On Furry Love

Big blue eyes, milky-wet whiskers and a plump, warm belly.

The kitten shaky-walked a few steps and tumbled down into place on the linoleum floor, its head swaying lightly from side to side. Its tiny and delicate gaze rose up as far as it could and a frail, almost inaudible cry escaped its minuscule mouth.

Kneeling down, Doug gently put out his large, rough, manly hand for the small kitten. The tiny creature's face angled toward the man's thick fingers and its pink, wet nose touched it a few times. Lacking stability, the cat stumbled forward and regained its balance, but it began to sway again, this time like a drunk man.

A deep, hearty laugh rumbled from the chest of the large, though not obese man. The kitten did not notice, for it was now ambling along the kitchen, almost falling into the milk saucer, just to be scooped up last-minute by the large crane-hand of the man.

The poor little cat, feeling defenseless and startled by the sudden move, began crying once again, but louder and at a faster pace.

"Shh!", urged Doug. "Emily will hear you! We can't let her hear you, can we? It would ruin the surprise!"

He delicately held the kitten to his firm chest, talking to it in hushed tones. Doug began humming, which seemed to calm the small thing down and made it stop crying.

Doug hummed as he covered the short distance from the kitchen to Emily's room, passing through what was, for him, a rather cramped hall. He couldn't help stopping in mid-hall and staring wistfully at his wedding photograph. They had been so happy together. Why had she left? He could not find the reason. Well, at least he had Emily, and she was all he needed. That playful brown-haired princess was Doug's life; he would protect her to the end of his days...And even beyond.

The big man peeked curiously into his daughter's room. She slept so soundly; it gave him a tender feeling and a resolute tranquility.

The kitten had already fallen asleep in his arms. Doug took it back to the kitchen and placed it in a basket filled with clean rags.

"I'll have a load with you two," he murmured contentedly, crossing his arms over his chest. Despite all he had gone through, it seemed as if Doug had enough love in his heart for the whole world.

Janice

What is it that made her look out the window on such a gray day? She felt suddenly inspired by the lack of sun, an inspiration that brought on depression and discouragement and the lack of something to live for on that particular day.

The house was quiet and the wooden floor cold; time did seem to go on beyond the rain-soaked windowpanes where her life stopped and stared out sullenly, hoping for a change of mind from the uppermen.

She didn't have anywhere to go but she walked because she couldn't do more. All the books had been read and the pages had been written in. Her room was not the same shade of blue.

After all this time perhaps her mother had been right about it all. Had she not relied so much on a disposable boy she would not be trapped like a rat. She had made him into a Buddha, a marble statue of a man and idolized both his blessings and his wrongs like a bat, blind and senseless. In the end, she could have been giving love to a stranger. It wasn't until he cut the cords of the cardboard cloud that were holding her up that she realized the scum he was.

Now she could spit on his pictures and silently sob, though the name and voice that went along with it still played in the back of her head like a broken record.

If only she had known this would happen, she would have never left her friends on the side like the stale complementary bread on restaurants (the one you never take), or the garnishing lettuce that was only there for looks (genetically modified for your aesthetic convenience) but was never eaten (were her friends there just to be later thrown away? what a cruel fate, my lettucy girls!).

The worst part, she thought as she swallowed a whole 10 pills, was not that she had lost all contact with the outside world, that she had become a 97-pound wilting little figurette, that she felt she could no longer trust anyone and that her heart had been broken to no end and left unable to love again...The worst thing was that she would never, ever be able to enjoy a rainy day again as she used to when she was a lively, love-filled, hopeful girl.

My name is Billy...

My name was never Eric. That was merely a mask, a name given to me at birth, presumably because my parents had no chance of knowing I was not an Eric, and I would never be an Eric.

As I grew up I toyed around with figments of my imagination, made-up personalities (or "imaginary friends", as some people would classify them) which helped me cope with the lack of friends, which was due to my introverted personality. I would often write stories and draw pictures of these personalities; I needed something to remind myself that they were there, and subconsciously I needed something to run to when all the fun and games of childhood turned into pre-teen fears and anxiety, and later teenage problems...You must know the drill.

All of these "games" I took to as a child ended abruptly one day when my brother's friends decided to raid my room for a cheap thrill and found all of my creations. I came home from the dentist to find a herd of coca-cola-fueled 13-year old boys laughing on the floor of my room and calling me a "schizo" (how did they even manage to know what that is?), a "loony", all sorts of names on account of my creations. I guess they could never understand the mind of an artist as myself.

The worst thing is I never got any support from my parents, not one sentence or comment which could reassure me and keep up my hopes, not one hug to make the pain welling up in my 8-year old body go away. I never really understood how these humans I was forced to live with functioned, and, up to day, I still haven't figured it out.

However, I refused to give up and conform with the normal child activities of the time; I was never going to be a part of the whole Power Ranger cult, or subdue to the over-obsessive purchase of violent and steroidic-looking action figures, I would never be a normal kid. This is why I dug under my bed until I found what was left of my made-up people and rummaged through what little art I had left. That is when I found Billy Buttonhead. I remember he had been one of my favourite creations, along with Chamomile Sue (who had the power to shoot boiling hot chamomile tea from her tongue).

Billy was not particularly good-looking (as an 8-year old, I wasn't exactly what you could call a revolutionary artist), but he was kind and caring, and he kept mostly to himself, like me. He was not a trend-setter, nor was he a follower of trends; Billy was his own person, someone who did not define others and was, in turn, not defined by anyone else. Years later, I came to realize that I had modeled Billy to what I was, or actually hoped to become, not what my parents had tried to make of me (as they had, numerous times, tried to "help" me become a sociable person by sending me to summer camps and register me for sports, clubs and after-school activities).

Nobody knew about Billy, of course. I kept him as my inside self, the artist, the brain in the head, the soul in the body. This was not to say I didn't have friends at all; I did keep a few friends close and was nice to people in general, but no one has found about my secret...Yet.

Billy is what makes me write, what makes me want to live life, because Eric isn't the one who takes in all the colours, smells and tastes that life sends my way, it's Billy who takes in everything and throws it into poems, stories and, sometimes, drawings.

I could not live without Billy, I could not be who I am, because I am not Eric. I was not born to be a soccer player, a camper, an Eric; I was born to be a writer, I was born to be a Buttonhead Billy.