I — II

I know I promised I wouldn’t come back to this corner of the web. Honestly, when I made that promise I was sure I’d keep to it. When my situation, uh, developed the following night I kept mum. Just like I said the last time that I came here, all I wanted to do was to move on.

And I did move on, for a couple of months at least. I didn’t speak about Lola. I did my best not to think about Lola and, for a couple of months, it worked. The reality that my furry companion was used as a flesh puppet by some eldritch force became so distant that it could be ignored.

Until tonight.

After months of not having to deal with the incomprehensible realities behind Morana Air, tonight I was confronted by those terrible questions again. I come here partially to clear my head, to try to make sense of what I had witnessed tonight. I also come here because you all have been spamming my DMs begging for closure. You wanted to know what actually happened to Lola, what those bleeding red lips in the crystal ball were, you wanted to know more about Morana Air. I still don’t have all of the answers to your questions, but if I tell you what happened tonight maybe my inbox will stop overflowing.

The main reason I’m here, however, is because I’m done with all this. I know I said it before, but I won’t say it again. This is the last time I’m going to stumble into this weird corner of the internet. This is the last time that I’m ever going to talk about Lola, at least about her corpse.

I can’t understate how done I am with all of this. What happened, happened. I just want to go back to my regular, comprehensible life. Before I do, however, I guess I need to close the book on this chapter of my existence. Consider this post one big slamming of the pages.

If you’re not familiar, I came to this forum a couple months back to talk about my cat, Lola. She died right before I was meant to move halfway across the globe and I was forced to use Morana Air to transport her corpse. I’ve had Lola for over fourteen years, seeing her go was beyond heartbreaking but what I found at the Prague airport was considerably worse. My cat wasn’t dead anymore. My dead cat arrived alive and, well, different.

Her high-pitched meows turned into strange guttural groans and she smelled like death itself. In utter confusion about the fate of my beloved pet, I went over to a local ‘paranormal expert.’ I’m pretty confident the woman was a scam artist but during the meeting my cat managed to get its paws on her crystal ball. Whatever was pulling the strings inside of my dead cat communicated with us. It talked about vessels and rings of salt and finding things that are not yet born. Crazy, spooky shit.

That’s when I called it quits.

I left Lola’s animal container in front of a KFC, caught a tram back home and wrote my update post. The bloody lips, the terrible smell, the trauma of my dead cat being used as some vessel — it was all way too much. Like I said in the post, I was dead set on never thinking about the whole affair ever again. I sanctified that promise with a bottle of wine and some crying and then I went to sleep.

By the time I went to bed most of the rotting smell had aired out of my apartment. There was still a week left before the start of the school year and the forecast predicted clear skies. I went to sleep in hopes of waking up in the late morning to finally explore my neighborhood. Instead, I woke up before sunrise to my neighbor banging on my door.

She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Czech, but with a bit of help from Google Translate her issue with me became clear.

‘Your cat loud. Your cat loud on street. Take your cat, you bitch.’

Before the translation was done, I could hear those horrible wails. Even though I left her on the other side of the city, my ‘cat’ had somehow found my apartment. The neighbor was furious and I understood her well enough to know she was talking about calling the police. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain the Lola situation to the authorities.

The moment I opened the door to the apartment complex the creature ran past my feet and scurried up the stairs. When I got to my front door the cat, once again, ignored me. Lola’s corpse rushed past the hallway and took a seat by the window. It’s only then that she acknowledged me.

Her eyes kept on darting from me to a pigeon’s nest across the courtyard. She kept on staring and meowing and I had no idea what to do. For a couple of minutes, I desperately googled animal shelters, but none of them were open before sunrise. Filled with despair and slowly turning nauseous from the smell the cat dragged in, I tried going back to sleep.

Much like the night prior, I didn’t get any rest. Whenever my mind did drift away from the presence of the living feline corpse in my bedroom, it drifted towards memories of Berlin and adventurous school kids falling off of roofs. I laid there in the dark, trapped between getting the rest that I so desperately needed and finding a solution to the meowing corpse I was stuck with. When the dimness of my room gave way to a weak red glow I thought I had made it to sunrise.

I was wrong.

“No, no, no! The time is running out. Soon I will be trapped. Soon the bind will be permanent. No, no, no! I require a thing not yet born, a circle of salt. This is not the vessel I have paid for.”

Her eyes shone like burning rubies from across the room. She was hanging atop the paper lampshade I had on my bedroom light. Those bleeding red lips were barely visible behind the folds of paper, yet the voice in my head was as clear as it had ever been. Low and terrible and haunting, it spoke to me about things not yet born and vessels.

For a couple breathless seconds, I watched the demoniac cat sway from side to side on my lampshade, but then I had enough. I got out of bed and demanded answers. I demanded to know what happened to my Lola and why the horrible beast was tormenting me. My sleep deprived screaming did nothing to faze the cat. When I finished, however, the voice in my skull spoke up once more.

“Yes, yes, yes! You care for the vessel. You love the vessel. You will help me and we shall both feel joy. Yes, yes, yes! An unborn thing, a circle of salt. I shall be a being of feathers and you shall see the vessel returned to its rightful owner!”

Smoke started to stem from beneath the cat’s body. Before I had a chance to ask another question the paper lampshade lit up in flames. The metal frame of the lamp quickly shed the burning paper. The fire burnt fast and I managed to douse my carpet with a jug of water before too much of my security deposit burnt away, yet by the time I took care of the blaze the cat was gone.

She had hopped out of the window, walked on the tin roofs and sat right by the pigeon’s nest across the courtyard. The creature’s gaze was singular. It wanted me to follow.

Crawling eight stories in the air over ancient roofs just to follow a cat that was meant to be dead was the last thing I wanted to do with my morning. I don’t like heights and, more importantly, I’m not insane. Instead, I brewed myself a coffee in hopes of finding some rhyme and reason in my life.

The caffeine helped. The lack of a horrid smelling corpse in my apartment helped even more. As I stood by my window watching the cat, however, those demonic words kept on slithering through my head.

“You shall see the vessel returned to its rightful owner.”

Maybe it was the jolt from the coffee combined with the sleep deprivation. Maybe it was the promise of seeing Lola again. Maybe I just wanted the whole dead cat affair to end and crawling out of the window seemed like the only choice. Whatever the reason, that’s what I did. I got on all fours and crawled across the tin roofs to retrieve the thing that was not yet born.

My journey to the nest was quick. The metal beneath me groaned and somewhere in the back of my head there was a voice that kept on insisting I was going to tumble to my death — but I moved quickly.

The nest on the other side of the courtyard was constructed from straw and plastic bags and cigarette butts. A lone inch-sized egg sat in its center. As if mimicking the gentle movements of my Lola, the cat nudged the egg with its nose. Then, once my goal had been established, the cat scampered back on the roofs and returned to my apartment.

My journey to the nest was quick, yet the return took an eternity. The fear and insanity of where I was and what I was doing caught up with me. My movements were much less sure than the cats and my weight left behind a considerable trail of dents. About halfway through my journey a spot of roof where I had crawled over before shifted and sent me sliding down towards certain death. Luckily, I managed to stop myself from falling by shoving my foot into one of the ancient rain gutters. Most of that morning has been forcefully scrubbed from memory, but balancing on the edge of a roof with a pigeon egg between my thumb and forefinger will forever stay seared into my mind.

When I entered my apartment again the cat seemed to express something resembling joy. Its howls were still dark and undeniably eldritch, but the cat moved around excitedly as I drew a circle with my salt shaker. I placed the tiny egg in the middle of the circle, making my kitchen counter look like a cartoon eye.

My mind was completely blank after crawling over roofs and I was barely holding myself together, but my guesses proved correct. When I placed the egg in the circle of salt the cat curled up around the egg and started to purr. It started to purr and it sounded exactly like my Lola.

The cat sat in the circle of salt and purred and slowly, ever so slowly, its fur started to bristle. The coarse gray of my dead cat’s fur faded into the fluffy white of Lola’s youth. With her eyes still closed, she started to meow. That horrible dark tenor was completely gone. The cat on the counter sounded just like my Lola again.

When she opened her eyes the milkiness was completely gone from them. She could see again. She could see and she didn’t look a day older than when I moved into my first student flat. I had traveled halfway across the world and didn’t sleep for two days and crawled over roofs, but sitting in front of me was Lola.

At her feet, the pigeon egg started to hatch. The eggshell didn’t break from the top, it cracked from all sides as if it contained an inflating balloon. Whatever came out of it wasn’t a pigeon. The bird was jet black with red eyes and grew with each breath. Feathers sprouted from the bird as Lola’s fur grew fluffier and fluffier.

She looked just like the kebab hungry kitten that had followed me back home in university. She was small and fluffy and meowing just like she did when she was alive, but she was getting smaller. Lola was getting smaller and the black bird kept growing.

When she was nothing but a fluffy clump of white, her fur started to retract. What was once a cute kitten turned into a hairless gerbil. In seconds she undid weeks of development until she was nothing but a thumb sized chunk of flesh. Before my Lola could be thrown backwards through time any further, the bird ate her.

The bird ate her, spread its wings and flew out of my apartment window.

In response, I spent three days in a crisis center barely holding onto my sanity. I walked out with the firm belief that none of this happened. That’s the only way I could keep my shit together enough for the start of the school year. It’s also why I didn’t come rushing back to this corner of the internet for an update.

Whenever I had a moment alone all I could think about was the fur retracting into Lola’s little body. The first few nights were horrid. Prague, however, is a colorful enough city to help keep the mind occupied. I signed up for every new staff activity there was and scoured the internet for any interest groups that could take up my spare time. After a couple days the smell of rot left my apartment and after a couple washes my clothes smelled like clothes again.

It wasn’t easy, but I moved on. I kept myself busy with work and found friends and settled in my new three-year home. Occasionally, when I’d find myself crossing through I.P. Pavlova or whenever I stared out of my window for too long, I’d get uncomfortable but Prague and school kept me busy. I was happy.

I was happy, but now I’m here.

Now I’m here.

One of my friends threw a birthday picnic near the Letna Beer garden today. The picnic ended up being a lot more about booze than food and by the time it was packed up I was still hungry. The folks that were left at the end of the picnic wanted to go bar hopping but I was more than done for the night. There’s a tram across the river that takes me back home, so down from Letna hill I swung by the beer garden to grab a kebab.

The plan was to eat the kebab at home, but I was starving and the view from the bridge was nice. The Prague castle was all lit up and the tourist boats were floating by and the kebab was delicious. I was having the time of my life, but then, I saw something that brought the horror crashing back.

Two bright red eyes. Jet black feathers.

It sat on the railing, watching me. I tried to shoo it away. I tried to convince myself that it was just some weird diseased pigeon that had crawled into an old chimney, but the stare was undeniable.

The initial shock left me scared, but the alcohol turned that fear to anger. I demanded to know what the creature was, what it wanted from me. The pigeon stayed completely still, it’s featureless red eyes betraying no emotion. It isn’t until I asked about what happened to Lola that the horrible bird moved.

“The soul which you seek is dead.” The dark voice thundered in my skull when the pigeon landed on a bridge lamp. “It died far from here. Yes, Yes, Yes. What you saw on the morning of my rebirth was simply the muscle memory of a dead vessel.”

The light glowed red and much brighter than any of the other street lamps. None of the drivers paid attention to me. Cars and trams and buses sped around me without a care in the world.

“As for my wants, I want nothing from you. No, No, No. Our paths have only crossed because of a clerical error. I have been invited to your realm to watch. I am here to witness the final century. I have no —

The glass shattered beneath the bird’s claws. Instead of continuing to speak the pigeon sat back down on the railing and continued to stare. I forgot what I asked it, what other crumbs of information about the incomprehensible I begged for — but the bird didn’t answer. Instead, it launched at me, grabbed my kebab and flew away.

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m done. I pray that whatever amount of psychic energy it took to commit this madness to paper is enough to help me move on. I’ve managed to live like a normal person for the past couple of months.

I can do it again.

I’m done. I’m done with weird fortune tellers and crawling over roofs and eldritch spirits and I’m done with dead cats. I’m done and I only have one piece of advice to offer:

For the love of God, never book a flight with Morana Air.