The forest-green, long-sleeved, t-shirt I am wearing is covered with strands of white cat fur, thanks to my decision to hold Phaedra (the cat) in my arms for an incredibly brief moment a short while ago. Judging from the amount of fur Phaedra left on my clothes during that fleeting embrace, the gravitational pull of my body must be enormously powerful. So powerful, I think, the fur from cats locked in solid steel vaults can be extracted from the animals by gravity, pulled through thick steel walls, and permanently affixed to cotton fabric. And not just sufficiently adhesive to cling to cotton, but strong enough to behave like welded stainless steel nuts and bolts encased in material a thousand times harder than Time and Distance, multiplied by the largest prime number, commonly known as M136279841.
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I heard footsteps. Or I felt them. They belonged to someone else; not to me, nor to anyone I knew. Who is so careless that they scatter loud footsteps in their wake? Who, especially, is so unafraid of the crushing sounds of boots on bone that fear, to them, has an aroma like smoked roses and the desolation of an ice storm? Is that a pathway to escape or, instead, a passage to purgatory?
