by, herded together for a fleeting instant by the pull and push of the traffic signals. Watching the cars pass, Hank was overcome by a rather unpleasant feeling.* As he turned to watch the cars disappear down the street, Hank took his eyes off the crosswalk in front of him, and in the process was nearly cut down by a soulless yuppie running a red light. The city opened its eyes and yawned.
*The truth was Hank had some very morbid theories as to where City Wok got its meat.
*Or would have been, if Steve hadn’t lacked both the credit to purchase a van and anything resembling upper body strength.
*Foremost among them was that he smelled like a public restroom had a nightmare.
*Don’t ask me how they got there because I don’t know either. He has a washing machine you know.
*This feeling, Hank has since told me, was sickeningly close to the rising unease that comes when someone chooses the urinal directly adjacent to yours, despite all the others being open.
I decided to experiment with footnotes in this story, I think it went well.
This is the first story I've posted here, and hopefully I'll have a few more up in the near future.
