The Cat's Meow

The cat's meeow

Hairballs. They crossed Mimi's mind often, because they crossed her tonsils often. She liked to think that if she had a use for a swear word hairballs would be a great option. It was species appropriate and packed a punch, rolling off the tongue. That is, if she had the faculty of speech. Which, being a cat, she had not. It would be cool though. Like, for somebody annoying you, or for losing your yarn ball, you could do a hiss, but for something really bad, like a dog barking at you, you could go 'hairballs!' in a very bad ass tomcat voice.

Mimi's current situation surely merited a swear word. She had felt this coming, but what are you going to do? You couldn't meeow to your human 'Listen, every time I jump off the window sill my heart goes kathump kathump wigga wigga, I may have a genetic heart disorder.' So there was nothing for it. Just, enjoying every new morning, chasing mice and laser lights and being grateful you were still there in the evening.

Mimi was lying under the shrubs at the corner of the street, waiting for her human to come home on her bicycle. The little human, not the big ones. She did this most evenings. When her human would round the corner, they would lock eyes. And when the bicycle zipped past, Mimi would chase it to the shed. The human on her side of the street, Mimi on the opposite side of the street. Mimi was a smart cat. She never crossed the street. There be cars!

She could feel it, her human was almost there, yes! Oh oh... a sudden pain in her chest. Kathump kath... ump... No, no, please not at the peak of her day! Could this not just happen in her sleep? ... Kath... wiggawiggawigga... thump... Mimi gently rolled over on her side and felt her tongue sinking out of her mouth, control over her muscles slipping away. Oh, there was her human just now. Shame she couldn't chase her to the shed... Her human cycled around the corner and saw Mimi in a, rather dramatic, display of last moments among the living. Now you're probably thinking, but cats have nine lives right? And you would be right. They do! Mimi actually still had a few of them left. She didn't know how much, because cats can't count over three. But several at least. And those lives are great for things like falling out of trees the wrong way, or being run over by cars. But if your heart is just not pumping blood for you, they're kind of useless. Like, you can respawn your character in an active volcano all you want, but it's just going to die again and again.

The shock was written on the face of her human. Mimi could feel a twitch rippling through her body, and after that a stilling..., a relaxing..., a... wait no! Her human was cycling straight at her, all her attention focused on her dying cat. Don't do that! Don't look at me, look at the car! A car approached, fast, and neither the driver nor her human saw the imminent danger. Mimi fought to keep her focus, clinging on to the last moment of her lives. There had to be something she could do, anything!

A crash. A sickening thud.

Hairballs.

__________________________________

Alex sat in front of his laptop. When he looked past the screen he could see out of the windows of his apartment. It was three o'clock at night. Weird time to be awake, you think, but as will be explained shortly, not for Alex. He was awake and happily going about his day, by... OK. So this story may have a lot of stuff in there that could be called romantic, but the start is less romantic. Alex was jacking off. To porn. Something that was pretty common for him. So common in fact, that he had by sheer exposure to on-screen nudity gotten rid of the common phenomenon of porn needle point vision. Like, the thing that happens when you look at a hot chick and instantly lose your peripheral vision. This is important to note, because his laptop was on his desk in front of the window. This meant he could watch porn and still look out of his window. The view out of his window was, if you like old European cities, terrific. So, should his attention lapse momentarily from the on screen nudity, it did lapse in style. He lived on the first floor, but mind you, in America this would be called the second floor. Here, in the inner canal ring of the city, streets had cobblestones, churches were over four hundred years old and the skatepark in front of the stately town hall stood out like a drag queen at a guns and ammo convention. Cast iron street lights illuminated the deserted streets and the narrow bridges over the canal that in a few hours time would house the weekly fresh produce market. And socks, of course. In the northwest of Europe, it isn't a market if you can't buy socks. By a sheer stroke of luck the porn he was watching was not really the type that when busted by, say, your mom, made you go "lalalalala" with your fingers in your ears for the rest of your life every time you thought about it. It was like, regular. Guy, huge dick, girl, big butt, vaginal fucking. Good fucking though. These people were into it. Amateur couple, also a couple in real life. Alex was somewhat of a fan. You could see actual passion there. Genuine porn, that was one of Alex's many preferred categories.

Alex was combining his porn watching with his current two other main activities in his life. It is perhaps a sign that you need a hobby if your main life activities can be combined both with each other and with watching porn. They were, in no specific order, being a landlord, and The Project. At twenty two years old Alex was on the young side to be a landlord, but truth be told, it wasn't really a demanding job. Alex liked to remind his brother that being a landlord means you have to be ready to spring into action at any moment. It's just that the Didriksens downstairs, the only house he was landlording, had in the two years that Alex now em, landlorded, only needed a repair twice. Both times it took the three of them less than five minutes to figure out that Alex was never going to be able to fix a water heater on his own and the job had to be outsourced. But, readiness and preparedness also counted as work.

The Project actually took up a lot of Alex's time. He had this theory that astronomical day length and the human sleep cycle did not match up. This requires explanation. So. Humans just happen to live on a planet that has 24 hour rotations. Had we lived on, say, Mars then we would see the sun come up every 24 hours and 40 minutes. So, on earth we decided that it would be handy to have a day rhythm that matched a 24 hour day length. But, intuitively, don't these extra 40 minutes just sound a little better? What if we could test what the human day cycle was without giving in to the social pressure of being awake when everybody else is awake? Or the social pressure of our planet that stubbornly keeps revolving at the pace that it does. Alex had decided that he himself was the perfect candidate for a field experiment, since he was immune to social pressure and his job did require him to be always ready, but not necessarily awake. After two weeks of following two strict rules: go to bed when you feel like it, get up when you feel like it, Alex had established that over the course of seven earth days, or one week, his body liked to have six waking and six sleeping periods. This heavily indicated that the preferred day length of the human species... well, only Alex so far but maybe this would spread, was on average 28 hours. If humans could teach themselves to be able to work, chill and sleep in both day- and night time they could live according to their nature. True Nature, if you will. This would make the world A Better Place. Alex worked on his project for 24 hours a day, or ahem, 28 hours a day. He was basically chilling and watching porn for science, while also having a job as a landlord. Damn, put like that he was a busy man, and since it was for science, also a good person. There are perfect examples, by the way, of animals that display the very behaviour that Alex is researching. They are opportunistic with respect to the hours of the day they use for sleeping or foraging. For example, the roe deer, and more commonly known, cats. They will...

Hang on. Movement on the street beneath his window. It is, weirdly, the mailman. Or upon closer inspection probably mailwoman, on a bicycle. You don't expect mail to be delivered at three in the morning. Also, she rides like a woman possessed, very fast and somewhat erratic. No... no don't take the corner into the alley at this speed, the cobblestones are bumpy there! Alex's body gets up on autopilot, trying to see whether she makes it through the corner there. His forgotten, but still hard cock hooks on the tabletop, comes loose with a jolt as he gets up further, snaps into his belly, which causes it to rebound and neatly hit the spacebar of his laptop. This conveniently pauses the porn video just before the cumshot. Even through his concern for the crazy mailwoman Alex has excess brain capacity to register that that was a nifty trick.

Smack! Oh gods, she goes down like a soccer player being tackled. As if that isn't bad enough there is a lamp post right in the line of her fall. Thud! Without further thinking Alex is off his feet, scrambling into his shoes while hoisting his junk back into his pants. He sprints through his apartment door and down the stairs. Pausing for a tenth of a second to adjust the lock so he can get back in he storms outside and kneels beside the girl. It looks bad.

In his country you're supposed to ask "is the bicycle OK?" after a tumble, but when it's bad, well, you know it's bad. She isn't wearing a helmet and has headbutted the lamp post, judging by the blood streaming over her eyes. Her right arm sticks out at a weird angle.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck." Alex tries to figure out what step one is. What is step one? Oh right, call the alarm number. But his phone is still upstairs! Don't panic...

Weirdly, the realisation that he can't call an ambulance and has to figure stuff out himself gives Alex the focus he needs to adapt and overcome.

Possible spinal injury. If yes, don't move the patient. He looks her over. Her eyes are closed, but he isn't sure if she's lost consciousness or not. But she looks... weird. Each part of her body is covered in clothing, including a hoodie, gloves and a face mask. Also, she is sorta lanky. Tall and skinny, with a lot of limb going on. But apart from the arm no part of her body looks damaged.

"Hey!" He prods her in the cheek. "Hey! Are you awake?"

"Aaaah jeez..." she whines, "don't do that again. My head... aargh..." There is something about her voice that is just a bit off. Well, no wonder.

"That would be the concussion. You hit the lamp post with your head. Um, can you feel your toes?"

She frowns. It's basically the only expression she can do that her excessive amount of covering allows. "I don't know? Ow fuck head huuuuurts..."

Alex pinches her ankle.

"Ow!"

"Oh great! Now I'll do the other one..."

"Don't do that you weirdo!" What is it about her voice? There is a sort of whiny, but also airy noise to it. A bit like hissing.

"Oh yes I'm going to. I want to know if you have sensation in your leg, to check if your spine is intact. If you can feel this, the pinching, we can safely move you." He pinches the other ankle.

"Hmpf. Well OK then. I can feel that."

"Awesome. Have you seen your arm? Slowly move your head to the right... oh, or you could do that..."

She whips her head around, gives a little shriek, grabs her right arm with her left and sits up waaaaay too quickly for somebody with a serious concussion. "Oh fuck! It's all wrong!"

"Yes it's disloca... oh, or you could do that..."

She jerks her arm once, then again and with a whimper pushes the arm back in the right position. What the fuck.

"Did you just relocate your arm?"

"I don't know! Look, it works again. Hurts like a motherfucker though."

What a weird chick. "Do you relocate limbs often, or was this a one time thing?" She just looks at him, apparently still dazed.

"So, if you can just lean up against the wall over there... "

Alex takes off his sweater and puts it down for her to sit on before helping her over to the wall. "I'm just gonna run up to my house, right there, and get my phone, OK?" Since she doesn't answer he adds "Be back in thirty seconds. Gonna call you an ambula..."

"No! No ambulance!" She grabs his hand with surprising strength. "Promise me!"

Why on earth would she not want proper care? "Look, you just got banged up pretty good. It may be completely fine..." He paused. It could, right? Concussions are not life threatening or anything. "... but to be sure we want them to check you out, right?" And, Alex thinks to himself, take you off my hands.

She shakes her head violently. Too violently for somebody with a concussion. "Oh... I..." she makes an awful retching noise and pukes all over the curb, narrowly missing Alex's sweater. Why on earth would she refuse good and free... oh wait, that's it of course.

"But hey, the ambulance is completely free of charge. Even if you're... homeless?" She doesn't bite. "It won't cost you a thing. I'll do the talking and..."

"No! No I... it's not the money." She turned her head this way and that before looking at him again. "Ow, my head hurts sooooo much. Em, so I am a wanted criminal. Like, super bad guy. They will find out who I am and they will arrest me and put me away in a... cell." She grabs her head. "Hey do you have these little white pills..."

"Em, extacy?" I mean, it's a weird chick, it's three in the morning, not such a stretch is it?

"No, the other ones, the ones with..."

"Ah!" Realisation dawns. "Tylenol?"

"That's the one... gonna go sleep now..."

Alex jumps up and grabs her under the armpits. "Oh no you don't! You're heavily concussed, the street is cold..." He feels that some sort of explanation is needed as to why he is so uncharacteristically decisive. "I am a landlord, trust me."

She groans.

"Okay, girl. you don't want an ambulance, but I can't leave you here. About the super bad guy thing... Like, what did you even do? Crypto scamming?"

She looks at him with one eye closed and nods, looking somewhat grateful for the suggestion.

"So, please fucking please consent to me dragging you to my house, so you can sleep on my couch. I promise I'm not a pervert."

"Ugh. Allright then. Creep."

"Also I will wake you up every hour, to make sure you're still OK."

"I dununu my consent." She mumbles.

"You what?"

"I... that thing where you first give something and then no longer."

"Like... withdraw? Take back? Oh I know. You renounce your consent?"

"Yupz."

"Negative. Up we go, sister."

"You're gonna drag me, human?"

The human mind is a wonder in multitasking. Like, just as a random example, your brain can think about hauling a grown lady up the stairs, while also wondering if leaving the slightly totalled bicycle is a bad idea and if calling somebody human is a thing, and trying to figure out how to not come across as a pervert when you're hauling said lady to your bachelor pad. And if you're wired that way you can combine all of these things with wondering if said lady is hot beneath all those layers of clothing. But that is not something Alex would do, obviously. Anyway, yes he does drag her.

As he lowers her onto the couch she opens her eyes one last time. And of course they land on his computer screen, because, reasons.

"Why is there a naked woman on your computer screen with her mouth open?"

Oh fuck. "Emm, sooo..."

She sniggers. It's a lazy snigger. Before she passes out she mumbles "Just messing with you. I know what porn is. I know more than you think. So you are a perv."

Wasn't that a perfect example of stating the obvious. Of course she knows what porn is. Unless she's trying to imply that she grew up in a secluded bible belt community or whatever. And it doesn't make him a perv! She should see some of the other stuff he watches sometimes.

And then, just like that, Alex has a sleeping girl on his couch.

Finally he can use his phone. Being without it for at least ten minutes in a sort of crisis situation really drives home the fact that you become dependent on it. He could feel his fingers twitch from wanting to use it. A search uncovers that waking her up every hour would be indeed the safest way to go about it. Which is completely fine by Alex. For him, it's about mid morning.

Time slows back to its usual calm flow. This must be the most action Alex gets this whole week. Well, he did go out for groceries just yesterday. Yesterday meaning his yesterday of course. Strictly speaking he could go back to what he was doing before this whole crisis situation unfolded. But weren't there rules, like, conventions, about jacking off with sleeping girls in your room? Probably not a smooth move. And it's not like Alex doesn't have anything else to do. Like, em...

Suddenly Alex bolts upright. Pupil dilation! Or, dilatation, whatever? In any case, to check if somebody has a concussion, you can shine a flashlight in their eyes. That will make the pupils contract. If both pupils do so normally, there is no concussion. Fat chance, but still worth a try, right? Alex has a flashlight in the electricity closet. Every landlord has one there.

Or otherwise he could use the flashlight on his phone. But then again, why is there a flashlight in his electricity closet? Ugh, focus please! Dammit, he is a landlord, he has a flashlight for emergencies, this is an emergency and he will bloody well use the flashlight. Alex dumps his phone on his desk with a sense of finality. It bounces on the space bar of the laptop, which restarts the porn, in full screen. This in turn wakes up the concussed girl on his couch.

Fuck yeah! Swishswish. Oh yeah baby cum for me! He comes all over her face, missing her wide open mouth altogether and jizzing his impressive amount of cum all over her hair and eyes.

"Jeez his aim sucks."

Oh fuck she's awake. "Sorry sorry sorry! I didn't mean to... oh, was that a play on words by the way?"

She shakes her head. "Oww... that still hurts."

"Um, yeah. So, moving past the embarrassing moment just now, I need to check your pupil, em, dila... em." He clears his throat. "I'll be right back."

Flashlight retrieved, Alex asks: "Could you open your eyes for me for just a minute?"

"If you ask me to open my mouth too, I'm bolting."

"Har har."

She visibly swallows when he goes to check her pupils.

"Don't worry, I'm not even touching you." But, try as he might, the pupils don't seem to react to anything. "So, let's try this again. Just close your eyes, and when I say yes, you open them. OK... yes!" He shines the flashlight in one of her eyes. Nothing. Her pupils don't give a damn about the flashlight. "That's weird."

"Juzt... forget it. I'm tired. Wanna sleeeeep..."

"I don't like this. I mean, we already knew that you probably had a concussion. But I still find it weird that your pupils just stay the same size, whether I shine a light into them or not. Both the same size too. Can we do a retry on the doctor discussion?"

"Nope. Dangerous criminal, me. And it'll be fine. You go watch porn, I'm going to sleep now."

Hmpf. With a certain amount of satisfaction, Alex sets an alarm for an hour from now. See how witty you are then.

Her snoring is excellent. Alex has never before thought about rating snoring on a scale from bad to good. I mean, in general snoring is considered bad, and not snoring is good. But her snoring is like... soothing man. A long drawn purring noise, not loud, but present, you know? If a drunk fat guy snores Motörhead, her snore would be Vivaldi. It would be a pretty good alternative to a white noise yoga concentration gluten free thingy. Something about the eyes doesn't feel right. The night is still, Alex hasn't dared to restart his porn, yet, and there is nothing going on on the streets below him. It's amazing how much excess thinking capacity you have when not watching porn while also doing research. Maybe... and this is a sentiment that is miles away from Alex's usual state, even a bit boring? Something about those eyes doesn't feel right...

Suddenly it hits him. Eyes don't do that. And he knows why he didn't notice. All of a sudden the whole dangerous criminal thing makes a lot more sense. But how to test his theory without waking her up? Or, you know what, he could take her fingerprints! In that case, he could just keep up the whole charade for now, take the prints to the police later and boom! Dangerous crypto-criminal apprehended, and Alex is a hero as well as a revered scientist! They usually take prints from wine glasses in movies, so he grabs his Rtea-Dtea mug, which sometimes doubles as a wine glass. She's fast asleep, so this should work.

One of her hands is tucked under her cheek. But the other one is freely accessible. The glove proves to be tricky. It's tighter than Alex anticipated and clings to her hand in a weird way. When he carefully peels it off, all the while listening to her breathing to check if she doesn't wake, it becomes clear why that is. Her hand is... well, it is a hand, just a weird one. A sort of birth defect, maybe? The fingers appear to be shorter, and... nails shouldn't look like that, right? Also, women should be less hairy than this... The fact that the rest of her body and face is also covered up starts nagging his nerves uncomfortably.

First things first, he takes the finger print and puts the mug away. For the cops. Just... in case. Now to make sure she doesn't suspect that he took her fingerprints, the glove needs to go back on. Jeez. He goes to work, trying to suppress his curiosity as to what is under that hoodie.

After minutes of fruitless tries the glove is back on halfway decent. Maybe she can think she messed with it in her sleep? Alex looks at her face mask. It must be done. As carefully as humanly possible he lifts it away from her nose and pushes it down.

Oh my fuck. He puts the face mask back where it came from, quickly.

That is not a human mouth. Or, it is, but it's just too... Come on Alex, think the word out loud for goodness sake. It's just a bit too... catlike. The whiskers are the main giveaway.

You know, when deep down you're already aware that something is true, with like, your deeper brain? And your conscious brain, the one on the surface, has trouble keeping up? Alex had it when his parents died. It was too sudden, too unexpected... The police told him. And it was true, of course. Why would they lie? But he just had to keep denying for a while. Can't be true. Not until I've seen proof. But really, deep down... you know.

He shakes the thought out of his head. Finding a catgirl on the street is not the same thing. It's weird, rather than devastating. Thoroughly weird though, since people dying is a real thing and catgirls certainly aren't. His mind is still grasping for explanations like plastic surgery and stuff, but really, deep down, he knows. This is not someone who took her furry identity crisis to the plastic surgeon. This is a mythical creature. She is still fast asleep. He carefully folds back her hood. Yup. No question anymore. Furry, triangular cat ears. And just to eliminate any thought of fake, one of them twitches at the touch. The gentle snoring stops. Oops! He readjusts her hood and sits back. No harm done.

Mentally, but not out loud, Alex uses some strong language that just doesn't translate to English really well. Is this really happening? He pinches his arm, because that is a thing you do. It just hurts.

BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ!

Alex nearly gets a heart attack, but it's just the alarm.

"Gaaahhh. Please, let me sleep!"

"No, I gotta..." There is no way back, he now has to wake her every hour to pointlessly look at her pupils, that no doubt are not going to do anything interesting, "... check your pupils again."

While Alex grabs the flashlight he can see her adjusting her glove from the corner of his eyes. Was the left one a different colour than the right one before? Well, nothing to be done about it now.

She reluctantly cooperates with the repeat of the whole pupil check thing. Now that he knows what to look for it's easy to notice. Compact lenses. It's funny really. There are compacts giving you cat eyes for people who want to dress up as a cat, but as it turns out there are also compacts for cats who want to dress up as humans.

"Ahem. So, no pupil reaction again. I think we can forget about the pupil check and just do the hourly wake up."

"Yep, yep, that sounds like a..." she has lost a lot of her earlier bravado. But maybe it's just her being sleepy, "good plan. You know, you can sleep if you want to. No need to stay awake for my silly ass."

She falls asleep again. Wowzers. Alex scratches the back of his head. Since the couch is now taken he plops down on his bed. What on earth is he to do about this whole situation? Should he confront her, or let her believe her ruse is still intact? He decides to lie down for a sec. No use sitting at the desk when you're not using the laptop. This is no problem, there being, obviously, no risk of him falling asleep. Since for him it's morning and all. He lies back and imagines what it's like, being a catperson in a world that shouldn't have any of those in it. Must be scary. Lonely, probably...

____________________________________

Mimi watches through the window. He's not calling anybody on the telephone. He's also not looking frantic or panicky. Instead, he's feeling the couch, where she lay, with his hands. With a bit of a faraway look in his eyes. Mimi doesn't get all of them, human emotions, but she did watch a lot of soap series. Please, don't smell the couch. Especially not where her butt... Oh gods. He just did. Boys! He does seem kind of OK, for a human. Maybe a bit on the dumb side. He did save her, and when she asked him not to, he didn't call an ambulance. Skinny fucker is coachable, then. Oh, he starts up the laptop. Three guesses what's going to happen now... ah! Got it right in one!

OK, that is...

Pfff. It doesn't even look like her. The girl in the video has way too little body hair. Really, it's only a fake tail and ears, and some whiskers drawn on with marker. Mimi is, if she says so herself, way cattier and duh, sexier. Oh wow, is she really going to shove that whole...?

Wait, his phone rings. Haha, now he has to pause his porn, or he will feel embarrassed in front of the caller. Such a human emotion, embarrassment. Mimi never feels it. Ooh, that is a nifty trick, pausing his porn by tapping his penis on the keyboard. Why, who knows, but nifty for sure.

"Hey bro, how you doing?"

(...)

"Nah, nothing much. I was just em, surfing online."

Hmm. Not an outright lie, but also not really covering it.

"Yeah the house is good, still rocking it as a landlord, obviously."

(...)

"Well... no, but I'm always available."

He looks a bit... annoyed, maybe? Human faces are hard to read. Also, they have so many emotions. Cats have facial, or bodily, expressions for get lost, give me food and you just insulted me. That's basically it. But humans? Hundreds.

"No, I'm like, good. I spend super little every month. With free housing and my part of the rent the Didriksens pay I like, even save."

(...)

"But then I'd be studying, which I don't feel like, to increase my chances of getting a job, which is something that I don't want!"

Also, why do humans speak with all these hand movements when they're on the phone? The other guy can't even see him.

Mimi loses interest quickly when the guy on the other end of the line, his brother, probably, talks a lot about, as far as Mimi can guess, kids and his house. Alex just goes hmm, and oh yeah and looks uninterested. Right up until the guy on the other end apparently asks something of note and Alex gets back in gesturing and sitting upright mode.

"No, nono... well." Also a very human thing. Wrapping a yes in a whole sentence full of no.

"I did meet somebody, but it's not em, anything. Interesting, is all."

(...)

"She did stay over. But nothing happened. Haven't seen her since..."

Hey, is he talking about her?

"No... not really. Probably."

Hmmpf.

______________________________

Meat. That's a sure shot. Alex is in the supermarket, taking in the options that are frozen. Like, if it's frozen it's going to keep for a long time and he could always use it for himself. Should that prove necessary. His cart is already filled up with the usual staples of the bachelor household: frozen pizza, bread, ham and cheese to make toasties, chocolate, peanuts and beer. And apples. Gotta stay healthy dude.

Pretty expensive stuff, frozen steak... Aahh! That's the ticket. Lots of meat, or at least largely meat, at a bargain price. Ikea style meatballs in bulk. Awesome. And, em. Fish. Obviously. They always steal fish in cartoons. The thought has struck him, and was discarded immediately, to just get cat food. Even if she wanted that, that's just gross. And it's not as if he is buying this specifically for her. He could eat this himself, if em...

Aha, fish fingers. Now that is a sweet deal. Kinda weird that frozen fish is pretty expensive, but gets a whole lot cheaper when you slice it up and roll it in batter. Alex checks out the package. It's as he hoped: you don't specifically need a deep fryer to prepare them. Can also be done in a frypan. Nice.

On his way to checkout Alex has more spring in his step than he had in the last few days. He can't believe he actually fell asleep with a mythical creature in his house. In the middle of the day too. His day. Other people's night. And then she was gone when he woke up, and that was that. He even thought at one point that he made the whole thing up. But the blood on the ground at the lamp post, and the beat up bicycle proved that at least that part had happened. The bike had been moved. From the middle of the curb to a safer place under some stairs. Had she moved it, or just a concerned neighbour? It wasn't locked, but nobody was going to steal it anyway, in this condition.

There's this scene in Twilight... OK, this merits some explanation. Obviously Alex is way too cool to watch Twilight, but like, there's only so much porn you can watch and sometimes you want to kick back and watch a movie. And when you have depleted every maze running divergent galaxy far far away trilogy, you might stumble on romantic vampires. The storytelling sucked, but the acting was great, and well. The one scene with the mind reading future telling thing kinda made up for three movies of little progress. And maybe Alex is a hopeless romantic in between tranny surprises plumber and stepmom stuck in couch. Anyway...

So she has been living with this vampire family and is in love with one of them. Her whole world will never be the same, obviously. But then they move away, disappear without a trace and she stays behind in a rainy part of the world, with nothing supernatural to keep her life interesting. And it's kinda hard to show the absence of interesting things happening in a movie. Although the whole Twilight series really tries hard. But you can see her falling into a bit of a pit. Like, without these romantic vampires, what is her life really about?

It's just handy to have some animal proteins in supply. It's not that Alex's life is in any way uninteresting without a cryptid humanoid. But should said cryptid turn up it wouldn't be a bad idea to be prepared, right. He is a landlord. It's in the job description to be prepared for stuff.

After Alex has hauled the groceries up the stairs and crammed the frozen meatballs and fish fingers in his fridge he goes back down the stairs. In his country people haul bikes everywhere so dragging one up the stairs to your apartment isn't unheard of. In fact, it totally is a hipster thing to have an overly stylized bicycle, with a leather hand grab and no gears, despite the fact that gears are objectively speaking nice to have, and have it hung up on a wall mount in your bachelor pad. These hipster bikes are however a lot easier to handle than a standard issue mail delivery bicycle, including pannier bags and a basket in the front. It takes him a good ten minutes, in which he succeeds in getting the bike up the stairs as well as smearing dirt and grease on his walls. Not great, for a landlord.

So, for the next few days the bike just sits there on top of some empty pizza boxes, right in the middle of his living room. It's no problem, he can just walk around it. He'll just toss it after... a few days at least. Gotta give it a chance.

Alright! Time for the mini project. It can be combined with The Project, no problem. Alex sets up his phone on a fixed stand, so you can see himself, the window and part of the bicycle. The busted front wheel, for dramatic effect. Today is going to be sunny, but since summer is long gone by now the light angle is low, which will make for good shadow and light contrast. The goal is to recreate the scene from Twilight where she just sits in front of a window all day and you can see from the light that time is passing, while she is just bummed out about being abandoned.

And action! He films himself sitting in his chair, looking out the window for a few minutes and sets an alarm for thirty minutes to do it again. This is going to be a big day. But first, half an hour waiting time.

OK.

Porn! Great plan.

As it turns out shooting the video is not enough activity to fill a day. And to jerk off every time in between shooting a few minutes of material would amount to at least seventeen times. That is a lot, even for Alex. This results, weirdly, in Alex cleaning his kitchen, watering his one plant and folding his laundry. Finally, when the last natural light is gone, it's time to edit the thing. Exciting!

He cuts and speeds up, adds some artsy effects and background string music and it's done in no time. While the file is rendering Alex asks himself what to actually do with the video when it's done. Not on social media. People would wrongly assume that he's a Twilight fan. Which is impossible. Although the actress is awesome. Especially since she came out as lesbian, or bi, whatever, and rocks the butch look. If he were a lesbian woman he would totally be femme. All the spiky hair butch chicks with tattoos would be lining up to pin his lythe little femme body to the wall and...

Hey. Back to the matter at hand. He could also never send the video to his brother. There would be no end to the comments about the emptiness of his life and the need to get a job, education, love interest... yes, his brother literally calls it a love interest, to accommodate for the fact that it could also be a guy or anything in between. He so badly wants Alex to no longer be single that he would marry him off to a pine tree.

So that leaves... well he made the video for himself mostly right, because not seeing a vampire again and not seeing a catgirl again are so alike. So watching it himself is the thing to do... right?

He plays the video. The sound and light is actually pretty good. And the camera angle switch also turns out well. It's a solid expression of what it's like, for somebody to be so low that they just watch the morning turn into evening.

He watches it again. It really means something you know. What a piece of art.

Actually, it's...

... sad.

Just...

... so sad.

__________________________________________________

This time Alex is less lucky, in the sense that the porn he is currently watching does fall in the category No mom I swear I slipped and then my hand hit the keyboard wrong and I accidentally pressed this weird link and now I am watching a grown man in a tutu being railed in the butt by a girl with an extra surprise between her legs wearing a rabbit costume. Also no, I was just applying some cream to the rash I have on my upper thighs.

Alex, on purpose or not, times his orgasm with the woman on screen. He is not the most vocal of cummers in the world, but he isn't completely noiseless. With some grunting and panting he crests, but just before the peak a slightly embarrassing little squeak escapes his lips. That's... OK. But still it's nice that there is nobody watch...

"That is forty-six times this week."

Alex jolts and gives a surprised yell. His heart skips at least three beats while he twists around in utter shock, nearly falling off his chair. It's her, languidly lying on his bed, without her face mask. She's looking at him like, em... the cat that ate the canary.