When a creature appears and offers the feral cat the Bargain—24 hours in another form—the cat forms a plan. He must use the Bargain to his advantage to save the life he knows. But the Bargain comes with hidden perils. And if his plan fails, many will pay the price. A cleverly crafted tale from the cat’s point of view, “The Destroyer” offers a unique perspective of the complex relationship between humans and felines.
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The Destroyer
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
I discovered the house during one of my last crazy full moons. Nestled in the trees at the very edge of my twenty-acre territory, the house was small, white, with big windows and a large porch. In the back, a barn no longer used by cows, but still smelling of them, and to the side, a garage for a single car that seemed to be the only vehicle that used the dirt road.
I collapsed in old straw in that barn, beneath rotting eaves, and slept off wounds from my inadvertent partying. I was terrified by my own lack of control; I knew if I didn’t stop fighting over females, I would end up like the old black tom that I repeatedly chased off the hill. He had only one ear, no fur on that side of his head, and a white orb in place of his eye that occasionally oozed. He could still fight—and did, every full moon—but afterwards, he never seemed to recover.
He was in that barn too. Normally, just coming off the full-moon crazies, I would have killed him, but I was too tired. Besides, when I was myself, I rather liked him. That night, we actually talked like equals—alphas who worried about their prides. He confessed he had only seen two more summers than I had, that once he’d been as strong and powerful and terrifying as I was.
And then he said the thing that changed it all. He said, had he to do it again, he would take the Bargain.
The Bargain—offered, they say, only to what the humans call “feral” cats, not to the pampered indoor variety. Once a year, cats of a certain age—no less than two, no more than four—got to try being another creature for 24 hours. The easiest to become were the ones we knew: dogs, horses, cattle.
Human.
Only no feral cat chose human. Except the old black tom.
It scared him so badly, he said, that he hid in that very barn for twenty of his twenty-four hours. He felt big, and stupid, and different. Then at the moment when the gods let him choose between remaining human or reverting to feline, he reverted. And had the best six months of his life.
Until the following summer, when he lost his first fight. Then his second. And finally his third—to me—becoming instantly old, and a half-breath away from dying.
He was the one who told me about the Bargain, and he was the one who showed me the Others. He said if he had real choice, he would have become them.
Just before dawn, we snuck out of the barn and sat by those huge glass windows, watching the gray-haired human woman inside, her slim hands preparing dishes which she then gave to the Others.
They looked so wonderful then: the silver and gold female, tail high, the epitome of female beauty; the long-haired white male, so dainty that he seemed unreal; the black-and-orange female with the asymmetric eyes, and the stunning gold male with the square leonine face, the one that the black tom said looked just like me.
I had a flashback at that moment to my kittenhood. I had seen that woman before. She had found my mother, my siblings, and me underneath an abandoned house. She had actually caught me, just before I could run to my family, and held me.
She called me a little ball of fluff. She called me cute. She called me precious. My heart pounded so hard I thought it would come out of my chest. My mother watched from behind a board, her eyes glittering, tail switching. The woman said I was too young to come with her without my mother, so she set me down and I ran for my life, my mother catching me with one strong paw and holding me down.
The woman said she would come back with help to “rescue” us.
But when she came back—if she came back—we were gone. Mother had moved us to an old-growth stump half an acre away. It was warmer and drier than that abandoned house, but much more cramped.
Mother warned us that we should never ever let the humans take us because we would disappear forever. She said the woman had taken her other kittens in the past and she never saw them again.
One early fall evening, Mother died horribly outside that stump, when she led a pack of coyotes away from us all. We were old enough then to survive on our own—barely—and we managed. All except my sister, who died in kittenbirth not six months later.
I’d like to say the old black tom taught me that my mother was wrong about humans, but the nice man on the hilltop was already changing my mind. He put out food every morning, and the neighborhood ferals ate there. Most of us avoided the humans entirely—I don’t think they ever knew they were feeding up to ten cats a day.
But I began to watch the nice man. He felt safe. Safe in a way I hadn’t felt since I came to consciousness under that house. I started to understand cats who lived with humans. I heard tell of domestic cats that lived for twenty summers, that spent their final years sleeping in the warm sun instead of hiding from coyotes or bear.
That morning, with the old black tom I should have hated, watching the woman and the other cats—the pampered ones, the tom called them—I felt something I had never felt before. Envy. They had daily food, a warm bed, no predators, and no full moon wars. The Others got along, and the woman took care of them.
I went back almost every day and watched, wishing I could go inside. Then I’d go up my hilltop and see the kind man. I ate his food and slowly—ever so slowly—I let him touch me.
The windows in the kind man’s house weren’t as big as the woman’s, but when I climbed on his car, I could see inside. He too had pampered cats who received the same kind of treatment the Others got.
The man told me I could join his family. He ran his hand along my back and spoke soothingly to me. But I had so many bruises from the fights that he would inevitably brush one and then I couldn’t help myself: I’d scratch him and run away. He had to trap me to take me to that frightening place, the one that stopped the full moon fights somehow. Only I didn’t know that would happen. I figured it out later.
I figured a lot out later.
After everything changed.
The changes started in the house in the woods. Another car came up the dirt road, swerving and nearly hitting the old black tom. Then I thought it the old black tom’s fault. Now I think it was intentional. The old black tom and I, we hide while a big man, soft like a pampered indoor cat, walked to the door and let himself in. He brought the woman bags of rich-smelling food and other things.
Lately, she hadn’t been going out. And instead of walking around her kitchen to feed the Others, she grabbed onto things—the chairs, the counters, the door frame. She moved like a cat who had been in a bad fight and nearly lost.
Five days later, I found the silver and gold beauty cringing near the old barn. I tried to calm her, but she fled. It took me two more days and the promise of food to get her to come near me.
I tried to take her back to the house, but she wouldn’t go.
He hates us, she said. He wants us all dead.
I did not believe the woman would let that happen, but the silver-and-gold beauty said the woman was dying. The beauty could smell it—the sickness, the loss. The beauty wasn’t going to stay with that man.
So she stayed with me. Roaming the hillside, jumping at every noise, eating the nice man’s food.
And a few more days after that, the handsome gold cat joined us, and then the white one. They had escaped through a broken basement window along with the black-and-orange cat, who was not with them. The white one led us to her, collapsed beside the road. He said we had to help her, and I said she was going to die. Her leg was crushed, the bone sticking out, and her eyes were glassy.
Again, the gold cat said we must help her, and I said the only thing we could do was make her die faster, which I didn’t relish, and the gold cat said, in his superior way, that humans would know what to do.
So I said we need to take her back to the woman, and the gold cat told me—sadly—that the woman was gone. She had died quicker than the gold cat had expected. The white cat said he would not have left the house had the woman still lived, no matter how awful that man was to them.
They all had wounds, mostly healing, but the black-and-orange cat’s were the worst.
The gold cat again said we had to get her help and I knew only one way to get the kind of help he wanted.
So I lifted the black-and-orange cat gently in my teeth and carried her up the hill. She passed out from the pain. The Others trailed after me, and we brought her to the nice man at the very time he was bringing out dinner.
I put her down near the food, and he took her away. He came back without her, and I thought I had made a mistake, but the gold cat told me that I had not, that humans worked together to solve problems, something I did not realize.
Humans had prides as well.
They just weren’t obvious.
At first, the Others tried to live with me. But they made so many mistakes—not fleeing the predators, not understanding the full moon crazies, not sleeping in a protected place. One by one, they let the nice man catch them, and one by one, they vanished from my hilltop.
I saw them again, inside the nice man’s house, but it wasn’t the same. The tension, the fear, remained in their eyes. They jumped at loud noises and did not sleep soundly.
They were forever changed.
Especially the black-and-orange, who could no longer walk without a limp. I had been right; had she stayed another night, she would have died. But she had a life indoors again, pampered and protected and safe.
I wished I could live that life. But whenever the nice man tried to pick me up, I scratched him. Whenever someone else stood with him at feeding time, I fled.
I was, he said, too feral to ever be tamed. He had waited too long, he said. I could not adapt to the pampered indoor life.
I believed him. I saw what my life had done to the Others. Just a short few weeks in the wild, and they were not the same. They didn’t even sit in windows any longer, gazing out at the world with longing. Now they sat on the nice man’s floor and stared upwards, protected by walls, afraid to leave.
I wished they would go to the open windows so I could tell them what I saw.
I saw that man, that horrible man, the one who had brought food, stomp the old black tom with his boots. The old black tom had died there, beneath those feet, and I could do nothing.
I had thought the old black tom would die in a full-moon fight or running from coyotes. But he had died in a place he loved, for no reason at all.
Then I realized what happened to the silver-and-gold beauty, why she would not go back. How the white cat had lost some of his lovely fur, and why the gold cat wouldn’t even go back to that yard. I know how the black-and-orange cat had lost her leg.
Then the man invaded my barn. I thought, perhaps, he was looking for us, looking to injure us. But he dug a hole instead. A large one, long and rectangular.
On a breezy full-moon night before the Others were adopted by the nice man, but after the nice man had saved the black-and-orange, I tucked them into the hollow of that old-growth stump my mother had found, then came down the hillside to watch the fights and remind myself why I was happy to be free of those urges.
Instead of seeing fights, I saw the man with the woman in his arms. I was downwind, and I could smell her. She had been dead at least a day.
He put her in that hole and covered her with dirt. I could still smell her, just not as strong. If I could, coyotes and dogs could as well. She would be uncovered soon. Then he covered the dirt with rocks and I figured only the desperate would dig around them.
I stayed hidden as he walked by. I watched those boots, remembered how he had stomped the old black tom, and wondered if he would stomp me too. I did not get close.
The horrible man stayed in the house. It was his now. He had conquered the territory, first taking out the weaker animals, and then the woman.
It was wrong. He did not take an unclaimed territory. He took it for his own, but not in a constructive way. When a young tom takes over territory, he takes responsibility for all inside it.
This man did not. He was a destroyer. He emptied the territory of all inside, like coyotes would. But unlike coyotes, he did not travel through.
He looked like he planned to stay.
And I had no choice but to let him, even though his house was in my twenty acres. He was bigger, stronger, and more violent. The kind of violent that did not care who—or what—it stomped, even if it got nothing in return.
***
The next night, the moon still seemed full. I sat on my hilltop and watched the animals caught in their fever, fighting and copulating and running mindlessly across my acreage. I did not miss it, but I felt strangely left out.
Midway through the night, the party moved elsewhere and I did not move with it. Instead I enjoyed the pale silver light—and the silence.
Until someone said, Traditionally, fairy tales give you three wishes. And technically, that’s what you’ll have. But we only claim two wishes, because the third is the one you must reserve for that last hour.
I started: I did not see or hear anyone approach. For a moment, I thought I was getting old like that black tom, but I was not. Because no one could have anticipated the silvery see-through creatures sitting on either side of me.
They looked like they were made of moonlight. They were not quite cats—a bit too big, a bit too sleek—but they felt like cats. Cats crossed with something else, something older, something wiser.
Are you talking to me? I asked.
No one else is around, they said. They both spoke at the same time, and somehow that did not surprise me, not until later, when I actually thought about the whole experience.
I asked, What are you talking about when you say wishes?
And then I knew: they were talking about the Bargain.
My heart started to race, but I did not move. I had learned in all of my fighting not to let the opponent know exactly how you feel.
You have twenty-four hours to try a new form, they said. You may choose that form—lion, dog, human, whatever you want. And you may have one other wish to ease that transition, whatever that wish may be.
That’s two wishes, I said. You mentioned three.
The third will either turn you back into yourself, they said, or it will guarantee you remain in the new form. We will not let you waste that wish. We reserve it until the last minute of the twenty-fourth hour. We will appear to you then. Will you make the Bargain?
Why is it a Bargain? I asked. What do you get from it?
For the first time—the only time that night—they looked at each other. Then the one on my left said, We get entertainment, as the one on my right said, We get enjoyment.
I did not want to know more. But I knew what I wanted. I wanted to control the hilltop. I didn’t want anyone to take even a corner of it from me.
I want to be human, I said.
That is the hardest wish, they said. Make sure your second wish helps you.
I did not know exactly what they meant, but I remembered what the old black tom said. He said he had become human, he had felt weak and stupid. Others would ask for strength. I did not.
I want human smarts, I said. I do not want them to know I’m a stranger to their culture. I want to understand it all the moment I arrive.
The cat creatures twitched their tails and tilted their heads. Then they nodded like humans.
You have twenty-four hours, they said. In the last minute of the last hour, we will find you.
And they vanished, taking the pretty silver light with them.
As well as all of the smells and most of the sounds. The hilltop grew dimmer and I was cold.
I looked at myself. I was naked, with pale skin, long legs and long arms. Ginger hair feathered my body, not heavy enough to protect me. Next to me, a shirt, pants, undergarments, and shoes. Those, I knew, were a product of my second wish, just like my ability to put them on.
I did not like the shoes. I needed to feel the ground beneath my feet.
I sat for at least an hour to get my bearings. I had two perceptions: My feline thoughts, which felt more comfortable, and the human understandings overlaying them. I knew then that my vague plan to conquer the hilltop would take more effort than I thought.
To conquer the hilltop as a human would take more than one night. I would need to build an identity, find a way to earn money, find a way to buy a home—here—on the hill. It would take time, years perhaps, and even though I knew humans lived longer, I was not sure I would.
I almost wished I had not asked for understanding. Then I remembered the old black tom and how he had hid during his human time because of the ways the change made him feel. I remembered how I liked him, and the crunch of his bones beneath that man’s boot.
I could not conquer the hillside as a human, but I could remove the destroyer from it.
I stood, stretched, and felt bigger than I ever had in my life. The old black tom had been right; there was a vulnerability to this body despite its size. Its fingers had thin nails, not claws. Its teeth were even, strong, but not sharp. I flexed the fingers, watched the muscles, realized I had only a few advantages, and the greatest of these was size.
Down the hill I went, to the trees and the house. It was harder to walk my usual route—there were tree branches and bushes blocking my way. I couldn’t go under them. I had to go around.
Finally I went to that dirt road, and trudged to the house.
With my new knowledge, I could find a phone and call the police. I could tell them about the body in the barn. Even if they accepted my testimony, even if they arrested that man, they would have to prove he had killed her, and that might be difficult. Then they would lock him up in a room and feed him three times per day, turning him into a pampered cat, although—I suspected—he would be more like the Others, never quite able to accept his good fortune.
I did not want him to have good fortune. Human solutions did not seem like solutions to me. I knew the customs. I knew how to use them. But deep down, I did not understand them.
Perhaps I should have asked for understanding, not smarts. But I had asked for what I had asked for, and unlike the old black tom, I would not waste this opportunity.
I would use it to secure my hill.
***
The house was dark. The destroyer slept later than the woman ever had. I knew he was there, though. His hated car sat in the driveway, its engine still warm.
I did not try the front door. Doors were for humans. I found the broken window in the basement, the one the Others had escaped through. I slid inside, the glass cutting at my clothing. I had to ease my shoulders through one at a time and twist my torso. Humans were not very flexible.
I could not jump to the floor. I had to slide toward it, breaking my fall with my hands. I tumbled, winced at the pain, and stopped flat on the concrete floor.
Dust rose around me and made me want to sneeze. I couldn’t see well, as if I was already old and going blind. Humans couldn’t smell things, couldn’t see things, couldn’t hear things. It was a wonder they survived at all.
A real human in this basement would grab a tool or bring one. He would climb the steps and use that tool to attack the destroyer.
But I did not know how to use tools. And I had the benefit of surprise.
I crept up the wooden stairs on all fours, not because I had to, but because it felt more comfortable. I stopped and listened a lot, worried that my weakened powers would make me vulnerable.
But all I heard as I reached the top was a faint snoring not too far away. I stood, walked quietly, although not as quietly as I wanted. Bare human feet slapped against a surface. They didn’t pad the way a cat could. Everything about this body was big and loud and uncomfortable.
I thought I would like the size. I thought it would give me a feeling of power. It did not.
The kitchen stank of rotted food. The place was filthy, papers scattered everywhere. I looked at them, realized I had acquired another skill. I could read. I saw a woman’s name on an account ledger, money deposited after she had died, automatic payments coming out, keeping the lights on and food in the refrigerator.
No one would come here. No one would know.
This place was too remote for other humans. Apparently she had liked that, with her animals and the silence. He, somehow, had taken advantage of it.
Then a voice: Who the hell are you?
I turned, and saw him, my heart pounding. I had lost my advantage—he knew I was there. By rights, he should have sprung, attacked me before I attacked him.
But he had not.
He did not look the same. He wore a robe over boxer shorts, and he was barefoot. The boots were nowhere to be seen.
Oddly—or not so oddly—he was smaller than I was. Shorter, not nearly as powerful as he had seemed from the ground. He gave off a faint stench I recognized.
He was afraid.
My advantage had come back. I had learned in those full-moon fights how to use someone else’s fear. You did not give them time to overcome it.
I gave him no time at all.
I launched myself at him. I did not fight him like a human. I fought him like a cat, with clawed hands and sharp teeth, going for the vulnerable spots, the soft underbelly, the throat.
He tried to push me away. He could not. He had no defense against frenzy, and I did not give him one.
I destroyed him, the way he destroyed the old black tom, the way he had tried to destroy the black-and-orange, the way he had destroyed the woman who had lived in this house.
I destroyed him, and when I was done, I studied him for a moment.
I could, I suppose, have called humans to help me with him or what remained of him. They would come, clean the house, take him away, find the woman, and know some of what had happened.
But this house was remote, isolated. It had checks coming in and bills being paid. And he had an identity, one he was leaving behind.
I could clean this place. I could stay here. And I could bring in Others. I knew where they lived, how to tame the feral ones, how to make the lost pampered cats safe. I would leave the broken window alone for those who did not like being confined, and I could find food. Eventually, I could learn enough to survive, only not as a destroyer.
Cats buried excrement all the time. They buried excrement to hide traces of where they were, what they had been. He was excrement. I could put him deep in the ground, so no one would scent him.
No one would look. I would make certain of that.
I continued to study him—or what was left of him. I could carry him, and dig a hole for him. I could clean the walls, and figure out how to live here.
Or I could claim it as part of my territory after the humans had cleaned it out. It would take them a long time to settle the accounts, to figure out what had happened to the woman, to find out who he was.
Besides, I did not like to be confined.
I picked up the phone and dialed 911, but said nothing, leaving the phone off the hook. I knew that would work, because I knew human details, although I did not understand them.
Someone would arrive, take the body away, remove the smell of death. They might board up the window, but they wouldn’t close all of the crawl spaces. I would find a way in, or my pride would as I continued to form it. We would eat the food of the nice man and we would sleep out of the rain and we would be safe, or as safe as we could be, here at the edge of my territory, in my world.
At the last minute of the twenty-fourth hour, when the catlike creatures came for me, I exercised my last wish. I returned to my old life.
And I did not regret it.
I am old now, older than the old black tom had ever dreamed of being. I am careful about how I make my way to the top of the hill. I know some young tom will try to take my turf from me, and I don’t care as much as I thought I would. I would cede most of it to him, if he asked, so long as he left me the house.
The humans call it the death house. The nice man who still feeds me cautions me to stay away from it, saying no one knows what happened there. I do not tell him I live there now, with other ferals and the occasional refugee for whom I must find a home.
My original Others look healthy and younger every year. They have now moved to the windows, and their eyes have less fear. I have not told them what I did. I do not know how.
But on late summer afternoons, I imagine doing so as I doze in my safe place. I imagine telling the old black tom about my choices during my Bargain.
I like to think he knows what I did.
But he probably does not.
His life ended on that overgrown driveway. Mine will end in the woods nearby. When the time comes, I will leave my house, my territory, and die the way my kind does. Alone, so that no one follows the stench of death.
I like our ways. I understand them.
And while I remember all that I have learned about the humans, I still do not know what it all means.
I’m not sure I want to.
I am simply glad there are the nice ones to balance out the destroyers.
I no longer wish I could be different. I like my life. I like the choices I have made. And I like sleeping here, on my porch, in the hot, hot sun.
“The Destroyer” copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
First published in Human For A Day, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jennifer Brozek, Daw Books, 2011.
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