An October's Day

When faced with grief, will you choose to remember?

Making friends with a talking cat was not on Arthur's schedule. At least he thought they were friends. She seemed to love tormenting him, but he felt some odd nostalgia towards her that he couldn't explain in words. Arthur also didn't expect to run down endless corridors, chased by moths with haunting red eyes plastered on their wings. Though he supposed the mocking figures in the peeling mustard wallpaper were the worst of the bunch.

"Looks like someone needs some sun," a girl whispered rather loudly. He turned to the feminine voice, but it eluded him as another figure snickered.

"Those shoes are certainly a choice," a male figure mocked.

Arthur ran his pale hands through the dark waves atop his head. He had spent months searching for the perfect pair of red sneakers. They were certainly the worst, those paper devils.

"Are you moping about how Felix called your shoes ugly?" The antlered cat asked a pondering Arthur, with an impish gleam in her eyes.

He gasped and pointed at Sable as she purred with laughter. "He never said ugly directly."

Sable whacked her tail playfully against Arthur's leg. "I'm saying it now."

"You really are a pain in my—

"Heart, yes." Sable looked up at Arthur with a wide smile from ear to ear, bearing sharp teeth.

Arthur shook his head and peered down at his shoes again. There were whorls of embroidery, sometimes carelessly stitched upon the red canvas. Almost as if a child had used their scribbles as a muse for the artwork.

Sable walked ahead. "Keep up, slowpoke."

Even if Sable had insulted Arthur countless times already, he still liked the cat. He travelled down another endless hallway. Brick red paint was smeared onto the walls with little care. Small artworks were dotted along the walls at random intervals. Some were right next to each other, and others were miles away. There was a photograph of a young girl with green eyes and raven dark hair, probably about eight years old. She held a cat in her arms. Beside the photo was an artwork with the number nine painted atop a beating heart caught Arthur's gaze. But his favorite was a painting of a skeleton surfing. It had even waved at him as they walked past a mirror.

Arthur looked at himself. He looked terrible, as if he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep in his whole life. His hair was unruly, uncombed. He smiled. His muscles fought against the movement and settled back into some kind of non-frown. Something to convince living beings there was not a sadness resting on his lips in perpetuity. He stared into his two brown eyes. There was something in the irises, black as the wrinkled button down he wore.

If only he could remember . . .

"Just a little while longer to the key room," a voice bellowed from a taxidermy bear head. Its eyes followed the two of them as they passed, and swung back into place like a pendulum.

Sable responded with a tail flick, saying, "Thanks, Harry.” She continued sauntering down the hall, “Oh, and do keep up, Arthur.”

He shook his head and turned his face away from his twin’s. Sable was quite the distance away already. Arthur walked briskly toward her.

The bear must have lied, or Arthur was losing his mind, because it was not "a little while longer." Perhaps time passed differently in this place. He didn't know why he was in a rush or why he felt the need to leave. This feeling of being allowed in this space for only so long before he had to go back, somewhere? If he closed his eyes, he could hear the rhythmic thumping of the beating heart on the wall behind him. Hear the fluttering of monstrous moth wings or the hushed gossip of the wallpaper residents. And through it all, he felt a vague sense in his stomach that he wasn't supposed to be here, and it sank further when considering the consequences of his presence. They finally arrived at a tall staircase with bones for spindles. Arthur let out a huff at the sight.

"Our owner has excellent taste." Sable said confidently, head held high.

Arthur eyed Sable sarcastically, putting his hands on his hips for dramatic effect. "Oh, does she now? And I suppose now you'll tell me she harvested them herself?"

The lamps around them flickered in response to Arthur's sassiness. "It's best not to make the lamps angry, Arthur," Sable reprimanded him with a motherly tone.

Arthur retorted quietly in a mocking voice, "It is best not to make the lamps angry, Arthur." The lamps went dark. Apparently, lamps can hear whispers.

Sable stared at him with her glowing eyes. "Now look at what you've done. They won't turn back on for another 33 minutes exactly because of you."

"I say good riddance to bad rubbish," Arthur responded as an electric plug sparked angrily at him, and Sable prodded him away by the hem of his pants.

It would seem the hallways weren't the only seemingly endless thing in this mansion. After what felt like an infinite flight of stairs, he finally reached the top. He raised his arms triumphantly like an accomplished five-year-old, then slumped against a plain white wall. In ragged breaths, he asked, "Are you sure—we have to find—the key room?"

Sable breathed easily, as if the mountain of stairs was child's play. She looked up at him like a disappointed librarian between the air and her nonexistent glass lenses. "Yes, you fiend." Hitting him in the shin with her sharp antlers, she purred, "Move along, little bug."

Arthur sighed but kept walking, taking only slight offense as he let air saturate his lungs. It felt good to breathe deeply, to feel something alongside exhaustion. "You know I'm the bigger one here. I'm no bug."

She walked ahead of him, wagging her tail like a finger. "And yet you don't know where you're going, little bug.”

He hated to admit defeat, even in his mind, but Sable was right. Arthur had no idea where he was. How did he even get here? A talking cat seemed like the craziest thing here until he met the topiary monsters and the massive fly-eating gargoyle frogs. The mansion was nothing but hallways, and sometimes, plastic spiders. A drunken shopping bag ghost passed them, hiccuping along his merry way. The ghost had asked them for the time, which was odd because no one knew the time here, only that something was either a little longer or soon.

"Here we are, little bug." Sable prodded open a door leading to a small bedroom.

The rickety wood floors creaked beneath his red shoes. The walls seemed to have had better days. There was a single twin bed with a worn out quilt. A chest of toys sat in the corner, unused. On a nightstand sat a small yellow cake with a candle shaped into a nine. The wick stood upright. Free from the remnants of flame or heat.

"What's with the number nine? I keep noticing nines around this house." Arthur mused softly, turning his head in all directions, trying to figure out the space as if it were one large puzzle.

Surprise passed over Sable’s face briefly, but she replied without a second beat, "Our owner has fond memories of the number."

Arthur shrugged and looked closer. The room was full of keys. All over the walls and the floor, some even hanging from the ceiling. Every single silhouette was unique. An infinite amount of choices that could take him anywhere or nowhere.

Sable purred. "The rules are simple, Arthur. Pick the key you believe will let you out. If you pick the wrong key, we get another, permanent, tenant." She started to walk away before she added, "Oh, and do use your brain. I don't want to lose to an imbecile. They're no fun to talk with."

With that, Arthur was left alone in a room with a million selections for freedom. But only one led to true escape. He was already living some kind of freakish nightmare, so Arthur figured he might as well play along. He scoured over the keys for what felt like days. The only creature that visited him was another drunk shopping bag ghost that asked him what his favorite color was. He answered blue and told the ghost to beat it. Arthur felt he might give up and become some kind of cat toy in this strange universe, maybe a ball of blue yarn that Sable played with until he didn't remember anything about himself but the kind of fiber he consisted of. That was, until he spotted a special key.

It wasn't ornate or beautiful. It was ugly and rusted. But it was shaped funny. The key was off-center to the right, like the number nine. As he inched closer to the key, he could feel the mysterious heartbeat again, thumping harder and faster as he reached to pick it up. He grabbed it, his hands shaking and slick with sweat. The rest of the keys turned to ash around him. A girl's voice spoke in his mind, one he remembered hearing before, but not from here. Her ghostly whisper wrapped around his mind, "Remember me." His brain felt as though someone had submerged it underwater and put it back into his skull, still damp and dripping. Arthur felt an unwavering urge to cry.

Arthur shook his head and settled back into himself before sprinting down the stairs. Wiping salty tears on his black shirt, he ran and skipped down the stairs all the way through the seemingly forgotten house. It was eerily quiet, as if everything had died twice. Sable was gone. There were no moths in the air, no lamps with malice in their bulbs. When he reached the door and put the key in the slot, he was greeted not by moonlight but by another house. Only this house belonged to him.

Painted butter yellow, the epitome of happiness, he had once thought. However, the color made his heart crumble into fractured glass that tore through his chest. He wished it were painted black or some dark shade his shadow could get lost in. Forget-me-nots swung like dancers in the moonlight, and he longed to let the flowers become a memory so distant that his hands couldn't reach it. Arthur eyed the amber glow of his daughter's jack-o-lantern shining in the night outside her window. Through the glass pane sat an empty twin bed with a homemade quilt.

The pumpkin was rotting. It would only be a matter of time before it returned to the ground where it was born. October leaves fell and caught on the wind like birds in migration. Arthur wished he could fly away with them. Tears finally slid down his face and created dark puddles on his mourning clothes. He saw the shadow of a dollhouse in Eden's bedroom between blinks. A meow tore his gaze away. Tearily, he saw a cat sitting a few feet to his right, nestled by the forget-me-nots with bright green eyes.

{cover art: Corridor in the Asylum by Vincent van Gogh}