Graham Masterton - Mirror

Wanda cried out, 'No!' but Martin drew back his arm and then crunched the screwdriver straight through the cat's chest and pinned it to the wall.

He stepped back, staggered back. The cat didn't scream. It twisted and struggled and swung from side to side, staring at him, staring at him, as if it didn't mind dying, impaled on this screwdriver, provided it was sure that Martin would soon die, too.

Wanda began to sob hysterically. Martin said, 'Come on, come on, it's all over now. The cat went crazy, that's all. It just went crazy.'

He led her toward the door, back to the Capellis' apartment. He shielded her face as they passed the cat. It was still alive, bubbling blood from its stretched-open mouth, still staring, still trying to swing itself free.

They opened the door. Wanda leaned against the wall, white and shivering, her forehead and her upper lip beaded with perspiration, her hand pressed against her lacerated cheek. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I have to be sick,' and she went off to the bathroom. Martin stood light-headed in the hallway, swaying from side to side, and heard her regurgitate the chicken-and-stuffing frozen dinner that the Capellis had left her.

Emilio had heard the screaming and the banging around upstairs, and he was sitting up in his bed wide awake. 'Boy,' he said, impressed, when Martin came into his bedroom and switched on the light. 'What happened toj/oa?'

'I had a fight,' Martin told him. 'Listen — you'd better get back to sleep. Your grandparents will be home soon.'

'Who did you fight with?' Emilio wanted to know. 'Was it a ninja? Boy, I'll bet you got those cuts from a ninja throwing-star.'

'It was a cat, as a matter of fact,' Martin told him. He sat down on the end of Emilio's bed and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. He was amazed by the amount of deep red blood that spattered all over it. 'Am I hurt that bad?' he asked Emilio, and stood up to look in his He-Man mirror.

His face was appalling; like a newsreel photograph of somebody who had just been blown up by a terrorist bomb. His eyes were puffy, his cheeks were swollen, his whole face was crisscrossed with deep scratches. His ears were torn, and his left earlobe was almost hanging off, and dangled when he moved his head.

'You'd better get to the hospital,' said Emilio sensibly. Martin saw this grotesque, bloodied face nod back at him. 'Yes,' he said. 'A-one idea.' He couldn't understand why it didn't hurt more than it did, or why he was able to walk around and talk so sensibly when he looked so terrible.

Wanda came into the room, still white, pressing a bloodstained pad of toilet tissue to her lacerated cheek. 'Oh, my God,' she said, and her eyes were filled with tears. 'I never knew a cat to do anything like that.'

Martin dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. 'I'm going down to the hospital, okay? I don't want to wind up like Van Gogh, with only one ear. Wanda - will you be all right?'

'I guess so,' she said. 'I'll call up my pop and tell him what's happened.'

Martin lifted the tissue away from her face and examined her scratches. They were deep, but quite clean, and he hoped for everyone's sake that they wouldn't scar. He didn't relish the idea of being sued by Wanda's parents.

'Come on, you'll be okay,' he told her, although he could feel her trembling through her jogging suit; that unstoppable shaking of the shocked, and the truly afraid.

He left the Capellis' apartment and went upstairs to get his car keys. When he reached the landing, he hesitated. Supposing the cat had worked itself free? Supposing he opened the front door and it came flying out at him, just as ferociously as it had before? He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, smearing his knuckles with blood and saliva. Then he cautiously reached out his hand and eased the door open.

The cat was hanging exactly where he had impaled it, its tail and its hind legs dangling, its front paws cocked, its flat anvil-shaped head lolling to one side. Dark rivulets of blood ran down the wall beneath it.

Martin tiptoed along the hallway until he was almost opposite it. Its eyes were closed, its mouth was silently snarling open. It didn't look at all like Lugosi. It was a big brindled torn, with a heavy shaggy body and vicious claws. It stank of cat's urine and some other unutterable sourness that Martin couldn't even begin to recognize.

'You miserable sonofabitch,' he told it between puffed-up lips. The cat had even managed to scratch his tongue.

He went into the sitting room. He tried the light switch again, and this time, unaccountably, it worked. He found his car keys gleaming under the desk. He made a point of not looking in the mirror. If everything in the mirror was the same as it was in here, then that was fine. If it wasn't, then he didn't want to know. Not now, not just yet. His ear was beginning to throb and his face felt as if it was already swollen up to three times its normal size.

He went back into the hallway. He wondered what he ought to do with the cat's body. He couldn't just leave it hanging there, but now that the adrenaline had all drained out of him, he found the thought of touching it almost too repulsive to think about.

But supposing Mr Capelli came looking for him, when he was down at the hospital, and found it? There wouldn't be any question about it then. Immediate eviction — futon, desk and typewriter straight out onto the street, no argument, so sue me.

In the kitchen drawer, Martin found a large green trash bag. He went back out to the hallway, rolled up the trash bag like a giant condom, and arranged it under the place where the cat was hanging. His idea was to yank out the screwdriver, whereupon the cat's body would drop neatly into the trash bag. He could then unroll the trash bag, twist-tie the top, and heave it out of his car in some dark and lonely stretch of the freeway.

He stood in front of the cat's body for a long time before he could summon up the courage to take hold of the screwdriver handle. What's the matter with you, wimp? It's only a cat, and a dead cat at that.

What's the matter? I'm scared shitless, that's what's the matter. I mean — where did it come from, this cat? The windows were locked, the door was locked, nobody else had a key. Where the hell did it come from, except out of the mirror?

Mr Capelli's right. That mirror's driving you bananas. Get rid of it, before something comes shimmering out of it that gets rid of you.

He grasped the screwdriver handle tightly and tugged. Nothing happened. The blade was jammed too tight. God almighty, he thought, / must have had the strength often men to dig this into the wall. But look at me now. Hundred-and-sixty-pound weakling.

He placed the flat of his left hand firmly against the plaster, readjusted his grip on the screwdriver handle with his right hand, and tugged again.

The result was instantaneous. The cat's eyes flared open, and it screamed at him. He screamed, too, just as loudly.

The cat dropped. Martin fell backward, jarring his back against the handle of his bedroom door. But as quickly as he could, he bundled the green plastic around the writhing animal and twisted the top of the bag tight.

'Oh God, please make it die,' he gibbered. 'Oh God, oh God, please make it die.'

But the cat twisted and turned and ripped furiously and noisily at the plastic with its claws, screaming with a cry like a tortured baby.

Martin picked up the screwdriver, but dropped it again. It rolled across the floor, out of his reach. The cat savaged a long rent in the plastic. He saw its hate-filled face, with its mouth still stretched wide. He saw its eyes burning.

Crying out with effort, he lifted up the bag and twisted it tighter to keep the cat imprisoned inside it. Then he swung it around his head, once, twice, like a hammer thrower, and smashed it as hard as he could against the wall - and then smashed it again, and again, and again.