Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

I have learned in my own home, after movie and TV show study, that balaclavas are a major accessory for bad guys. They are black stretchy ski masks, leaving holes for the eyes and mouth only.

Since no one can identify the wearers, they are worn by SWAT teams and criminals, like bank robbers and terrorists haughty enough to think that their ugly mugs are famous far and wide.

Okay. But these pure-white balaclavas are like Lady Godiva white-chocolate masks.

Wedding appropriate.

While I am marveling at the brutes’ refined taste in headgear, someone steps up.

“Please,” I hear proud Father Hernandez urge in a strained, almost unfamiliar voice of pleading, “do not sin on Holy ground, or hurt any of these worshippers. I have stepped away, see. I…we will not resist. All you see is yours, but know that our Holy Lord’s vigil light burning twenty-four hours above sees the sins in your heart.”

“Sorry, Padre,” a basso voice growls insincerely. “We need to upset your ceremony until we get what we came for.”

“Step back, Padre,” another invader’s voice orders. “Step back. You have been saying Mass for years over a fortune and your luck is about to run out.”

The White Chocolate Balaclava Boys continue advancing, guns raised and at the ready, to the first altar step.

Okay. We have got a bead on the bride,” another loud voice announces. “Everybody else, hands up and kept in sight. Move away from the altar.”

One guy moves straight ahead, Uzi covering the bridal party.

I see the leader’s ugly black wing-tip shoes approach the steps and the ladies’ dainty heels and black-patent men’s dress shoes parting to the right and left of the altar.

“That is right, priest to the far left with the fluffy ladies, bride and whatever. Dudes to the far right, remembering I would love to pick off a Fontana or two.”

Then the invaders take a wide stance and make a demeaning demand.

“Wedding party, on your knees, bride, groom, do like the priest, and we will do a little holy excavation, Father, so you will live to genuflect another day.”

“All of you. Drop on your knees.”

Sorry. No can do. Not only do I kneel to no one, kneeling is not a default posture for my species.

I drop and hunch, thereby tipping my zebra-striped container over sideways on the floor. I can no longer see the action. I buck like a bronco to move my portable prison into better viewing position through the mesh sides.

A nudge (kick) from a Fontana size-eleven black patent-leather shoe in the carrier side is accompanied by a whispered, “Chill, dude” from a face leaning over my carrier zipper.

I glimpse gray pant leg. I have lived to sorta see a Fontana brother on his knees? Mama Fontana’s Red Pepper Pasta Sauce forbid! The whisper continues. “Can the growling. Avoid attracting attention. You were supposed to be a stuffed stand-in here.

“Your real part was supposed to come much later.”

I sincerely hope there is a “later” for my part, or parts.

The head guy says, “We have a bit of heavy lifting to do before any ‘I do’s’ are said and I do swear to shoot anyone who looks sideways at our operation.”

Shoes shuffle over tile, then I hear rough grunting and cursing, and the scraping of stone on stone, like a giant is using a mortar and pestle. If this were a horror movie, which I kinda think it is, somebody would be opening the tomb of The Mummy or Dracula. I prefer Dracula, because there would likely be bats on the scene, and I love chasing bats, almost as much as rats like the present company.

The grunts, curses, and scrapes get repetitive.

“Hey, bride,” a guy shouts, “stop fussing with that bouquet. You throw it at any of us when we get close up, we will not be trying to catch it, and you will be left at the altar, dead.”

That threat echoes in the silence. I can sense the stunned humans around me, frozen in horror. Maybe it is Dracula under that altar.

The growl low in my throat merits another toe-kick, but there is not a Fontana brother in the world who can shut up Midnight Louie when he is on the warpath. Besides, the people have moved too far aside to do anything. Me, I am not going anywhere.

“Temple,” a thundering voice from above shouts, “You cannot do this. Thank God, I have reclaimed my memory. I have come to rescue you. Marry me! ”

A caped human figure in black comes flying from the top of the nave like a huge raven on a bungee-cord pendulum, getting bigger. A rustling wind swishes, ruffling my already bristled coat, as the figure reaches the floor, dipping low enough to sweep my roommate and her trailing white train up, up and away to the other side of the nave.

“What or who the hell is up there?” a balaclava-masked guy shouts. “A vampire Tarzan bride-napper? Shoot!”

So there I am, struggling in the carrier, cursing the zipper tab that is resisting my insistent right incisor, a.k.a. fang, a.k.a. lock pick. I am basically Houdini doing an underwater escape from a locked shroud, losing-air-as-the-seconds-tick-by trick. Only without water.

Finally! Front fang connects with zipper tag hole and pulls down. I push my shoulders free. At last I shuffle off the hated portable immortal coil of my zebra-pattern carrier bag and leap out. Of course the exposure is dangerous, but I have been operating blind until now.

I see Miss Temple’s beloved train ebbing away to my left as she disappears somewhere high and out of the action. The wedding party seems as stupefied as the invaders and guests in their pews. I bristle everything I have and run to center ground before the gaping hole in the floor to defend what is left of the wedding party.

“And somebody kick the cat with the stupid bow tie under his puss offstage while you are at it.”

I can no longer contain the primeval feline warning that has rippled fear along human spines for millennia. It starts low in my belly, like a sports car engine, and escalates into a deep vibrating howl in my rib cage until it explodes from my throat in an ultra high- C shriek.

In perfect time, my personally auditioned Our Lady of Guadalupe cat choir pounces down from behind the red-velvet curtains in the organ loft hanging high behind everyone like a plague of the Red Death. Paws and claws pound down three sets of ivory keyboard, each key a gleaming “step” of sound, cats all the while howling a cappella. The resulting dissonance would wake the dead and promptly have even Dracula jumping back, cowering, into his coffin.

The human adrenaline high such unholy sound unleashes makes every heartbeat discernible, each throb a punch on a panicked jungle drum.

Hah! The wild shots into the distant ceiling have stopped. The ghost-faced interlopers are crouching, clamping hands to ears, with their weapons dropped against their legs.

The bridal party, however, leaps into frenzied action.

The missing, ahem, new bridal couple are swooping back down, a symphony in swinging black and white. Mr. Max sets the bride down on the altar steps and draws fire as he continues the swinging arc to vanish into the nave’s blackest, highest shadows.