Skitzy Skitzers and Skitz

by Patrick Eberly

Skitzy’s been trilling all morning. My escalating shushes are being ignored. Groggy and unhinged, I finally give in and get out of bed, open the door and stagger out. He dashes underfoot and tangles in my ankles. I almost splinter my forehead on the fireplace.

Sparse furniture struggles to fill the large room. The chandelier hangs low like a giant tonsil where the dining room table used to be. Skitzy leaps on it and climbs up the chain. He inverts and smacks down at the crystal body like he’s knocking its crystal guts out.

I grab the chain and shake him off. “Skitz, am I going to have to raise this thing up?”

He bumps me off balance and flanks me. I follow him into the converted laundry room and slosh his bowl full of mushy meat scraps. The chandelier squeaks as it swings. Skitzy gnaws.

“I need to wash the fur out of my hair or I’ll look crazy.”

The showerheads are water cannons that blast hot lava into my ears to loosen up my mind.

I think Shannon’s been watching me. She hides out alone in her room, eats bags of food, and dry snipes the neighborhood through her broken curtains. She always comes knocking a few minutes after I get home. Her timing is too perfect.

Last visit I learned she was caught shoplifting a piece of costume jewelry.

“It’s embarrassing,” Shannon babbles. “Three years later, and every time I go into a store, people still watch me and send messages to each other about what I’m doing.”

She sweats through her frayed sundress. Her blond hair is unkemptly pretty.

“Maybe they’re just random people texting,” I suggest gently.

“No, I see the same faces everywhere I go.”

She’s complaining about being followed while currently borderline stalking me. Skitzy passes by and ignores her. He’s a good judge of character because he hates almost everyone.

“He looks clean. Is he staying here now?” she asks.

“Skitzers? Yeah. He moved in.”

“I’m glad. I’ve felt so bad for him being out alone all the time.”

“He gave me no choice. He sat outside the front door chattering so loud I couldn’t sleep, so I let him in. Now he won’t leave.”

“Such a pleasant story. I hear him out there at night sometimes. He sure is loud.”

“Yeah, I like his fur. He matches my furniture.”

He’s orange but his nickname is Grey Fur. I say it like one word: Greyfur.

“I’m thinking of changing his name. I’m not sure it suits him.”

“He had that name for years before you got him. He doesn’t want to change it,” she replies. “You ready for dinner?”

“Shhh. He knows the f-o-o-d words. You’ll get him all riled up.” Skitzy begins to pace in circles. “Look, I think he’s learning to spell.”

She isn’t listening. “How about tacos?”

I give up trying to reason with the unreasonable. I char a carcass and we all feast until we’re overstuffed.

Skitzy saunters off and flops down somewhere while Shannon grabs my knees and opens her blue eyes wide. I crush her breasts in my hands and pull her in. I tug her dress down past her tan lines. Her lips are a moist bear trap. She fucks like a vajazzled demon tanned from the fires of hell.

Afterward, I hold her until she falls asleep then let her go. She snores quietly behind me as I get up and walk to the bubbling fish tank. It casts blue effervescence on the walls. I think there are fewer koi today, but I forgot how many there were yesterday. The lid is closed and locked; they can’t be escaping.

Shannon’s behavior in bed is growing increasingly unpredictable. I think it’s a reflection of her mindset. I’d hate to think what she does while I’m sleeping. Is she stealing my koi, one at a time, so I don’t notice? To what end?

I enter the spare bedroom/dojo. Against the olivewood walls lean my unfinished paintings. Skitzy’s been slobbering on them as he walks by.

I bang in nails and hang up half-painted watercolors until a nail hits a wire inside the wall. It juts out, angled up, like an invisibly electrified fishhook. I wonder if the rubber floor mats are grounding me.

If I fry will Skitzy eat me? Where will he start chewing?

I sit on the floor and lean my head back and stare into the ceiling fan to decompress. Things feel cyclical lately. Skitzy springs into my lap like an ambush and curls up. I stroke behind his proud, ripped-up ears.

“Skitz, I’ve been thinking people are real if they see you. Is that backwards?”

He overgrooms the end of his tail, chewing on it until it’s soaked to a matted point. When it’s fluffy and he strokes it against my leg it’s like a hug. But that thin, snarling tail dripping across my ankle is a wet paintbrush dipped in poison.

Outside, the reptiles blend into the nightfall, crunching at the giant cacti in the front yard. Some mornings I go out to find brown and green plant entrails smeared across the granite driveway and spiked into the sand.

Skitzy leaps down. The pitter-patter of his nails on the hardwood grows to a furious clatter. He’s feeling nocturnal tonight.

Tomorrow morning there will be lizard heads waiting for me, so large I’ll need both hands to hold one. I wonder how Skitzy overtakes things so powerful.

A dull green baby scurries in to escape the heat and rushes across the room. It doesn’t get far before Skitzy is standing over it, making a death noise. He gnashes through the baby’s soft spine, smacks it backward with his bloodied face, and waits patiently as it drags its broken body away.

Skitzy lets the baby think it’s escaping, then mauls it again and watches it gush some more gore. The bites appear to have a paralyzing effect.

I’m naming him Thumbtack to honor his resilience. Thumbtack knows Skitzy can never let him escape. The others would lose respect.

Skitzy’s finished grazing. He digs his jaws in and brute-slams his head around until Thumbtack’s neck snaps. Blood splashes on the couch and pools on the floor. Skitzy presents me the quivering head.

I open the door and unleash him onto the grounds. Puffs of dust explode behind his frantic steps. The desert at night is mirage country.

Shannon’s parents tell her that people think she’s paranoid. It makes her cautious. She always leaves when Elise comes over, like she doesn’t want my sister sizing her up.

Elise can go anywhere in a conversation and never make me feel like withdrawing. She has a warm way of being blunt that soothes me as it catches me off guard.

“Are you sure you want to stay here by yourself? Don’t you get lonely?” she asks.

“I’m not staying with you.”

She looks down at her daffodil tea then around the room. “Is the furniture different?”

Freezing windows dull out the nighttime ambiance. The curtains have been shredded again. The moonlight shatters on its way through.

“Percolation is important,” I blurt out. “Can’t let the room get stagnant.”

“I see.” Her brown eyes pierce. “It’s strange being back here, isn’t it?”

I sit calmly in the quiet.

She leans in and lets her dark hair veil the sides of her face. “Driving up here got me thinking about things. Being here must be tough for you. It’s a lot to deal with all at once.”

“It’s a lot to deal with, and the best thing for me is to be here.” I catch myself raising my voice and calm down. “The other day, walking through the woods, I thought I saw Crikey in the trees.”

I don’t tell her he responded to my psst. He looked right at me and meowed. I closed my eyes and felt his shadow pass across my face then disappear.

“He can’t possibly still be alive after all this time,” she says. “You’re just overwhelmed, and your brain is messing with you a bit.”

“He seemed as real as he ever had.”

“He’s not.”

“Maybe he was never real.”

The long pause means I’ve said something extra odd. “Does that mean I’m not real either?”

Maybe. I have a variety of madnesses I’m not sharing with you.

“I just worry about what happened to him,” I say. “There were always dangerous things here.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder. Her scent reminds me of childhood. “He may have just gotten lost and ended up with someone nice.”

“I know you wish I would let you in more. I can’t tell you how I feel when I don’t understand it myself.”

It was the most honest thing I could think to say. Elise sees the impasse and stops. Shortly after, she gives me a reluctant hug and leaves.

The afternoon burns on. Shannon and I are trying to watch Strangers With Candy but Skitzy’s yowling and growling at us.

“He sure does like to fuss and complain,” she says.

“Who’s daddy’s most favorite boy? Is it Skitz?”

I chug some of her homemade prickly pear wine. The antique sofa crackles beneath her as she leans into me. I’ve put plastic over all the furniture on account of the habitual splattering.

“The original fruit this wine was made from is extinct,” she claims.

People are a never-ending catalog of different ways to be crazy.

Skitzy is still causing a scene. He wants the balcony door open. “Sorry buddy, too hot out today.”

“He’s being awfully bossy. Is this normal behavior for him?”

“Sometimes.”

She grabs me, demands I smile through the ambush, and takes a picture of us before I can say no. Skitzy leaps through the background.

She looks at the picture. “That’s nice. You picked up two only childs.”

He settles next to her. She pets him harder than he likes to be petted.

“Is his fur getting thicker?” she asks.

His wet tail snaps around each time she runs her fingers down his back. She continues her ramblings, ignores his warnings, and digs her nails in until he torques his body and tail-whips her arm with a loud smack.

“Ow you fucker,” she yells.

He calmly stands his ground and watches her rub off the impact. He is long and lean and battle-worn.

“Didn’t you hear him murmuring?” I ask.

“I heard something. I didn’t know what the hell it meant. He seemed friendly.”

“He was telling you not to touch him.”

Her arm is reddening up. “This really itches.”

I try to take her mind off it. “If you had to give him a nickname based on his color, what would it be?”

She thinks hard, “Scorpion tail,” and pinches him playfully.

Skitzy stings her again and seems annoyed by her shrieks. He flattens under a retaliatory swipe and jumps down.

“That shit hurts… Drew!” She glares at me. “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

“He’s a bit worked up with all the blasting outside lately. Maybe you should go.”

“You’re asking me to leave?”

“I don’t want to upset him any further.”

“Upset him? He attacked me! Nothing happened to him.”

I lock the door behind her and walk towards the fish tank. It’s empty. My hands shake as I unlock it and stare dumbfoundedly at the motionless water. The feeding schedule on the side of the tank must be expired.

Noticeably crazed, I stamper around the sprawling house. How many times do I pass by the same thing before I see that I’ve covered the same ground?

I plop down in front of the fireplace. Brick columns thrust up on either end. On the mantel rests a picture of our family snuggling fireside, drinking hot cider and listening to the scratch of vinyl records.

I reach into the fireplace. Grate soot smudges my fingertips. Sharp things poke out from the overflowing ash pile. I forage around and excavate what look like twelve identical fish vertebrae. Is that how many koi I had?

“Skitz, did you do this? Did you eat them all?” I ask. “Where are the rest of the bones?”

Hearing them out loud makes me question the sanity of the questions. “Jesus, I hope he did this. The alternative is frightening.”

Am I talking to Skitzy or myself?

“Why would he choose the fireplace?”

I step out into the dusty heat and don’t stop walking until the chlorine fumes hit the back of my throat. The waves echo off the outside walls. My mind is an unmoored pool floaty.

Shannon may be using my questionable grip on reality to manipulate me. “Did she gut those koi and leave them in the fireplace? Or burn them alive? What have I been saying to people I assumed were hallucinations? If Skitzy isn’t real, I’m fucked.”

Wait, how can I say that? Real compared to who? These stray people that wander uninvited through my life? This creature doesn’t care what I look like, how much money I have, or who respects me. He loves me just because I love him.

Fuck it. I accept his shockingly carnivorous nature, his vague vocalizations, his unpredictable swings from aloof to dangerously hostile; because whatever his existence in our stray reality means- all Skitzy’s ancestors have led to the creation of this most perfect version of themselves, and I believe what I see, and he believes in me.

We’re going to get these loose screws rattling right again. I’ll use the whipping incident as an excuse to break ties with Shannon, I’ll finally ask Elise what she sees, and I’ll get those home repairs done, I think, as I make a rare walk around the decaying neighborhood.

Shannon casually steps out of her parents’ house as if she hasn’t been watching me the entire time and walks over. Behind her a starless dusk blows a blizzard down from the mountains.

“My arm is still tingly.”

“I think Skitzers killed my koi.”

She seems shocked. “You do? And you’re letting him stay?”

“He’s good to have around. He’s primal. And I’m curious how he got the lid unlocked.”

“Sometimes he looks at me like he’s planning to jump me.”

“You are pretty hot.”

She gives me a bashful, playful smile. “So, what are we going to do?”

“Well, I can’t have you being a disruptive force in my roommate’s life.”

“Your roommate?” Her smile disappears. “That deranged twatwaffle that mauled me?”

“I don’t think that’s fair. He lives with me and I’ve suffered no bruises—”

“He’s mean,” she yells. “Wait, you knew you were breaking up with me and you called me hot?”

“I’m going home. Elise will be here soon.”

A steady crash bangs slow through the quaking house. I march faster toward it and into the main foyer.

The chandelier hangs high from the cathedral ceiling and shadows the room in downward patterns. Skitzy bats at it like a boxing heavy bag from atop the armoire. The front glass is smeared with snout residue that blurs the dishes inside.

“Skitz, you’re going to knock it down!”

His rhythm is slowly knocking the room off-kilter.

“Are you hungry, big boy?” He dives down close enough to sniff me. “You want some food?”

He’s all over me as I pelt his dish with dried organ pellets. The house resettles while his fangs dribble.

Elise is always a step ahead of me on the phone:

“You don’t sound stable,” she says. “You’re saying some crazy shit.”

“I don’t want you here. It’s not safe to travel through the ice cyclones.”

“You can’t ban me from my own house—”

“Your house. Great. Thanks for that Elise.”

“It’s mine because dad left it to me, and you’re not living there alone unless I say so.”

“You didn’t have to bring that up. You said it just to humiliate me.”

She’s thinking of what to say. “That wasn’t my intention.”

The long night falls.

Skitzy sits motionless on top of the hall coatrack, guarding the front door like a gargoyle. Headlights flood his face. He stares into them until they turn off, then revanishes into his shadow. Outside, Elise crunches her way through the horde of snow.

She hard-jolts the door open and lets all the cold in before closing it again. Skitzy stays still. Her hug is stern as her look. She seems oblivious to him watching above us like eavesdropping mistletoe.

In the kitchen I tap the slough off the absinthe spoons. The sugar froths in the green mist. We used to drink them in front of the fireplace.

“I need to know what’s up,” she says.

I had moved the island back away from the counter a bit to open up the room and change the flow of the house. It’s a subtle difference.

“You know how I get,” I reply. “My imagination has a mind of its own.”

“That’s not good enough. You said there were ‘footprints gathering in the snow’.”

I see pairs and pairs of eyes through the branches outside.

“I’ll show you.”

“Forget it. We’re not wandering off in the dark. We’ll freeze.” She palms the arm of her sweater and wipes cold fog from the window and looks out. “I’m not driving home in this shit.”

“That’s fine.”

Skitzy strides in from the hall.

Elise grips the stem of her glass. “It’s nice seeing you so much.”

I smile behind a sip that goes down mossy. Skitzy advances on her from one shadow to the next. His own shed fur, sparking up the air around him, makes him sneeze.

“I’m sorry I brought up dad. But if it’s an emergency…”

She waits for me to say something while he climbs up the stainless steel refrigerator behind her. At the summit he leans back into the darkness, just eyes and jaws looking down at her.

“I’m not just going to back off because you get upset,” she finishes.

We chat until the drinks heavy her eyes and slur her words.

I pull a furry hood over my earmuffs and slide open the iced glass door a crack. A maelstrom of cold rips through. Skitzy calmly walks out, thick shoulder muscles press through his dense, black fur, extra tufts jut out between his fingers from under his paws.

He puffs up like an inflatable teddy bear with razors for claws. His footsteps fracture the powdered earth. The winter night sky looks clogged.

Skitzy perches still on an evergreen stump and lets the snow bury him alive from above. The dragging winter cold staggers the animals out of the trees in search of food.

An infant forest squirrel hops by. Dark and powerful, Skitzy explodes out of his igloo. The critter screeches and zigzags to the nearest tree then bursts up. Skitzy claws his way around the trunk like he’s peeling it, disappears behind the shredded bark, then hops down with the shivering rodent between his teeth.

I want to congratulate him, but he won’t let anyone near him when he’s outside and instinctual. Like the open air hits his lungs and changes him. The snow blows quietly sideways and sticks to me.

To most people, silence means something is missing. To me it feels complete. This pool was built for warm days, noisy with kids and dogs. I like it better as a buried glacier.

A path indents across the whitened ground and stops at the center of the frozen pool. I lurch through the snow to follow, but skid on the ice and fall off my feet. My hands and knees dampen as the surface crackles beneath.

Something small and sharp juts out from the ice and tears through my coat sleeve and into my arm. I unhook myself. This seems out of place.

I brace my feet, grab hold with both mittens and straighten my body hard as I can. It pops out and I take the dull pain of ass to ice. A frigid fossil stares up from my sheathed palm. It looks like a cat-sized jawbone.

“How could it have burrowed in like this?”

I scamper around and scour for more remains. Something obscene happened here. There are answers at the other end of the tracks, but they’re disappearing under the snowfall.

The heavy snow crinkles beneath my bootsteps. My body sways in the windy crosscurrents as I stomp inside the adult squirrel pawprints. They surround my feet, large as snowshoes. The tracks lead me away from the house and amass at the edge of the silent forest.

A small herd, known as a smerd, must have passed through and clustered under the treetops. It’s like Skitzy is drawing them here. I wonder if he’s watching.

The trail leads deeper into the mountain pines to the sight of the massacre. Entire families lay strewn across the vast forest bed. Their mutilated grey bodies, half eaten, have begun to curdle. The food chain is a crime scene.

The cold burns. The snow is ash and the landscape a dusted apocalypse.

The forest wails and turns me around. The far-off house looks dim and alone, like a painting. It’s snowing so hard my footprints vanish as I step out of them. The tree line buckles.

I think Skitzy murdered poor Crikey and took his place. He probably slaughtered those tree squirrels and likely my koi. What else has he been up to?

“I may just be feeding a pile of uneaten foodstuff to a long-buried bowl,” I tell myself. “Maybe there never was a bowl, and I’ve been hiding an empty grave.”

I approach the house. Our cars kneel low, their rubbery tendons torn open and hobbled. I call Shannon.

“Yeah?” She doesn’t sound happy to hear from me.

“I think Skitzers slashed my tires.”

“So? You’re putting up with it and taking his side over mine. Why should I care?”

“I know, but he’s getting more brazen. I think you should avoid him. Stay indoors if you can.”

“We’re snowed in, remember? So I won’t be leaving my house because I’m trapped in it.”

“Fine, good plan. Stay trapped.”

“Was he out last night? I heard what sounded like a cult of animals desecrating something.”

“Send me that picture of the three of us.”

I gather an armful from the firewood pile, go back inside, and throw it onto the blaze. Cinders burst and bubble over. I step back to avoid being charred.

There’s a calendar on the wall, but it can’t be right. I’ve passed by it so many times today. When does walking from one room to the next become roaming aimlessly in circles? Just dragging footscrapes through the fur.

It’s getting more difficult to maneuver around in here. I’m adding walls to disconnect the rooms. If the time comes, I’ll do better to control the funnel and take the element of surprise.

My phone pokes at my hip. I pull it out and unvibrate the outburst to bring up the picture Shannon sent. Skitzy is out of focus like bigfoot.

In my head I hear inverted sentences.

I sort through the mail pile. “Is this the disability or the lottery check?”

The clouds hang low and lazy as the sun claws its way up from the horizon through the dense sky. Skitzy prowls the foothills, exhaling a primordial yodel.

“What’s that racket outside?” Elise asks, yawning and rubbing the bloodshot out of her eyes.

“The blasting sounds closer today.”

Gracefully she floats to the warmth of the fire. “You smell like a wet animal.”

“Someone slashed all our tires last night.”

“What? Are you fucking with me?”

“Come on.”

We bundle up in our parkas and walk outside to survey the damage. She goes stun still. I huddle with her and we shiver together.

“The rubber is frozen. How could this have happened?” she asks.

“I think it may have been my ex-fuckbuddy Shannon. Have you met her? Unstable, frazzled girl from across the street?”

I show her the picture of Shannon and I with Skitzy.

“What is this?” she asks, nervous puffs of frozen breath floating away from her.

“Can you describe what’s in this picture?”

“I can describe being scared of your behavior right now.” She pushes away from me.

I’m not going to get a straight answer from her. “Go inside and lock the door.”

I storm off and traverse the tundra to Shannon’s house. The paint is peeling and the welcome mat is misspelled. I have to listen carefully to Shannon. The truth lies beneath her words.

Through the window, I see her circle down the spiral staircase and pussyfoot toward the sound of the doorbell. Behind her, the walls are decorated with beaded mammoth pelts covered in cobwebs.

She answers wearing a derpy printed sweater and a forgiving look on her cold-blushed face.

“How’s things?” Her voice is flinty.

“Have you spoken to Elise?”

“What do you mean?”

They’re both being evasive. Things are happening in couplets again.

“My sister. Can the two of you see each other?”

I show her the jawbone and watch her reaction for tells.

“I’m getting mixed messages here,” she says. “Are you trying to buy me back with this thing?”

“It’s not a gift, you twit. It’s a piece of Crikey’s face.”

“So?” she says in her pissed voice.

“So how the hell did it get in my pool?”

“How the fuck should I know?” She gets louder and handsier.

“Do you know who slashed my tires?” I yell. “Was it payback?”

She gets right in my face. “Drew, this is a first, but you’re just too fucking batshit for me.”

“Fine by me, I’m not even sure you’re real.”

The door slams, stranding me in a frozen tsunami.

“Crazy asshole,” she yells from inside.

The waist-high snow pulls down on me like cryogenic quicksand. There seem to be less trees than before. By the time I reach home I’m exhausted and suffering from brain freeze.

I ponder as I defrost. Everyone is trying to influence me. Are Elise and Shannon conspiring to drive me insane?

I rush around the house tugging on doors and windows. None unlocked. I’ve already done this, already verified and reverified and forgotten and checked again.

“The giant pines have held snow in their arms for so long they cry at night. Winds of frost spiral through the valley. The cars are buried over, the ground floor of the house entombed in the storm. How long have I been standing at this window, looking down at the canopy of the trees and talking to myself?”

Skitzy hasn’t come home. Will I find his stiff body in the thaw? Or will he strut in after the woods melt? Is he out committing more atrocities? How many bodies are buried out there?

I remember the forest corpses, steam rising from their wounds and rotting the air. I haven’t seen Elise for a while. I think she’s going through a hibernation phase.

I shouldn’t have come back here.

A buzzing sound lures me downstairs. Each step descends further into the buried part of our house. Snow packs against the windows and darkens the unraveling floor plan.

In front of the fireplace, Skitzy lays on his back, legs up, fishtailing into the polar bearskin rug. Shannon’s royal purple vibrator grinds between his fangs. I think he’s sharpening them. I’ve read homemade pet toys can be the most stimulating and therapeutic.

“Hey handsome beast. Who’s got a tasty treat?”

He crooks his neck toward me, rowdy dick flopping helplessly out the sides of his jaw. He’s been weathered. His fur is gnarled with burrs and foxtails, his face a weeping willow of droopy whiskers. At eye contact I give him a slow blink. He pauses, then blinks back and trots over.

“How’s my big slice of pumpkin pie?”

He smacks a mouthful of latex and drool against my thigh and splooges me in pheromones and spunk breath. I’ve missed his aggressive friendliness.

I rub under his chin and send him into an alligator trance. The chew toy drops with a splish and squirms on the ground.

We sprawl fireside. The flames cast a catacombs afterglow. His limp body arches and falls in my hands. From his slumber, he gives me his belly. I rock him in my lap and hum to him.

“Skitz, is one of us imagining the other?”

Out of the corner of my ear rustles Elise. Her words come into focus as she approaches and sharpen when she sits next to me.

“Did you hear me?” She reaches out and palms the edge of the fire.

Or maybe her voice has traveled from inside my head to outside my head. “Hi Elise.”

“You listening?” She grabs my shoulders and shakes a nod out of me. “We’re running out of food. No one’s coming to help. We’re going to have to leave soon.”

“Okay.”

She lets go and looks into the flames. “If we wait too long, we’ll be too weak to go.” Her bones creak as she stands and begins to walk away. “We’ll gather what we need. Warm clothes, flashlights, lighters—”

“What do you think happened to dad?”

She stops. “What do you mean?”

“The cops acted like they suspected me of something.”

She turns back toward me. “They were just being cops.”

“Then why did he leave everything to you?”

“Drew, I promise when we get out of here, I’ll discuss whatever you want—”

“I know the two of you talked about me,” I press. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me.”

“Look, I’m glad we’re speaking again after so long, but this is a lot to put on me so quickly.”

“You can pack that gear by yourself then. But you already look too starved to carry anything.”

She’s boxed in.

I look down at Skitzy. His churring lulls me. It burbles low through my insides in different frequencies and intensities. I’ve been eating his food…

“Dad didn’t trust you.” Her voice cracks beneath her tears. “He said crazy people can smell each other’s brain rot and you reek like you’re decomposing.”

…It tastes like rotten steak. I’ve been studying his language as he sleeps, when he speaks most openly. If I can learn to understand, maybe I can respond.

“Do you remember when we were little, how scared I was of this house?” I ask.

She sits on the sofa across from me. The firelight reflects off her damp cheeks. “Sure. You told me you had to run as fast as you could because something was following you.”

“I could feel it right behind me.” The shadows of the flames seem to burn the walls and ceiling. “The only way to escape was to run outside. I knew it meant there was something very wrong with me. Being trapped here is making me feel like that again.”

She stares at me with love and fear. “We should leave now.”

I continue Skitzy’s chin rub. He seems to be becoming more aware of Elise’s presence. What will he do if I release him from hypnosis?

“You don’t want to see it,” I say.

“See what?”

My hands go still.

Skitzy emerges from his slumber, barrel rolls off my lap, and lands on his feet. His ears perk back at the sight of Elise and he freezes into a low dip on the bearskin. He closes in and pounces onto the sofa beside her. His claws tighten and snap into the plastic.

Skitzy turns his head toward her and makes a chirping noise I don’t recognize.

“Elise, do you hear that?” She stays focused on me. “Do you see him sitting next to you?”

She looks to her side, then back at me. “What a strange question.”