driving the cat

it starts the way it always starts: in the middle

i am chained up, shackled.  a handcuff somehow fits around my neck and you are with me, though i don't know who you are.  two other you's are held prisoner and i know now that they are, of course, really other me's.

our kidnappers have gone.  they drive off in a long hooded town car, dark.  i can see them craning their necks toward the house as they drive away.  three of them; three of me.  i am in plain sight in the giant picture window.  this feels like another trap, another way to catch me.  the house i find myself in is a mess.  paper cups and tools and debris surround me.  surround us.  and here, in plain sight, is the key.

we unlock ourselves slowly.  we take the bait.  we wait for the trap.

tick tock.  tick tock.  tick. . .tock. . .and still nothing.  i am alone, the decision to leave is mine.  whatever happens is now my fault.  see how they trick us?  i leave anyway.

under cover of night i cling to the shadow of shrubbery.  i climb the hill up to the other house and find an impossibly large cat.  or a cow.  or a cow that feels like a cat.  and i know, instinctively that it is neither.  it is a way to escape.  the cat-cow nods her head in agreement.

my hands are not petting but searching for the latch, the hook, the opening of the door that will let me inside.  there it is!  and here i am, crawling into the belly of the beast.  sprawled forward as if on (yet in) a motorcycle.  like i am flying instead of driving: this cat.

with a twist of the wrist i accelerate into the street to start the next level

in the middle, again.

they are out there.

they are watching.