Alley Cat
Lost Love and Pickled Peaches

I wait for Raphael for two whole hours at the nearest AMC movie theatre. We watch as people come and go in order to pass the time. Those that leave wear stretched smiles on their faces, tilting their heads back to laugh at a funny scene they recall in their movie. The smell of buttery popcorn and cinnamon churros coats the air thick, making me salivate. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in a movie theatre, and it makes me sad. I’m curious to see how films have changed over the years. People often make jokes about how the picture quality is so good that you can see each individual nose hair peeking out of an actor’s nose. What a time to be alive!

Todd breathes a long exhaustive sigh as he rolls over in my arms. He’s positioned himself so that he has a better view of the arcade behind me. Maybe Raphael forgot.

I turn around and watch two kids take turns playing with the crane machine. The crane grasps a stuffed dinosaur’s head and lifts the doll, but the doll slips from the claw and falls short of the hole. The kids sigh in disappointment before reaching into their pockets for another dollar. “Raphael never forgets. We used to meet up here all the time.”

Whoa. Todd looks up at my face in disbelief. You and Raphael used to be friends?

An intrusive memory of Raphael’s strong hands tracing down my bare back disrupts my tranquil state of mind. I blush. “Yeah…friends.”

Todd reads my face and shakes his furry head in disapproval. Luka better not find out about that.

“And he won’t because it’s all in the past,” I say, staring at the doors. I expect Raphael to walk in any moment now, but he doesn’t.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Todd says in a lilting tone that’s meant to tease me. He seems like the kind of guy that doesn’t fall in love easily. But when he does…

“Since when were you a good judge of character?” I jokingly boop my finger on his triangular nose. “I bet you’ve never been in love.”

Todd tilts his head in thought. We watch as the kids waste five dollars on the crane machine before finally giving up and running over to play air hockey. I haven’t been in love per say, but I’ve loved. Remember, I had another owner before you and I had a family of my own before that. It’s also a lot easier to recognize love when you’re not tangled up in it.

I can’t help but snort out of my nose. I’m cynical and always have been. “So what? You think he’s still in love with me or something?”

Todd looks over my shoulder and his ears twitch from excitement. “Maybe you can ask him yourself.”

I turn around to face the doors and see Raphael scanning the scenery with a keen look in his eyes. I’m surprised to see him wearing his Malcolm X glasses. He hasn’t worn them for a couple of decades now and it adds a few years to his age. My gaze unintentionally lingers on him as I’m reminded of the man that Raphael used to be. Raphael used to be happy. I still remember how he used to grin from ear to ear. It brightened his whole complexion and had the contagious effect of making others smile as well. He used to be so full of energy and was known for belting out the most soulful songs in church. He was Atlanta’s biggest flirt, my love, the man that I would lose to a large cause. I shake my head free of the painful thoughts. It’s over. I remind myself, it’s over.

“Helene!” Raphael waves at me and we walk towards each other until we’re face to face.

“Raph.” Before I could say more, Raphael apologizes for being late.

“Sorry about the long wait. I got held up in The Bronx.”

“For the last three days?” My voice heightens with skepticism.

“Yeah.” Raphael stuffs his hands into the pockets of his puffy jacket and looks down. “And I’ve got a lot to say.”

“When have you never?” Raphael can’t help but turn away to hide his smile. I wish he didn’t. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him smile.

“Care to walk around with me?”

I agree. We walk around the theatre in slow strides as he confides in me his new found intelligence. “The wolf I talked to was an old friend of mine I met some time ago at a John Lennon concert...not that that has anything to do with what I have to say.”

“Ah yes, the 70s. Did you get high off LSD and have delirious sex while you were at it?”

Raphael lets out a short laugh that emphasizes his annoyance. “You know, Helene. I forgot just how vexing you are. You never were the one to take anything seriously.”

My temper goes unchecked and I blast him for the offense. “Oh. So I don’t take ‘anything seriously’ because I’m not the one that marched into a firing squad?”

Raphael looks at me dead in the eyes. I’ve wounded him, and I know it. Raphael winces at the horrible memory and takes a step back. “God, Helene. Why do you always have to remind me of that?”

“Because I know that you still blame me for what happened.” My voice shakes when I say it. Raphael takes a moment to recompose himself. He never was the one to yell. He never shouted at me or called me a ‘bitch’. He was a gentleman in every way, and I hated that I had nothing to hate him for.

Raphael speaks to me in a carefully controlled voice, the kind of tone you use to talk to a spoiled child. “For the last time, I never blamed you for anything.”

“That’s not true,” I whispered. “I could have saved you. I could have prevented you from becoming...this.” I summon my claws. Blood bleeds from my fingertips as claws, six inches in length, jut out from bone. Raphael acts quick, taking my hands and hiding them against his chest. He pulls us together so that it looks like we’re hugging, but I can feel the tension between us. Despite being so close, we’re further from each other than we’ve ever been. But it hasn’t always been like that.

I met him in the summer of 1962 in Atlanta. Jim Crow laws and segregation were at its height. The nation was divided more than ever before, torn apart by hatred and bloodshed. I decided to move down to Atlanta after getting into some trouble in the north for busting a drug ring. I was twenty-three, young, and ambitious. I had only intended to lay low in the south, but I quickly found out that I was never good at going unnoticed. People often stared at me wherever I went. My green eyes said that I was white but my dark skin and the peculiar alignment of my Nepalese face said otherwise. No one knew what to make of me.

It didn’t take long for me to run into Raphael. At the time, he ran a small produce stand one block away from my apartment. Raphael sold the freshest produce in Atlanta, straight from his mother’s farm in the countryside. He was known for his pickled peaches and his infectious smile. Even before I got to see his face, I heard rumors of his wholesome voice and how he could make any woman swoon. I had to see him for myself, and I did.

“Thank the lord!” He seemed to be talking to the air. I had just walked past his stand by the sidewalk and felt obliged to turn around to see who he was talking to. When I did, he continued with his one-sided conversation (aware that I was listening). “I’ve been blessed to have an angel sent down my path.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “The last time I checked, angels had wings.”

“Then she has yet to earn her wings.”

He had caught me, hook, line, and sinker. I was drawn to him, and he was excited to claim his win. I leaned against his fruit stand and eyeballed his peaches. Each peach was pink and covered all over with fuzz. Their floral aroma found its way to my nose and entranced me with its intoxicating scent. I was instantly reminded of an old story and I told him. “You know, Lucifer was an angel once. Before he betrayed God and fell.”

Raphael’s eyes widened with interest, and he took a ripe peach in his hand. He inspected it, slowly raising his eyes to fixate on mine. “Indeed, Miss. And they say that he deceived mankind by enticing him to eat a piece of fruit.”

He brought the peach to my mouth and bid me to take a bite which I did. My teeth sunk into the fruit’s soft flesh. Its sweet nectar flooded my mouth, dripping down the sides of my chin. Even to this day, I’ve never tasted any peach that was as sweet as Raphael’s.

In the spur of the moment, Raphael lowered his head and pressed his lips to my ear. He told me his address and that there was a bed waiting for me that night. And like the reckless fool I was, I agreed. One fling led to another and another. I never expected it to become anything serious, but it did. I went to church with him on Sundays, met his family, learned how to pickle peaches with his mother on the holidays...The abundance of joy I felt with him led me to believe that this was it, that he was ‘the one’. But my life soured at the peak of its heat like milk.

Things got progressively worse in the south. People were getting hosed in the streets for peacefully protesting. Important people died. President John F. Kennedy got shot. Martin Luther King also got shot. Malcolm X went down with him. Innocent people got arrested and killed. Rosa Parks went to jail for a fucking bus seat. Eventually, enough was enough. Raphael’s mother’s farm got burned down and his younger brother was shot in a protest gone wrong. Against my pleas, Raphael joined the Black Panthers and I was afraid for his life.

“You’re going to get killed!”

I tugged at his clothes to prevent him from leaving the house, but he fought me off. I cried. I begged. I pleaded. But it wasn’t enough. Raphael wasn’t afraid to die. And worst of all, he wasn’t afraid of leaving me behind either.

He slammed the door in front of my face. I wished I hadn’t cried so long. I wished I had just chosen my words better. Some way or another, I received word that there was a rat in the organization. Somebody had been in cahoots with the police, alerting them as to the exact time and place of the protest.

By the time I arrived at the scene, dead bodies scattered the ground and protesters were being shoved into the backseat of police cars. I searched all the bodies, trying to find Raphael’s. But it was to no avail. Raphael had turned before I got there. And once again, my love had abandoned me again.

I laugh bitterly at the memory, wiping tears from my eyes. “It would have been nice if you wrote back to me. Like, ‘Helene. Guess what? I’m not actually dead. I’m actually a werecat. Sorry for making you worry so much!’ But no! I had to run into you fifty-five years later at a fucking skate park!”

“I was terrified!” Raphael raises his voice, scaring me. When he realizes what he’s done, he calms himself down. “I was terrified, Helene. The entire time we were together, you never bothered to tell me the truth about what you were. I spent decades after my death trying to learn about what I was. And even to this day, I haven’t gotten a solid answer. Is it a curse? Are we descendants from a cat goddess? I don’t have a clue! But the point is, I didn’t want to scare you. I thought I was a–a–”

“–a monster?” I finish for him.

Raphael presses his lips together tightly to form a thin line. “I could have saved so many years of my life if you would have just told me. Things could have turned out differently.”

“What? Between us?” I tilt my head up to glare at him. “You chose to walk to your doom. You chose being a hero over me.”

“I wasn’t trying to be a hero! I was trying to do the right thing!” Raphael says, pounding his chest with his fist. “Look around us, Helene!” Raphael opens his arms to embrace the entire theatre. “Look around you! There’s white kids and black kids playing air hockey together. There’s no separate water fountains. Interracial marriage is legal now. I made a difference that day.”

“And you did,” I whisper. My voice breaks as well as everything else inside me. “And I’m so proud of you. I just wish you loved me enough to stay.”

Raphael tries to pull me in for an embrace, but I push him away. “I can’t. What’s done is done.”

Raphael opens his mouth to say something, but I don’t let him. “The Bronx werewolf. What did she say?”

He chokes on his words for a bit but manages to recollect his composure. “She advised me to contact some werewolves in Manhattan. She gave me a whole list too, but our best shot is to find a powerful pack. According to her, rumor says that there’s a secret family of powerful werewolves in Manhattan who are known for their...business. They sell poisons, antidotes, potions, and they also offer secret services.”

“Hold up.” I stand at attention at Raphael’s revelation. “Does that mean they have the cure for lycanthropy?”

“It’s possible,” Raphael says with a grim countenance.

“That means we don’t have to kill the rogue werewolves!”

“H–Hey. Don’t get your hopes up. We have to prepare ourselves for the worst. Worst case scenario is that we have to kill all of them. I can’t imagine how confused they must be.”

“Then we need to act quickly.”

“No,” Raphael says sternly. “What we need is a plan.”

“So what do you propose, Mr. I-Have-A-Plan? Shall we go door-to-door to every werewolf residence and beg for their assistance while there’s a rogue werewolf on the loose?”

Raphael bares his teeth at me and is three seconds away from lecturing me about my rudeness when his phone goes off in his pocket. He checks his phone for a text and I watch as his irritated visage darkens into a solemn countenance.

“What is it?”

Raphael shakes his head and slowly turns over his phone. A long chain of gruesome pictures pile up in his messages: all of them clearly show two mutilated bodies bleeding out in an apartment complex. I can’t even begin to describe how graphic it looks. The only thing I can say is that the bodies don’t even look remotely human after all the trauma that’s been done to them. I force myself to avert my eyes, witholding a gag.

“Fuck,” Raphael whispers under his breath. He bolts out of the theatre and I sprint to catch up with him.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going hunting.”

“For a werewolf?” I struggle to hold Todd in a comfortable position as I run. We cut through streets, scale buildings, jump from roof to roof. I don’t have the slightest clue as to where we’re going, but I follow Raphael anyway.

“Raphael!”

He ignores me. I have to tackle him to grab his attention. We roll across the rooftop where I pin him down underneath me. “Will you just listen to me, just once?”

Raphael glares at me as I pant breathlessly on top of him. “Stop thinking that you could do everything by yourself. This is my mess. I’m in. Okay? Now tell me what happened in that picture.”

I make Raphael promise that he won’t run away and remove myself from him. We both sit at the edge of the rooftop as Raphael explains to me that the mutilated corpses in the pictures were lynxes from his clan. Both were killed by what their neighbors believed to be a large ‘dog’. Although the police are still investigating, it’s clear that they weren’t killed inside their apartments at all. The bodies had been moved. Raphael reopens the picture and points out the strange positioning of their bodies and the smear of blood from the door. The biggest clue of all were the victims themselves.

“Jai and Leslie were dating, but they didn’t live with each other. Whoever did this was trying to send a message.”

“But that can’t be.” I think about how terrified Luis was when Shirisha and I left him in Central Park all alone. “If he killed anyone, it would be an accident. He has no motive. Look at the bodies again.”

We re-examine the pictures and notice that although both corpses are equally gruesome, one corpse has clearly sustained more trauma than the other. Raphael and I exchange looks, both having full knowledge of how predators think. There’s a difference between killing for food and killing out of pure rage. When you want food, you try to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible. When you kill out of rage, you want to relish in your victim’s pain.

I point out the injuries on the arms and say, “That’s where she got injured first. Her arm was torn out of its socket.”

“Then they went for the face.”

Raphael looks up from his phone and gives me and says, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Someone’s trying to frame Luis?”

“Yeah. Luis is just a distraction. Someone’s looking to claim Manhattan.”

“But who?”

Raphael shakes his head in frustration. “I don’t know. The only enemies the lynxes have are the panthers, but we haven’t crossed paths since the 90s.”

“This just got a lot more complicated.” Raphael and I dangle our feet over the rooftop in thoughtful silence. The sun is starting to set now, causing the horizon to layer itself warm shades of red and orange. For a moment, I can’t help but think that our situation is somewhat romantic. It brings back memories of Raphel’s farm in Atlanta. We used to have picnics in the fields and watch the sunset together. I know it’s foolish to indulge in nostalgia but when you’ve lived as long as I have, that shit’s inevitable.

“Helene?” Raphael says in a tentative voice.

“Yeah?”

“How does it feel to be sixteen again?”

A smirk creeps onto my lips. “Oh, I’ve been sixteen for a couple of times now. Being a werecat is weird like that. When you die, you don’t get to choose what age you wake up as. Early to mid twenties is usually the most preferable. Adolescence is...tolerable to say the least. And then you have the weird cats that regenerate as children or old people.”

Raphael repeats his question again. “I said, ‘how does it feel to be sixteen again’?”

“Terrible. I hate puberty.”

Raphael leans back and sighs at the sky. “My voice stopped cracking last month.”

We both laugh. Our laughter fades out into dreamy sighs, and we turn to look at each other. “There’s no hope for us, is there?”

When I shake my head, Raphael’s smile softens into subtle disappointment. “Well? I guess some things aren’t meant to be. That’s too bad. You’re the only girl I thought of marrying.”

Sadness crashes over my head, nearly knocking me over the roof. I fall onto Raphael’s shoulders and sob. When I cry, I cry violently. My sadness is a terrible storm and I’m a vessel caught in the midst of it. Disappointment threatens to tear me apart. Heartbreak weighs on me, pressing me until I can’t breathe. But like all storms, they have to end eventually. And when I’ve cried my heart out, Raphael wicks away my tears with his thumb and smiles weakly at me.

“You make it so hard not to love you.”

“I could say the same for you.” I force myself to laugh even though it hurts.

“One day, you’re going to find someone that loves you well––better than I ever can. You hear me, Hel? And when the time is right, we’re both going to do great things. We’ll get to see the world––”

“I’ve already been all around the world…” I feel tired now. I just want to close my eyes and sleep forever. “I’m on my final life, Raph.” When I tell him this, his smile drops. “I’m practically mortral, closer to being human than I ever have been in the last 800 years. Living gets boring real fast.”

“Don’t say that,” Raphael tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Don’t ’chu say that. The time we have left is a gift. You gotta find something to forward to, Hel. For me? It was the lynx clan. They were my family and they still are. Now it’s your turn.”

I nod in agreement. Raphael and I talk until the sun sinks in the horizon, giving way to night. We end up parting ways before the first star makes its appearance in the sky. I’m surprised to learn that Raphael has homework to do and that he’s also an honor student and president of the student council. My heart swells with pride.

As for me, I head back to my little cardboard box and cuddle with Todd until we fall sleep.

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