Cats With Eyes Like Saucers by EC Dorgan
3400 words, ~17 minutes reading time
Issue 5 (Summer 2024)
I’m ten years gone from the city when I hear of her death. Lots of people died in that decade, but her death in particular consumes me. It’s all I can think about when I move back, that and the pumpjacks prophesying.
She wasn’t my best friend, she was something better: my neighbour, my after-school accomplice. We lived on the same block and went to junior high together. Every day after school we were inseparable.
We smoked Menthol cigarettes under a spruce tree. Got beat up in a park—it was minus forty and we were so bundled up we were misidentified. Most of the time we sat on a mattress in her basement watching cartoons that were thirty years old. We broke into her mom’s liquor cabinet and poured ourselves rye. We drank it in mugs with milk and cereal, and I never forgot that mixture’s vileness.
Sometimes we went out at night, we crossed the High Level Bridge and wandered to the cafes nearby. We wore each others’ jeans and nineties’ eyeliner. We walked and smoked, sometimes we shared a brownie or an apple. But we couldn’t let our guard down—this city wasn’t like other places. The sky was too big and if you weren’t paying attention, it could take you.
In high school, we went our separate ways. She went to live with relatives in a cowboy town a few hours away. I didn’t wait for her, I wanted out of the city. I left in grade 12—moved east, saw wonders too big for my eyes, cities with giant underground metros, palm trees and beaches, cities with skyscrapers and tourist crowds. Cities without skies at all.
All these years later, it’s the sky that calls me back, that or the memories of her. Or maybe it’s those damn refineries. They surrounded me in that city, under the massive sky. I’m living in some postcard town in Ontario with too-pretty streets and buildings that close me in on all sides. I’m suffocating.
I pack my car with the few things I own—a television, a wall clock, a laptop, the rye that’s always been kind to me. I drive west on Highway 16, and the sky gets so big I couldn’t turn back if I wanted to.
Once I’m back, I can’t tell if anything’s changed. There’s a new freeway ringing the city. What used to be a few lonely flare stacks have procreated and birthed a whole petroleum family. My tongue tingles. I can taste the flames. The High Level Bridge still dominates the cityscape. The sky’s still big, but now it’s smoky too.
I rent an apartment I can’t afford. I should be job-hunting, but I can’t stop thinking about her passing. I heard it on the news when it happened, twenty years ago. Unknown causes–what does that even mean? All I could do was push it out of my mind. Go back to denial, my go-to strategy, along with rye.
It’s not working now that I’m back. The city carries too many memories. I hate myself for leaving, for not being here when she needed me, for not returning for her funeral. I need to find her obituary, to read it again, before doing anything.
Finding it isn’t easy—it’s from that time before the Internet. And she’s like everyone who died before things went online—it’s like they lived in a different dimension or never existed at all. I google but barely find anything. Finally, I head to the library for microfiche.
I spend an afternoon in the dark, locked in a stuffy room beside a janitorial closet. The microfiche viewers are full of dust and I’m the only person on the floor. I find the obituary and read it five times. My ears buzz and there’s something at the edge of my memory. My eyes tear and I start to sneeze. It could be dust, grief, or frustration–the obituary’s full of words that don’t say anything.
After the library, I need air. I know I shouldn’t take Highway 16 but I can’t help myself. I drive west, burning gas I can’t afford. It’s late in the day and the sun shines in my eyes. I almost rear-end the pick-up truck in front of me. I’m in no state to drive, my mind’s on her memory.
Then a pumpjack emerges on the horizon. I’m only twenty minutes west of downtown when it rises up to the sky like a beacon. The reflection of the sun against metal dazzles my eyes. I breathe in time with the rhythmic movement of the walking beam. How can people drive by this without crashing? If I weren’t in my car, I’d fall to my knees. I’ve never been religious, but this is a revelation. I shouldn’t be surprised, oil is the only religion in this city.
The pumpjack slows its motion when I approach. The glare of the horsehead shines through the bone of my skull. My corneas burn but I can’t avert my eyes. I watch rapt and unbreathing while the metal contorts and waves at me. My spirit soars when the horse head looks at me. There’s a low groan when its maw stretches wide. I wait for the scream but it whispers to me.
My vision dims and the pumpjack’s message echoes in my brain. Everything turns black, and I don’t know if it’s the sky reaching down or the pumpjack swallowing me.
I grip the wheel while my heart bursts my eardrums. My spirit leaves me and the metal frame of my vehicle reverberates.
Then I’m back on the road, clutching the wheel, trying not to faint. I shake the whole drive home. When I reach my apartment, I step out on the balcony and look out at the High Level Bridge. My legs won’t hold me, and my spirit is god-knows-where.
I collapse into a lawn chair and close my eyes. Try to remember the pumpjack’s promise. I thought it was a prophecy, but the memory’s lost to me.
I awaken hours later, mosquito-eaten, throat burning from the acrid air. I had a nightmare, but I can’t recall it. My bones tell me it involved a big sky and shiny metal.
The next day, I skip the library. Spend the day on the balcony, staring at the river and the High Level Bridge. I look east and search the horizons for flarestacks. Can’t see a thing.
I sit on my lawn chair until dark and in this city, the light hangs on till past eleven. I breathe in smoke and let the mosquitoes devour me.
I have so many memories. We shared eyeliner till she moved away but there came a point when I couldn’t fit her jeans. She got skinny once she started making herself vomit. But still we walked from our back lane to the bridge, smoking or sharing brownies. Once she threw an apple and hit me square in the forehead.
Another time we were crossing the High Level Bridge late at night when a man jumped out of the rafters and chased us. We were winded when we reached the other side, our lungs scalded from the cold. We looked at each other, relieved to have outrun him, then we remembered that the sky might still take us. But it didn’t, and when we looked back we couldn’t see the man who had chased us—the sky chose him instead.
That was more than thirty years ago. I count and re-count them because I can’t believe the years. Two decades since her death and now I’m middle-aged.
I should have settled down and started a family by now. I should have made friends. But here I am, nothing to show for my years, alone in this city I claim as my home though no one here knows me. I haven’t made a friend since she died.
It’s Friday night and I'm home alone. It feels like every night is Friday when I have nowhere to be, no job to go to the next day. Barely enough savings to keep eating.
I stay up late, scared to sleep for the dreams that might hurt me. I move indoors from my balcony—it’s not the mosquitoes that bother me—I grew up here, I’m used to being eaten alive—it’s the sky that unnerves me, that hungry expanse. Kick myself for coming back, I can’t bear these memories.
I hide from the sky and watch mindless shows on Netflix. Half the world is watching the same ones—this is my best chance at community. Spend hours squinting into the TV screen beside my wall clock. But I can’t pay attention while pumpjacks are prophesying and the sky’s famished above me.
Fall asleep on the sofa and in the morning, return to the library. Stare at that same old microfiche though it won’t tell me anything. It can’t change what happened, and all I can do is sneeze. I walk out the library and looked to the empty sky. Turn my head eastward, searching for flarestacks, but there’s still nothing.
Drive west in the afternoon and a memory comes to me—how we used to take the bus to the mall after school. How every bus in the city had a seat that said “repent” on the back of it, written in black marker by the same jagged hand. At the time, everyone in the city knew about it, but now the buses are different and even if you googled it, you wouldn’t find anything because it’s part of that lost history.
I pass the mall and leave the city. Hold my breath when I spy the pumpjack coming up to me. It stops pumping and the world goes silent. My peripheral vision darkens and my car slows, we inch along the highway in pictures out of sequence. The sun brightens then occludes and the black metal of the pumpjack extends upward to the sky. Lightning flashes in arcs that sizzle in my eyes while bolts come up from earth and down from the heavens, a singular motion while the rest of the world is frozen.
Sound rushes back and when I gasp for breath, my mouth fills with nitrogen. The next moment, the road rushes up to me and I swerve to avoid the ditch. An oil tanker honks and passes me while my car sways and I clutch the wheel and pray I don’t roll.
Keep driving but my eyes blur and my ears scream at me. The pumpjack’s sermons were just as incomprehensible as that microfiche. I want to hit my head on the steering wheel in frustration, but I know that would only further confound me.
The next morning, something’s different. I see it in my reflection when I step out of the shower, dripping wet. Drop my towel. Spend hours studying my countenance in the mirror, while water pools on the tile around my feet.
I can’t place what changed. I make an alphabet of shapes with my lips and try to repeat the pumpjack’s message but my tongue fails me. Rub my ears and hear a low roar. Tell myself it’s the pumpjack, but deep down I know my ears have been screaming for twenty years.
I don’t go to the library and I don’t go job-hunting. Enter a trendy cafe and stand at a table, trying to decide whether to sit down. Everyone in the cafe is with someone. I’m the only one by myself. Feel the wait staff watching me, wondering if I’ll be a problem, one of those weirdos they’ll tell their significant others about when they get home.
I want to tell them about the pumpjack and about my friend who no one remembers, who’s not even on the Internet. Take a deep breath but everyone continues their conversations. I don’t have the courage to speak. Walk out of the cafe an inch shorter and no one even looks at me.
Go back to the library and stare at the same microfiches and just like last time it doesn’t tell me anything. Take the bus to the mall to follow our old footsteps but the whole bus system is different. I have to buy a bus card—spend the last of my money and can’t figure out how to tap the damn thing. Someone has to show me, like I’m a stranger in this city.
The backs of the seats are now fabric, they don’t tell me to repent or what I need to do to fix everything. I consider writing on the back of the seat but I don’t have a marker, or anything worth saying, anyway.
I’m home alone and it’s Friday night again. I stand at the window and watch cars cross the High Level Bridge. Wonder where they’re going and whether there are people hiding from the sky in the metal rafters. Wonder what it was like to have places to be, to have community.
I don’t have anyone. No one would know if the sky took me. Even the flarestacks I imagine on the horizon wouldn’t see. The thought guts me.
Look at the clock above the TV and let my eyes unfocus. The clocks become two in front of me. I watch the double hands move together and then separately. One of them blurs and my ears rumble like the pumpjack sermon’s coming back to me.
Blink and there was only one clock, but there’s a cat instead of the time, and its eyes are wide like saucers. I gasp and the cat motions with its eyes to the oven and when I turn, it’s set to 600F and smoking. The cat looks outside and I follow its gaze and the whole river valley is in flames.
Wake on the sofa with the Netflix show playing. It’s the same episode I watched every Friday of this week. My ears are ringing and the oven is ice-cold. Get up to search for my laptop and when I find it, I google her name and every possible variation. There’s even less trace of her than last time.
I go to the library already knowing what awaits me. Sure enough, there’s a new librarian who blinks and asks, “what’s microfiche?” I lead her to the basement to the room beside the janitorial closet but when I pull open the door, there are paint cans where there used to be microfiche viewers.
I start home, then stop in my tracks when I realize there might be a cat waiting for me. Consider the mall but decide I can’t bear the long bus ride. Can’t fathom battling with that card that won’t tap, then staring at a bus seat’s mute fabric back.
Return home after dark, defeated. Two clocks in my living room move to greet me. The cat flicks its tail. I keep my eyes from the oven and the window with a feeling they won’t burn if I don’t look at them. Open the cupboards and search for food but there’s only cereal. The milk in my fridge is sour. I pour it on my cereal anyway then add rye and the mixture’s just as hideous as I remember.
Netflix can’t hold my attention so I pull up my laptop. Google my friend and can’t find her. Look up prophesying pumpjacks, cats with eyes like saucers and smoking ovens and don’t find anything.
I get a sick feeling and start typing though I know I shouldn’t. My fingers won’t listen to me, all I can think is that we took a typing class together in 1990. I brace for the inevitable, then press my thumb down on the enter button.
And of course there’s no results under my name. Try again, this time with my age and my middle name. Nothing, it’s like I don’t exist either.
I toggle to my email then realize I’ve forgotten my address and password. When did I last log on or get mail? Close my laptop and break into a sweat. Walk to the bathroom and splash my cheeks with cold water. Put my nose against the mirror and finally realize what’s changed with my face.
We didn’t look alike, her hair was curly and mine was straight. We both had brown eyes and the same height, but our noses were different. But still—a resemblance, uncanny. I lean so close to the glass I bump my forehead and I see it, how both our eyes are haunted. She’s dead, and I’m a ghost still living.
And I’m alone in an apartment and it’s Friday night again. There never was a cat and the oven’s on ice. The river valley never burned. I’m so starved for meaning I’m imagining greater calamities, searching for explanations for what happened.
Can’t concentrate on Netflix, my eyes are too teary. I get up and walk to the balcony.
I’m set upon by mosquitoes the moment I step outside, and I let them feast, hoping the itch of their bites will distract me. Spend the night in my lawn chair, exposed to the sky, wanting it to reach down and take me, finally. But the sky doesn’t register my presence, and when I fall asleep, my dreams are of pumpjacks with meaningless creaks and groans.
I cover my ears but the roar is resounding.
After two nights on the balcony, an idea comes to me. I buy an apple and pack up my cereal. Throw in the wall clock and the rye. I grab the sour milk too. Put on a flannel shirt, heavy eyeliner and a choker necklace and head out to my car like it’s 1991.
Take Highway 16 west, and even before the pumpjack appears on the horizon, I can hear it thundering. My breath catches at the sight of the metal. But my hands on the steering wheels are shaking. I let off the gas. Pull over on the shoulder and put my head in my hands.
I always knew, though I didn’t want to believe it. There are no pumpjack prophets, this is mindless metal. Don’t want to think about what they’re doing to the landscape, how they’re desecrating it. I’m so lost I’ll grasp onto anything.
I know better than to U-turn on the highway, but I do it anyway. I never had judgement and I’m not about to start now. Turn eastward, and when I reach the Henday, I drive the full loop around the city. The refineries are to the east, and this time I ignore them. I’ve moved on—I’m going east to find cowboys and a twenty-year old grave. I’m still on Highway 16.
The graveyard’s right off the highway. I park on the side and for once, the vast sky doesn’t scare me. Find her grave and take out my apple. Tap it on my forehead for old times, then cut it into squares. Break out the rye, the sour milk, the cereal.
We sit in silence. I want to tell her I miss her and that I’m sorry for her tragedy. That it wasn’t fair, that I wished I’d been there. But I don’t have the courage to speak.
I leave her the apple, the milk, and the cereal. Take back the rye and hope she’ll understand.
Walk back to the car and sit in the driver’s seat. Don’t start the engine. The sun moves across the sky. I haven’t figured out anything. After a while, I step outside. Leave my clock, my laptop, and TV in the back seat.
Stand on Highway 16 and look both directions. The sky and the bottle are poor guides but I have a feeling the car would be worse.
To think, all this time, it was this memory calling me.
I’m not after closure, I’m not that kind of ghost. I’m selfish, it’s not just her I’m thinking about. I want to know where things went wrong with me too.
I sniff the air but can’t smell anything. The quiet in my ears deafens me. There’s nothing here, no great truth. Glance up at the sky and flinch at its size. Take two steps east then turn and face that damned city that haunts me. What does it matter, I’ll be a stranger no matter where I go.
I start walking back to the city, westward. My feet make no sound, but I don’t care.
I’ll be a ghost, live in the past, like there’s hope, like it’s 1991 again.