John hated 80-year-old Mrs Nune’s Siamese cats. Her In Home Aide, he took care of Mrs Nune after her husband died. Mrs Nune kept falling and needed help with bathing, household chores and meal preparation. John enjoyed helping her. She had a sound mind and had traveled all over the world with her husband. He’d been an ambassador for the US. John liked listening to her many stories.
She told him she got the pedigree Siamese cats for a steal in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Thais had kept the cats in a cage with a dozen amulets tied on top of the cage to keep the evil in. They’d belonged to a black magic Buddhist monk, who died in a Thailand prison. Mrs Nune said the Thais claimed his spirit lived in the cats. Not believing that nonsense, she made the Thais an offer of 60 Baht, roughly $2 American, for the cats. The Thais, steeped in superstition, were glad to part with the cats at any price.
After she returned to America with the cats, her husband petted the cats and died of a stroke. Mrs Nune didn’t connect the stroke with the cats. John wasn’t a true believer in black magic, but he wondered if the curse of the cats killed her husband. He found it a bit coincidental that Mrs Nune’s husband touched the cats and he instantly died of a stroke. John made it a point not to pet the cats, and he believed the cats hated him. They had enmity in their eyes when they saw him. He felt they wanted him dead too, and suspected he knew they had been cursed. John wondered if the mad monk’s spirit had divided itself into both of them, if such a supernatural feat was possible.
John had been to the far East and heard some strange tales about black magic and dead black magic sorcerers cursing people from beyond the grave. Some had cults that sprang up after the black magic sorcerer died, praying to him for curses on enemies and for riches and love.
But what would have been the point of a black magic monk coming back from death into the bodies of Siamese cats? He’d read in Buddhist holy books about people thinking of certain animals when they died and reincarnating as those animals. Devotees were warned about that. Put your thoughts on the Buddha when you drop the body, they were told. He will take you across Samsara into Nirvana and off the wheel of rebirth.
While John pondered those mystical mysteries, he accidentally stepped on one of the cat’s tails. It howled like a demon and dug its claws into his leg piercing his corduroy pants. He slapped it to the floor. The other cat leaped on his leg and scratched it unmercifully, blood trickled down his leg. He whacked that cat off him too. The cats sat up shaking their heads from the strikes and growled like demons. But, they didn’t attack John again. They had the wisdom to know his superior size and strength were too much for them. He feared they would hatch a revenge plot, and they always hissed at him after that.
Mrs Nune hired a maid, Melissa Banes. The first time John saw Melissa, he fell in love with her. He didn’t know if she felt the same way. He’d been silly to fall in love with a woman he knew nothing about. But, John couldn’t help himself. He could no more control his feelings for her than he could stop the stars in the night sky from shining. John kept staring at her until she became aware of him looking at her. She met his eyes with the same intensity. John had to look away. He couldn’t keep staring at her in the glare of her beauty. “Hi, I’m Melissa,” she said smiling.
“Hi, I’m John,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks. I know I’m going to like it here, and those cats are gorgeous,” she said, petting them, the cats purring. John wanted to warn her about the cats, but didn’t want her to think he was a lunatic and lose her before anything developed. Besides, his fears about them being possessed by a black magic monk could have been his imagination overreacting. So he kept quiet while she gushed over them.
They went out a week later to an Italian restaurant.
“How do you like caring for Mrs Nune?” Melissa asked John.
John rolled some spaghetti on his fork and said,“I enjoy it. I like helping old people. It’s a small thing, but I’m making her life easier in her remaining years. One day I’m going to start my own In Home Care company.”
“Impressive, John.. I have the same kind of ambition. I’m going to open a cleaning company in the future. I like the feeling I get when I make everything clean and nice. And, you know, people are always going to need people to clean for them. People don’t want to do it, but I will, and there’s plenty of work.”
“I like you’re ambitious,” Brian said, noticing Melissa’s nice breasts in her tight-fitting top. He quickly looked away, fearing she’d think he was a pervert on the first date.
“I feel there’s something strange about her Siamese cats,” Melissa said, taking a drink of her coffee.
“What do you mean?”
“At times they seem creepy to me. I can’t put my finger on why that is. It’s a weird feeling I get about them sometimes when they look at me, as if they are trying to hypnotize me with their beautiful, blue eyes.”
“Did you know she got the cats in Thailand?”
“Really?”
“Yes. The story goes they belonged to a black magic Buddhist monk there, and when he died his spirit entered into them. The Thais that owned the cats swore it was true and practically gave them away to Mrs Nune, and they are a pedigree Siamese probably worth a lot of money. She paid about $2.00 for them. And they hate me.”
“Wow. What a story. Why do you think they hate you?”
“Maybe they see me as a rival for Mrs Nune’s affections. But, I don’t really know. Sometimes animals hate people for no reason.”
As time passed, they went out more and fell in love. They spent their free time together holding hands and strolling about Mrs Nune’s estate and going out on dates evenings in the local city.
But the cats began taking up more and more of Melissa’s time. She became like their servant feeding and nurturing them and dashing to them when they kept meowing for her. Too preoccupied with the cats, she no longer took walks around the estate with John.
“I’m sick and tired of you putting those cats before me!” John yelled one day when Melissa was in the kitchen feeding the cats and said she couldn’t go walking with him.
“You’re jealous of the cats?” Melissa said, laughing at John.
“Don’t laugh at me!” Melissa said, stepping back.
The cats meowed louder and louder, working the atmosphere into a frenzy and John and Melissa’s emotions became more unraveled.
Melissa’s eyes changed from her gentle blue eyes to hateful black eyes, as if an evil entity were in her head looking at John through her eyes. At that moment, she grabbed a kitchen knife and charged John. He grabbed her arm and struggled with her, astonished by her increased strength. They fell to the floor and rolled back and forth each holding onto the knife. Melissa gazed into John’s eyes with more hatred than he had ever seen She spit in his face and purposely fell upon the knife. The knife embedded in her heart, blood gushing out of her, she bled all over John and died. The Siamese cats fell to the floor and died at the same time.
At the moment of her death, John felt something foul and evil entering his mind. A blazing, red light lit up his mind, swallowed and obliterated it, like a black hole cannibalizing a planet. The body that belonged to John crept out of the house. A day later, it boarded a plane to Thailand. In Thailand the black magic monk occupying John’s younger body resumed his evil ways and reestablished himself as the leader of his nefarious cult once again.
Bob Boyd