Kiku & The Athame
Okay, so here's what I remember. Bear with me because some of it went so far off the rails that I'm not super clear on what happened. But…
I really should have known that the night would not be a normal one when Kiku came through the cat door with a knife clenched in her jaws.
I'll be honest, that's not the first strange thing she's brought home with her. There was that one time when she had a hand in her mouth and my heart almost stopped in my chest. Until I wrestled it away from her and saw that it was some strange robot part. Where she found that I'll never know. I sold that on eBay to get it out of my apartment right quick!
That knife was heading onto eBay too. There was no way I was having that in my house and you don't just take stuff like that out to dump in the trash chute. I've seen way too many crime scene shows to know they find that stuff real quick if it's connected to a crime! The best thing to do is mail it out to someone who's purchased it legally. Then it's their problem. And also unlikely to get connected back to me because I didn't do any crime. They wouldn't investigate me out of the blue and they couldn't know that Kiku brought the knife home. Right?
I mean, I know there are those cameras all through the hallways, high up in the corners like we're not supposed to notice them. But I see them. Oh, I'm not blind! Maybe they could have seen Kiku with a knife but would they know what it was? Those cameras are always so grainy on those crime scene shows though. I was not going to worry on it.
I was in the middle of looping stitches onto my needles, counting and focusing because it's so darn frustrating to have to go back and do it again and again. Especially when you're knitting a large afghan and casting on two hundred plus stitches! I did not want to be interrupted so I didn't really pay attention to Kiku or where she went with the knife when she first came in. I know I should have but you really have no idea how long it takes to cast on that many stitches and the concentration you need.
When I had all the stitches on my needles and knitted through the first row, I set it all aside and went to look for Kiku. She's a bright orange ball of fluff with slightly crossed green eyes and the voice of a pack-a-day smoker. She should stick out like a sore thumb but somehow I always lose her in my apartment, even with how small it is. It's like she disappears. Which is what she must have done because I didn't find her when I went to look.
I did find the knife though. That was pretty unsettling because she left it on the desk next to my laptop. Sometimes I think she knows exactly what I'm going to do with the bizarre things she brings home. It's not the first time she left one of them next to my laptop. If she had opposable thumbs I would not at all be surprised to find she had queued up the eBay seller site too in preparation for me! (Listen, I know I need to stop imagining my cat thinks like a human but I'm lonely. Leave me alone!)
I sat down to look over the knife and figure out a decent price to sell it for. I forgot all about my knitting pretty quick. See, there was this funny little symbol on the knife. Which, when I looked at it more closely, was more like an athame than a knife. I can tell the difference. I spent a summer in my early 20s living with a roommate who did ceremonial things with athames. They're for magic and rituals and that sort of thing. The blade was silver, about 6 inches long, and wavy. The hilt looked like it was probably made of onyx or obsidian.
I'm handy with my cell phone so I took a picture of the funny symbol on the hilt of the athame and uploaded it to Reddit. It would probably take awhile for someone to recognize it but it was just my backup plan. In case the rest of my searches failed. I also emailed a photo of the whole knife along with the symbol to a friend of mine in the building, Harvey, who likes this kind of thing. He's kind of a collector, I guess. I knew he'd get a kick out of it.
The symbol on the hilt looked like a bow and arrow, pulled taught to fire, arrow pointing upward. On the tip of the arrow looked to be something like the All-Seeing-Eye or the Eye of Ra. But not exactly. In a semicircle around the bottom of the arrow feather were the words: Ordo Reliquariorum Viventium. Not too hard to translate really, it's just Latin. The Order of Living Reliquaries.
I put that into Google and came up with nothing. I opened my onion router and dove into the dark web to see if I could find the catchphrase there. I'm not really the greatest with the dark web; I don't know how to dig real deep and I probably don't want to do that anyway considering what I've heard is there. I did find some hints, a few mentions, some strange footnotes in ancient prophecy forums.
The most I could really find is that the order was very old and had found out how to keep themselves as secret as possible. With anyone who had allegedly interacted with them telling stories that made no sense. Quests for a special place where the stones would come to life. Chants that made your mind go "white". Crazy rituals involving beautiful women with shining silver eyes who went willingly to the slaughter. Just weird stuff that didn't really make sense to me.
The deeper I dug, the more outlandish the information was and I stopped taking it seriously. People were great at writing stories online. Just look at half the things on Reddit. I finally had enough, decided on the price I'd charge for the knife on eBay, wrote the listing, and it was up for sale. I went back to my knitting and had a nice, quiet evening with my yarn and a little Only Murders in The Building on Hulu.
I reached down a few times to pat Kiku who had slunk her naughty backside out of hiding. I wasn't really paying much attention. It was normal for her to do that. It wasn't until later, when I was trying to fall asleep, that I wondered where she went off to and why she hadn't jumped up next to my laptop or messed with my yarn ball like she normally did. Maybe she was having one of "those" nights where she just hid and only wanted the occasional scritch between the ears to remind her she belonged somewhere. We're both basically strays so I understood.
I heard back from Harvey in the morning. I assumed he had done the same search I did but that was not at all the message I found. I was in the middle of pouring food for Kiku in the Garfield themed bowl an ex-friend had given us when the notification pinged my phone. I looked at the email subject (NO NO NO!) and decided that was way too big of an energy to try to read on my phone.
I called for Kiku, but the little rascal didn't appear. I heard a thunk from the bedroom closet and assumed she would be out when she had finally decided she was ready to grace me with her presence. Cats, right?
I made coffee and turned on the news on the television for background noise. I might live alone but I don't always like to feel alone, you know? I took the coffee to my laptop and fired it up. While I was waiting for Windows to do some kind of update that simply had to be done right that minute, I heard another notification ping my phone. This one was a text from Harvey.
You must not ;lasooahg ! afghducker
He has big hands. Massive thumbs. He should never try to text. I laughed and glanced toward the bedroom door. I had thought I'd seen a flash of orange fur but there was nothing there but the bottom right corner of my bed, empty and freshly made. I shrugged and the chugging of my laptop gave way to a pleasant tone that said it was now awake and ready for whatever.
About damn time, I thought. I opened my email app as my phone started pinging over and over. Text after text flashed across my screen and I sort of chuckled nervously as I waited for the email to load.
"Goodness, Kiku, do you hear all of this? He has lost his ever-lovin' mind, right?"
There was another responding thump. This one sounded like maybe Kiku had run straight into the wall like she used to do when she was a kitten. Except much louder now she was an adult cat. I glanced toward the bedroom again and saw a flash of orange but then the email entitled NO NO NO! distracted me back to what I was doing.
Again, he really shouldn't use his hands to communicate. The email was a mess but, from what I could piece together, somehow he knew that when anyone searches for information on that symbol and the accompanying words, people within the cult know. Bad people. People with a lot to protect and hide. It sounded like a lot of hooha to me. A lot of urban legend mixed with fear mongering. He had spent entirely too much time with his collection and reading the occult books on his shelves. I shook my head and looked at my phone to see what he was texting.
They knowing that you are like that you are are know coming to find u
Duvking mother ducker autoconflict beans
Duck duck get out to mow tomorrow no noW!
I mean, he sounded freaked out so I hit the button to call. I never called Harvey. We never used the phone to talk to each other. The emails we used were anonymous but our phones always listened to us. We even left them behind if we met in person somewhere. You never know who might overhear and then I'd end up with a bunch of ads on Facebook for weird weaponry and books about Satanism or Faeries. No bueno. Do not want.
When Harvey picked up he sounded out of breath. "Please tell me you didn't go on the dark web for that thing!" he gasped.
"Of course, I did. Where else do I find the good stuff?"
A third bump from my room was followed by what sounded like Kiku doing zoomies in the middle of the morning and knocking everything down in my closet. I pictured all the pieces and cards and bits from every game and puzzle I owned, scattered across the floor of the bedroom and sighed.
"Let me call you back, Harvey," I said, distractedly and hung up on him while he was speaking.
"No, get out!" I heard before the line was dead and I was on the move to the bedroom.
"You had better pray you didn't cause major damage, you furry mongrel!" I called to Kiku.
Thunk! Tumble! Thunk! And the thing that sent a shiver down my spine? A small voice answered me and I almost screamed.
"I don't pray but if I did, it would be for this to not be happening right now. I am so hungry."
I took a tentative step toward the door and thought to myself that it was really time to shampoo the carpets or something because the smell of cat was very ripe in the air. I heard a groan and peered around the door.
To say I was shocked would be the understatement of the century. My head went light all of a sudden and I thought I might pass out.
"I'm sorry but I kind of warned you," Kiku said.
Kiku, who was then the size of a large tiger, swished a tail that easily could knock a grown man like Harvey to the ground. Right that minute, it was swiping books off my bookshelf onto the floor. I could see Kiku growing with my very eyes and I remember thinking that we were going to have a very difficult time getting her to the vet to fix this. Because we could fix this, right?
Rational thought really does leave when you're faced with the impossible. I hadn't read Kafka but I did know he wrote a book about a boy who turned into a very large, disgusting bug. That was what was happening there, wasn't it? My cat had somehow gotten tangled with whatever force Kafka had written about turning a kid into a bug. I made a mental note to look up that story and find out how it ended.
"I'm so hungry," Kiku whined and grew another foot taller.
I backed out of the bedroom, still stunned, I think. And kind of fascinated because maybe this was just a dream. Then I pinched myself and it really hurt. No, I was awake. My cat was nearing the ceiling. As she grew, her claws flexed and scraped, shredding the carpet beneath her and releasing more of that wild cat smell. It was beginning to make me gag.
Behind me, next to my laptop, my phone rang. I ignored it. Kiku had my full attention. I could see her nose twitching, she was smelling the air like she usually did. But her nose was so big that air wooshed by me like wind each time she sniffed. I backed all the way out into the living room.
"I just put out your food," I said even though that was a moot point. A tiny, Garfield bowl of food was not going to satisfy the massive, orange cat in my bedroom. What else did I have? I wasn't sure.
Kiku laughed - I think that's what the sound was - and I think I heard her head thunk on the ceiling. "Don't think that will cut it."
"Shh, come out of there, come out here, Kiku," I beckoned as though she were still a tiny cat who could still fit through that cat door I'd illegally installed on my apartment.
I watched the enormous cat attempt to slip through the bedroom door. It took her a few tries of bumping her whiskers against the doorframe and reacting like she normally would by avoiding it because her whiskers were saying she couldn't fit. Eventually though she used her paws to pull herself through, claws scraping up the wall and destroying a cross stitch sampler I had made a decade ago.
I think Kiku knew what I knew. If she stayed in that bedroom, she was going to suffocate. We had to figure out how to get her out of the apartment. I couldn't figure out how to do that without someone noticing. She was like the cat version of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Kiku the Massive Orange Cat.
I didn't think I could have been any more startled by anything after this but then someone knocked on the front door. My heart stopped - then restarted but it was going so much faster. I heard a voice on the other side of the door. It was a pleasant one, so not Harvey come to read me the riot act. He really was so full of it.
"Ms. Ishikawa, please do open the door. I have some important matters to discuss with you."
The voice was sort of musical and I raised an eyebrow at Kiku whose backside was now pressed against the balcony door, threatening to break the glass. This was going to be so bad if I didn't figure out how to make this person - probably some sort of door-to-door missionary - go away and find a way out of the building with Kiku.
"No, thank you," I said as sweetly as I could.
"At least look through the peephole to see that I am harmless, Ms. Ishikawa."
Kiku seemed to be shaking her head. "Sounds like a bad man," she whispered in a dull roar.
"What harm is there in looking?" I asked and walked to the door, putting my eye to the peephole.
There was a man in jeans and a t-shirt but I couldn't see his face. That was covered by what looked like some kind of passport and it was stamped with that weird symbol from the athame.
"Did Harvey put you up to this?" I asked, a little annoyed that my friend would go to so much trouble to freak me out. He wasn't really known for pranks but he was known for wanting to be right all the time. He might resort to this.
Kiku's stomach growled and the walls shook, glasses in the cupboard chinking off each other. Alarm rose further inside me. This was getting so bad!
"Fine! Just a minute," I told the man outside. To Kiku, I said as quietly as I could, "Get back in the bedroom!"
Kiku shook her head, her skull dragging across the ceiling. She'd grown so much that she filled the kitchen, her head close to me near the front door. There was no way she could go back into the bedroom.
The man knocked again and cleared his throat. "Ms. Ishikawa, please don't make this difficult. Think of your neighbors."
I pulled the door open forcefully, barely registering the man just beyond. He didn't have a chance to use the athame, identical to the one on my desk waiting to be sold on eBay, before Kiku's head swung down.
My cat swallowed him whole! Right like that. Opened her mouth and then he wasn't standing there in the hallway anymore. Gone.
I slammed the door shut, astonished, and even more panicked about what to do now. Then it was temporarily taken care of. As I watched, Kiku began to slowly shrink and shift. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would have thought the man from the hall had gotten in somehow and the swallowing hadn't happened. But I saw it all!
There stood Kiku. In the body of the man from the hall. Her eyes were Kiku's eyes and not his. This had to be very bad. If he was from the cult, they'd send someone else when he didn't come back. I looked at Kiku.
"I'm not hungry anymore."