Creatures

Chapter Thirty-Five

When my alarm went off for school, I was ready, but I gave no sign of it. I didn’t even hit the snooze button. I just let it ring.

It was less than a minute later that my sister Heather came into the room with her dastardly camera.

“Time for a new brother-blog update!” she said cheerily.

I had my head pushed under my pillow and had the blankets pulled tightly up to my neck.

“Get up little loser brother!” said Heather, “It’s show time!”

I moaned and wriggled a bit under the blankets, enticingly.

She took the bait and whipped them off me.

This was the golden moment I’d been waiting for. I sprang up, hissing and snarling, all fangs and bristling whiskers and long pink tail.

She screamed, and I will tell you from that day to this, it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard her make. It was a long, wailing type of scream, the kind that went on and on.

Standing on my bed in a crouch, I faced her, while my tail whipped and curled about my legs like a snake. She backed away and dropped the camera. I sprang at her, hissing like a wild beast. I snatched up the camera and followed her with it.

She scrambled away with more terrified shrieks and I chased her to the bathroom. I was pleased to see her own cat’s tail begin to sprout as she ran.

“You’re a rat, Connor! A dirty rat!”

“Are you blind?” I shouted back. “I’m just a huge mouse!”

“What’s the difference?” she said as she slammed the bathroom door.

I stood outside and scratched my claws slowly down the bathroom door. She gave a little shriek on the other side. Wood splintered and I knew mom would be mad, but I didn’t care at this moment of sweet revenge.

Then I had a thought, and I walked off down the corridor and back to my room. I check the camera and grinned. Everything was recorded: Heather’s reaction, her desperate flight and those tremendous shrieks were all there.

“What are you up to, Connor?” asked Heather’s muffled voice from behind the bathroom door.

“I’ve got your camera.”

“Give it back.”

“Come out here and I will.”

“No.”

I messed with the camera a bit more and got it to play back the scene where she was shrieking and running. I laughed to see and hear it all.

“I’m going to set up a blog for this one myself. This is the best thing you’ve ever shot.”

“I’m going to kill you, Connor,” she said in her muffled, through-the-door voice.

“You’re too scared to even come out of the bathroom,” I pointed out reasonably.

Then I had a thought. And I nodded to myself after a moment, certain that my thought was correct.

“Heather, I just realized something!”

“What, you little puke?”

“You’re a cat and I’m a mouse! No wonder we’ve always fought our whole lives.”

I took the disk out of the camera and headed for the computer, whistling as I walked.