Mrs. Tinkles
by Zachary Robert Long (4979 words, estimated reading time: 25 minutes)

Samantha is going to fucking kill me, Chloe thought as she stared into the gaping hole beneath the sink.

“It was just the pipes,” she whispered. “It had to be the pipes.”

But she knew that wasn’t true. The pipes made tons of noise, but they never sounded like a meow before.

She’d been in a hurry to get at the cleaning supplies Samantha kept there, but she could have sworn that she closed the cupboard door behind her. But if that was true, why were they still open when she returned from scrubbing the wine out of her blouse? She bit her thumb and paced the kitchen.

You’re over reacting. Go find the cat so you can relax.

The royal pain-in-the-butt had a very specific diet and had to be fed exactly at seven. That was the last time Chloe had seen the fat feline. A glance at her phone showed it was twenty to eight now.

Chloe rushed out of the kitchen and into the living room where the food and water bowl were kept. Her dish was empty. So if she was missing, which Chloe wasn’t ready to admit to herself just yet but if she was then at least she wasn’t going to go hungry any time soon.

A thorough search through the living room, bedroom, washroom, and the kitchen again, just for good measure, confirmed her worst fears. Mrs. Tinkles was nowhere to be found.

She’d opened the cupboard again to double check. Which is when she noticed the hole in the back and knew, without a doubt in her mind, that she was fucked.

She crouched down to get a better look at the hole when her phone blared her retrowave ring tone. She started, smacking her head on the top of the cupboard in the process. Wincing through the pain she answered without looking to see who it was.

“Hello?”

“How’s it hanging, bitch?” giggled Samantha from the other side of the country.

Chloe panicked and hung up.

“Fuck,” she yelled when she realized what she did.

She stormed down the hall to the washroom, locking the door behind her. She plugged the sink and turned the water on. Sure enough, Samantha called back a minute later. Chloe let it ring twice then turned off the water before she answered.

“Sam, that you? I nearly dropped the phone in the bath.” She dipped her free hand into the sink and splashed around.

“You know water damage isn’t covered by the warranty,” Samantha said with a voice that was equal parts stern mother and technical support representative. She’d make a good mom, if she didn’t waste all that matrony energy on Mrs. Tinkles.

“Shut it.”

“What was that?” Yelling into the receiver. “I can’t hear well. New York is so busy! You wouldn’t believe it. Movies don’t do it justice.”

“I know. We went together in high school.”

“Did we? I guess maybe we did? Still, you should see it!” Then the dreaded question, the inescapable black hole of inquisitiveness that was always doomed to swallow Chloe: “How’s mommy’s little princess doing?”

“She’s…. She’s full. I fed her just like you said to.”

“That’s purr-fect! Did she like it? I bet she did. Where is she? Is she in the room with you? Mommy wants to hear her little angel!”

Chloe bit her thumb.

“Ah… nope, can’t say that I’ve seen her in the last little while. But I’ve been in the bath and you know how she is with water.” She prayed the little shit wasn’t one of those defective cats that loved to take baths. Samantha was silent long enough Chloe started to get worried. Panicking she added, “Ha.”

Ha? Really?

After this was done she was going to need lessons on how to lie. It was a skill she was severely lacking.

Thankfully Sam didn’t seem to notice.

“Hey look, so listen, I forgot to mention this. You know, totally slipped my mind what with all the packing and the excitement, but mommy’s little pillow takes medicine now. It’s supposed to be mixed into her food, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now.”

“Medicine?”

“Yeah. It’s in the back of the fridge… or on the door? I forget exactly but it’s hard to miss, I’m sure. You can mix it in with some treats tonight, but it really should be in her food.”

“Is she alright?” Chloe was ashamed to admit it but part of her hoped it was something serious. Cats find dark places to curl up and die and so maybe she wasn’t lost after all. But just as soon as the thought crossed her mind, so did a wave of deep shame.

“Yeah. I know I should have mentioned it, sorry again. It’s nothing serious though. The little cloud got out of the window or into one of the other apartments a while back. I don’t know how it happened, it was only the one time.”

“Oh yeah. Catch fleas or something?”

“Heaven’s no!” A real edge entered Samantha’s voice as if the very thought of her cat catching fleas was a terrible insult. It only lasted a moment though before it was replaced with jubilance. “She’s going to be a mommy!”

Chloe couldn’t believe her ears. “Mommy?”

“I know, right? How could I be a grandmother already?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry! It totally slipped my mind but can you believe it? Don’t worry though, she’s totally not due for a couple weeks. So you don’t even need to worry about it.”

“I wish you had-“

“Except that you do totally have to worry about it. Not the birth. I mean the medicine. It’s every other day, so tomorrow you won’t have to worry about it. Just get it the day after then I’ll be home in time for the one after that. There’s nothing really wrong with Mrs. Tinkles but there’s some problem with the babies and its hurting mommy’s big girl. Moving around too much or something, it wasn’t really clear.”

Chloe thought about mentioning how sluggish Mrs. Tinkles seemed that evening as she pulled herself to her food bowl, Instead she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that she gets it.”

Images of still born kittens crossed her mind, kittens chewing their way out of their mother. Babies gave her the heebie jeebies, human, kitten, or mutant. She bit her thumb harder to clear the images from her head.

“I don’t remember what the pills are called,” Samantha was saying, “but they’re like a liquid inside the capsule so you can just split them open and mix them into a treat. It’s some kind of heavy tranquilizer that they use on-“

Chloe never heard the end of the sentence.

She was too busy imagining the look on her best friend’s face when she found out Chloe couldn’t keep her little fur baby safe. How she would look upon Chloe and no longer see her friend, just a burnt out ex-junkie she never should have let back in her life. Goodbye Samantha, the only friend Chloe had in this world.
The flesh of her thumb split between her teeth and as a flare of pain shot through her she dropped the phone.

Right into the sink full of water.

“Shit!”

She snatched it out. It was only in there for a moment.

“Please, please, please.”

It wasn’t on. She held down the power button. Nothing happened. She held the volume down button, crossed her fingers. Nothing.

For a moment she forgot Mrs. Tinkles entirely as she rushed to the kitchen, yanking open cupboards until she found a container of rice and some sandwich bags. She poured rice into a bag then tossed her phone inside, sealed the bag and shoved it into her pocket.

She considered making herself something to eat. Upon opening the fridge she remembered the fiasco she had gotten herself into. Food could wait. She had to find Mrs. Tinkles and make sure she got her medicine.

She found the pills stuffed between a can of cat food and a bottle of milk.

To hell with the treats.

She grabbed a cup and poured some milk into it. Samantha didn’t say how many pills Mrs. Tinkles got, but thankfully the dosage was printed on the label. She took two of them and used a steak knife to make a little hole in them. She squeezed the liquid out into the milk and used the knife to give it a quick stir.

She made another round of the apartment just to be sure. The cupboard under the sink was open when she returned.

Now I know I closed that.

Chloe stuck her head between the cleaning supplies and the plumbing. “Mrs. Tinkles?” She waited for a reply. All she heard was the groaning of the pipes.

She sighed and nearly closed the door when she heard it, so faint that it was almost beyond her audible range. So faint that she felt it more than anything.

Meow.
“You little shit ball,” she yelled as she yanked the cupboard door open so hard the hinges strained in the wood. She fully expected the little shit to be hidden in amongst the Mr. Clean and the garbage bags.

But all there was were the cleaning supplies, the pipes, and that goddamned hole.

“Well then,” Chloe said with a sigh. “At least I can tell Samantha how she met Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Furry.”

She scooped up the cleaning supplies in an overflowing bear hug and tossed them onto the kitchen table so she could get a proper look at the hole. It was bigger than she had first thought it to be. Much darker, too.

Chloe wasn’t as familiar with this building as she was her own, but she was pretty sure there were no neighbors on the other side of the wall. She rationalized that the hole must then open into a space between the apartment and the outside, maybe a little shaft so professionals can access some of the inner workings of the building like the electrical systems and the plumbing. Mrs. Tinkles must have found the hole sometime a few weeks back and used it for her ill fated tryst. She was probably visiting with her baby daddy right this moment.

“Mrs. Tinkles?” There was no answer from the hole. She felt like her mother yelling for their cat, Hex, to come back inside. That gave her an idea. She grabbed the cat treats and gave them a shake by the hole. She called the Mrs. Tinkle’s name over and over, punctuating each syllable with a Whiskas maraca.

While it always worked for bringing Hex home, it wasn’t working on Mrs. Tinkles. Though that was assuming Mrs. Tinkles was close enough to hear her treats.

“The things I do for love,” Chloe said in her best posh British accent as she got down on her hands and knees and slid her head into the hole. It smelled like the apartment above where Chloe was living. She was pretty sure the upstairs tenant was huffing jenkem, that drug made out of human feces. From what she could tell it looked like the space dropped down a foot or two below floor level. What little lighting from the kitchen piercing the darkness was reflected off something metallic that made Chloe feel confident about her earlier assumption. It was definitely a way to get at the pipes easier and if that was true then there should be enough space for her to drop down herself. Most likely there was a proper entrance through one of the doors meant for the building manager. They probably had somebody through to look at the pipes and they knocked the hole into the wall and just didn’t tell the manager so they wouldn’t have to pay for it. Or they told the manager and he decided what Samantha didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. She again called Mrs. Tinkles for treats and again heard nothing but the workings of the pipes.

She bit her lip and made up her mind. Samantha was going to owe her for this one. That cat of hers better be giving birth to our lord and savior Meowsus Christ himself.

Chloe poured the milk into a Ziploc container, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled into the hole. She had her phone on her to use as a light if it would turn on again, but she decided against trying it for the time being so the rice had longer to soak up the moisture. The last thing she needed was to see all the cobwebs and nastiness she was getting herself into. Out of sight, out of mind. After a couple of minutes her eyes adjusted to the dark, though not enough to discern more than basic shapes.

She could go either to the left or to the right. Neither option seemed more or less appealing than the other as she had no visual or auditory clues pointing her in Mrs. Tinkles direction. She was relying on blind luck alone and that was stupid. But she didn’t really know what options there were. She was going to get that cat its medicine if it fucking killed her.

As she moved she could feel the metal pipes that made up the innards of the building pressing against her, squeezing her tightly so that she had to walk sideways to fit, the cold concrete of the foundation pressing up against her, forcing her to move slowly lest she tear her clothes and scrape the flesh from her bones.

She lost track of time as she made glacial progress through the dark tunnel. It felt like she had been down there for an hour, but she didn’t trust her perception. She had turned to any help she could get when she was kicking her habit and one of those that was recommended to her time and time again was meditation. Though she did come around to enjoying it, she hated it at first. All she was supposed to do was sit there and focus on her breathing for two lousy minutes. So she’d sit there for what felt like an eternity with her eyes closed, breathing in breathing out, and then open her eyes to see not even a minute had gone by. She suspected that the same misguided perception of time was influencing her currently. It had probably been no more than fifteen minutes since she crawled into the hole in Samantha’s kitchen. She wouldn’t be surprised if it had been only five.

She wanted to turn back, wasn’t sure exactly why she was putting herself through this in the first place. But every time she stopped and glanced the other direction, not that she could see much back that way, she knew she had to press on. If she gave up now, she would never be able to face Samantha when she got back from vacation. But if she kept going and found the little furry pain-in-the-ass then she’d be able to share the story of her heroic quest. Plus she could tell Sam to get a lock for that damned cupboard.

And get the little asshole spayed, Sam.

But each passing moment made that achievement grow distant like a scene from a movie fading to black. It seemed so real in the beginning. Then it became vague, more a sense of a scene than an actual image, until at last it seemed like nothing at all and Chloe had simply had enough. It was time to turn around when ahead of her the darkness meowed.

With a renewed vigor, Chloe began pushing forward through the passage with little concern for the wellbeing of her clothes. She’d steal one of Samantha’s tops if she ruined hers. But nothing was stopping her from getting to Mrs. Tinkles. Not now. She used the pipes to help herself along as the walls tightened in around her, reaching forward into the dark to grab hold of the cold metal and pulling herself along, then grabbing the next one, and the next one, reaching forward, and grabbing hold of a handful of fur.

The fur wiggled in her grasp and she instinctively pulled her hand away with a yelp.

“Dipshit,” she cursed at herself through gritted teeth once her heart rate settled.

She reached back out and grabbed Mrs. Tinkles. The fur was warm and matted as she clenched a fistful in her arm and gently pulled. The fur tore away from the cat. Chloe screamed in terror and scrambled for her cell phone, ripping it out of the bag and mashing the hold button to bring it to life as rice scattered across the floor. In the light of the waking screen she could see that she wasn’t holding a clump of bloody cat fur, but a handful of heating insulation. All at once the tension in her shoulders let up and she burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

When at last she was able to compose herself and regain her breath, she noticed a sound within the echo of her amusement: the scurrying of tiny feet.

They sounded like they were directly beneath her but that was impossible, unless somebody flushed a kitten or a pet mouse down the toilet like some sick twist on the baby alligator urban legend. But what kind of sick fuck would do something like that? It would be unspeakably cruel, so Chloe assumed that the sound must be traveling through the pipe instead. That would mean it was coming from somewhere ahead, or so she reckoned.

“Mrs. Tinkles?”

She used the container of milk to push away the insulation that was spilling from the wall while she used her other hand to grab hold of the pipes and pull herself forward. She made it two steps forward before something in the darkness bit off her big toe.

Chloe screamed and jumped backwards as tendrils of pain shot up her leg, tributaries of agony joining together into a massive river that threatened to spill over the dam of her shock. In the same moment she half turned, reaching for the pipes that had been behind her, to get back to Samantha’s apartment was the only thing she ever needed, fuck drugs, she never needed a fix as badly as she needed to get out of the dark and into the safety of the light. Whatever it was in the darkness with her scrambled after her, nipping and clawing at her. Her shirt caught on something, pulling her neck backwards as her body surged forward, forcing her to tug and yank until it tore and she tumbled forward. The thing in the dark hissed and she could hear the gnashing of its teeth. She kicked out at the sound, felt nothing but air.

Maybe if she had been taking it slower, had kept her wits about her and fended it off with some forethought, perhaps if she had been feeling out each step rather than lunging blindly, then conceivably she would have noticed the pit she had stepped over unknowingly only moments before instead of toppling into it.

Chloe landed head first onto solid cement. The impact made her eyes roll into the back of her head, though the shock of losing her toe helped to mitigate the pain of the initial impact. Unfortunately it did nothing to diminish the pain of her arm breaking as her shoulder smashed into the ground beside her face, the crack of the bone echoing through the dark along with her screams.

The space in which she had fallen was only a drop of a foot or two. As her upper half came to rest on the cold concrete, her leg caught on the floor above so that her body half dangled above her in a sickening parody of a bat’s rest. She tried to wiggle free but every movement sent fresh slivers of pain through her body.

I’m stuck.

Tears spilled from her eyes.

Then she felt the creature above step over her leg, the fur almost tickling where it met exposed skin.

She tried to free herself but the pain was more than she could take.

The thing crawled across the small of her back.

“Help,” she screamed into a void as empty as the depths of space. She had been screaming and screaming and hadn’t heard a sound in response. Still, she hoped that somebody would hear her in the building above. Her voice traveling through the pipes to some unsuspecting individual’s drain.

The thing crawling over her took another step closer and lost it footing. Chloe’s cell phone smacked her in the face and tumbled to the ground next to her. She couldn’t remember if she had shoved it back into a pocket or if she had been holding it when she fell, but either way the creature must have dislodged it. It hurt to move her arm, even the unbroken one, but she forced herself to snatch it anyway. She held down the hold button, praying it still worked.

“Come on…”

The screen flashed to life, the light blinding her. Evidentially it had the same effect on the creature as behind her came a terrible hiss. She didn’t want to see what made that sound. Not that she could have if she wanted, not until her eyes readjusted. All she wanted was to get the fuck out of there alive.

She fumbled with the num-pad as she tried to franticly jam in her birth date to unlock the cell. She got it on the third attempt. She opened the phone app and dialed the first number she could press. The thing behind her seemed hesitant to approach. Maybe it was scared of the light?

Then the phone went black as it rang and the creature approached, first slowly and then quicker. It began to move over her, claws sinking through her clothing into her flesh so it wouldn’t lose its footing again. Chloe gritted her teeth, the pain registering less as pain and more as a dozen needlepoints of pressure. It rang a second time. The creature had worked its way to her neck, and now she could feel the warm blood flowing down from where it made contact with her.

It rang a third time and the creature scurried away as Samantha picked up and the screen came back on.

“Hey Chloe, what’s up?”

Oh thank god.

Chloe opened her mouth to scream, to get Samantha to call the building manager, the paramedics, animal control, or even the fucking army, but all that came out was a slimy gurgle as the darkness sank its fangs into her throat and mangled her vocal chords between its teeth.

“You there Chloe? This isn’t another butt dial, is it?”

She dropped the phone as her face was washed with blood. It tumbled to the floor beside her, landing screen-side down. In the second before the light was extinguished she saw, from the corner of her eye, what was in the darkness with her, gore soaking its mouth, shredded flesh dangling between its fangs: Mrs. Tinkles.

She frantically clawed at the ground looking for the phone. Her sobs sounded like ribbits, her screams were a wet slurp, barely more than a croak. She could feel Mrs. Tinkles shift her weight in the darkness beside her but the cat didn’t seem to have any interest in hurting her anymore. She almost wished it did, she could understand a beast gone rabid. But the waiting and the watching, and Mrs. Tinkles was watching her for she could feel its stare, made her feel more like prey than anything she’d ever experienced before. She could feel the hard plastic of her phone case but couldn’t get a good hold of it. She strained to stretch her arm, oblivious to the pain, somewhere beyond feeling it, simply desperate for a light, though not the things that light would reveal. She couldn’t get a grip on her phone but she managed to apply enough force to the edge of the case to flip it over. She slammed her eyelids shut as the tunnel lit up.

Beside her Mrs. Tinkles hissed again. She’d had enough of the bitch’s attitude this time. She balled her hand into a fist and swung at the sound, hit nothing but air. She could hear Mrs. Tinkles landing a few feet further away, wearily keeping her distance from Chloe.

“I’m hanging up now, Chloe.”

She yelled for Samantha but all that came out was a mouthful of blood and a wet slapping sound. She reached for the phone, desperate to keep Sam on the line. A set of tiny teeth sunk into her finger and pulled it off.

Her eyes flew open as the sound of the bone breaking echoed through the tunnel. Six of the ugliest creatures she had ever seen stared back at her. Patches of matted fur poked out from between their limbs, but otherwise they were completely naked. Their skin was a necrotic black instead of the usual pink of kittens or mice. Each one of them was the size of her hand with heads, and mouths, disproportionately larger than the rest of their bodies.

Mrs. Tinkles stepped forward to join the twisted brood, stepping over the cellphone as Samantha hung up. She nuzzled one of the abominations while another licked Chloe’s blood from its mother’s fur.

With the tunnel lit up, Chloe could see the container of milk she had forgotten about. It had landed nearby, somehow keeping its lid in tact, the best damn advertisement for the company she’d ever seen. She grabbed it with her good hand, brought it to her lips, pried the cover off her with teeth, and tossed the contents at the creatures.

“Fuck you,” she said, too angry to care that the noise was totally incomprehensible.

The container struck the ground, milk splashing over and around Mrs. Tinkles feet. Mrs. Tinkles hissed and six little voices joined her. The container hadn’t finished tumbling when the first one rushed her.

Tiny teeth sank into Chloe’s face, secured a hold in her flesh, and tore her left cheek off. The rest surged forward as fresh blood splattered against the floor. Chloe tried to protect her face with her good arm. She grabbed the one drinking from her cheek and threw it into one of its siblings. Another darted for her eyes. She snatched it by the tail and swung it blindly in front of her, hearing tiny bones crunch whenever it stuck something. One dodged past its swinging sibling and pounced at her face. It caught her on her lip and began to tug it free from her jaw, the flesh tearing with a sound almost like ripping paper. She dropped the creature she was swinging, took hold of the one sinking its teeth into her, and bit its head off in one bite, blood and something thicker spilling from its stump as she spit the severed skull out. She grabbed another and started swinging again.

But she could only fend off those in front of her. She was still dangling, unable to wiggle free, unable to get at those that circled behind and attacked her from the rear. One climbed up her back to where her shirt was loose so it could stick its rotted head into one of the cuts its mother had left. Chloe could feel the thing’s head digging around inside of her, the sensation causing a wave of nausea and pain as fresh and clear as anything she’d ever experienced. More followed and her will to fight was slowly lost to the pain. The one she held bit at her hand to free itself but she squeezed even tighter as it devoured the meat of her palm.

Ahead in the tunnel Mrs. Tinkles purred and lapped at the milk.

I hope you choke on it.
She noticed the hellspawn she was holding had gotten free and looked down to see it had chewed its way through all of the fingers on that hand. Her body must have been dispensing the good chemicals, though, because she hadn’t felt any of it, the image eliciting a shrug rather than the terror it should have. She may have even laughed, though it was impossible to tell from the noise that leaked out of her bleeding throat. The bastard that had eaten her finger was next to its mother, lapping at the spilled milk.

The wiggling inside of her stopped. For a moment she wondered if she was dead, her vision fading, then all at once coming back in a rush. It wasn’t her vision that had failed her. The light from her phone had gone out, only to be brought back to life as one of the creatures stepped on it and shrieked in terror. A flurry of tiny feet surfed a wave of blood down Chloe’s back and tumbled to the tunnel floor to lap alongside its kin.

Mrs. Tinkles had stretched herself out along the tunnel floor, one of her brood nuzzled against her belly. Then another one joined them. And another.

“Fuck you,” Chloe said in a victorious gurgle.

But as the last settled to sleep, Chloe remembered what Samantha had said. In the haze of her pain she had thought the milk poisoned. But it wasn’t poison that she had mixed in. It was a sedative.

They were simply going to sleep and, as the battery of her phone died, she would have no way of telling when they would wake again. But she would know exactly how hungry they would be after a chemical-induced nap.

After all, growing infants need to eat.