Morris Runnels

Let’s Hang a Cat

Let’s hang a cat against the wallpaper so it will dangle in front of anyone who walks in. My mother will open the door holding a casserole and she will have to go to the hospital to get all the glass out of her feet. You don’t have to watch. You can be in the bedroom when it happens.

It’ll have to be a black cat; she hates black cats. I’ll wait by the dumpsters out back for strays, and I’ll catch one in the carrier that used to be Rocky’s. It’ll still smell like Rocky, and it’ll make her sick. “It’s a sick perversion,” she’ll say.

I don’t know what kind of casserole she’ll bring. She brought broccoli last time, when she sat at our table and told us we were an abomination. She’ll probably bring broccoli again; she loves broccoli casserole.

Anyway, she’ll be at the hospital, and we can just leave the glass in the doorway and sit on the couch eating ice cream and watching TV. The cat will start to smell, but we can throw it out in the morning with the broken glass and the broccoli. We will eat vanilla, and we will forget about the cat, but we will still smell it. We will sit there with it all night.

Morris Runnels is an ESL teacher with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics. Their work has appeared in Amendment. They currently live in Richmond, Virginia.