Now

The Boy in the Bottle

A girl and her brother are on vacation in the mountains. While their parents are visiting a casino, the girl and boy walk a steep path through a forest looking for a place to play.

The sister walks quickly on long legs. She stops to wait for her brother, who walks slowly on short ones. The brother spots something bright in the moss by a tree root. It is a bottle marked danger but he is too young to read. He picks it up before the sister can stop him. The bottle grows large and the boy falls into it. It then grows small again, trapping him inside.

The girl puts the bottle in her pocket and carries it back to the hotel. She puts it on the nightstand, then turns out the light so her brother can sleep.

Later that night when the parents return, they tell the children they lost all their money and it’s time to go home.

Summer ends and the girl goes back to school. The parents leave on a cruise ship. The girl carries the bottle in her pocket everywhere she goes. It feels heavier now than it did in the forest. The girl is a good student, but the weeping sounds her brother makes from the bottle disrupt her studies. The teacher sends her to sit in the hallway.

The girl works in an ice cream parlor after school. The bottle weighs heavy in her pocket, causing her to stoop. The insults and protestations her brother shouts from inside it annoy the customers. The owner of the store tells her to go home.

Back at the house, the girl finds a bill addressed to her parents in the mailbox. That evening, she crawls inside the bottle and crouches beside her brother. No one carries the bottle now.

The Clever Cat

A girl lives alone in an apartment in New York. She is the first in her family to move to a big city. Her mother calls every night asking for her to return home. Her sister calls every day asking her to call her mother.

One day, while she is on the phone with her sister, the girl hears a commotion in the hallway. I must hang up soon, the girl says. After a minute, she opens the door, but the hallway is empty.

That evening, while talking to her mother, the girl hears scratching at the apartment door. I must hang up now, the girl says abruptly. She opens the door and sees a small white cat with a black spot on its head resembling parted hair and black markings on its feet resembling boots. It walks in and fixes itself a martini.

I suppose I should fix you one too, says the cat. No thank you, says the girl. But I do admire your cleverness.

The phone rings. It’s the girl’s mother again. Let me talk to her, says the cat. It presses the girl’s phone so close to its face its whiskers flatten.

Most beautiful mother, I miss you so, says the cat. It then waits, completely still, except for its tail, which lashes violently.

The mother is deceived. The girl sits down to read a book while the cat continues talking. I will return to you if you cook me chicken, says the cat. I am too thin and always hungry.

After the cat says goodbye to the mother, it jumps up on the couch next to the girl, washes itself, then falls into an untroubled asleep. The girl marvels at the creature’s cleverness.

The phone rings again, interrupting the girl from her book. It is the sister. She’s calling to say she heard the girl hung up on their mother earlier that evening. The cat yawns, then presses the phone close to the other side of its face, so its remaining whiskers flatten. It lets out a low growl, then says to the sister, I value your wise advice.

With the whiskers on both sides of its face flattened, the cat resembles a girl. Give me your skirt to hide my tail, it says.The girl steps out of her skirt and wraps herself in a throw blanket from the couch. Now give me your blouse with its long sleeves to hide my claws. The girl gives the cat her blouse, then pulls the blanket over herself to cover her nakedness. Feeling drowsy, she curls up and falls into a restless sleep.

When the girl wakes the next day, the cat is gone. She searches every corner of the apartment and the building’s hallway, to no avail. She returns to her book.

After a few days, the girl receives a text from the cat praising her mother’s cooking. The phone calls from the girl’s family stop. They only send cards on her birthday and at Christmas.

The girl sits alone eating takeout chicken, the kitchen echoing with silence. She closes her book and turns the music up loud.

__________

Nora Maynard’s writing has appeared in Moon City Review, Tiny Molecules, HAD, Pangyrus, Atticus Review, Salon, The Millions, and others. She’s the co-editor of -ette review, a journal of very short prose. She lives in New York City. www.noramaynard.com