Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24881886-20140501211340/@comment-24550863-20140505121247

The old crone on a sitting bench.

In the summer, I always left the city for my vacation time. According to my employee contract, I only get 2-week long holidays; this was definitely a good chance to escape from the city. The Canyon Lake, where I rented my country house, all in all seemed like a good place. There, away from the city, from all the bustle surrounding it, from its frantic pace of life, from signs of civilization, having a gift of placidity, serenity, and absence of my boss, I could finally rest peacefully for some time.

This time I decided to leave immediately after the weekend and not lose a single day. Since I was in a hurry, I made no preliminary preparations this time. Hell, I didn't even my charge my mobile phone  --(I think this is what you meant)--, I just had no time for it. All I did was pack my clothes, get my money, then leave, that's it. When I arrived, I finally felt free. Only for 2 weeks, yes, but still I was totally free! Oh God, you should visit this place to understand this wonderful experience. Spacious and tide houses with magnificent viewpoint. The riverhood, the forest, the wildlife... The place was pretty nice for many kinds of activities, be it a romantic getaway, sightseeing, floating down the river, family outings, and whatever you could think of. Personally, I used it as a good resort place for a lonely retreat as I was not much of an active person.

3 days passed peacefully for me, I was happy not to be troubled by my boss swearing at me, his calls to my home which always woke me up and demanded me to get back and perform overtime off-duty work, and by any other shit this moron always found some way to come up with. Next to me, there was a restricted land section belonging to an old woman. I didn't know anything about her other than her mental illness. She had some kind of mental disorder or something like this, but I never saw her going insane (at least not in front of people). She sat on a bench right behind the front gates and spoke quietly, swallowing her words. --( I felt this was better, you can change it back if you want) -- I was unable to hear what she was saying.

The weirdest part was her tendency of patting the air in a very odd manner as if she had an invisible pet on her knees, perhaps she had a screw lose in her head. Maybe she even had a pet at some point, but it died so this tendency of hers had became a remnant habit rather than another sign of some mental illness. If you read Bulgakov's 'Master and Margarita', you must remember the trick which made Yeshua know that Pilate had a dog in the past just by looking at his pat-like actions during headaches. But whatever. She was diagonised mentally ill, yet she still seemed pretty calm (from what I saw at this moment), and I didn't really feel like interrupting her privacy, trying to talk her about it, or trying to figure it out any other way. I wasn't scared of her weirdness. I just didn't care about it. Besides, why the hell would I even consider wasting my time on some crazy weirdo crone and her subconscious?!

One late night, I was sleeping. It was the 4th day of my vacation. I woke up with a strange feeling. I felt something woolly lying beneath my hand. Well, being half-asleep, I thought that it was just my cat. Maybe I had forgotten to close a window? I started to pat it with closed eyes. I was unwilling to open them because I was tired. However, a few seconds later, I was almost hit by a shocking discovery. I have neither a cat, nor a dog! Maybe it's a neighbors' cat who had got into my house after I had forgotten to close a window? I turned my head, opened my eyes, and looked at the window. Is it necessary to mention that it had been shut firmly? Too afraid to turn my eyes onto it, I started to think quickly. 'What the heck should I even do?' I asked myself. My inner voice (you could probably call it 6th sense or intuition) warned me not to look at this cat under any circumstances. I was feeling primordial fear for some reason. I don't know why, but this encounter with this unknown aggressive cat almost made me, a grown-up man, pee my pants. It was something I could only deduce as anticipation and bad premonition. I had no idea how long it lasted. Maybe only 2 minutes, maybe 20. I was so fucking scared that I lost track of time. At last, I figured out a solution. I was going to jerk my hand away, snatch my blanket, and then attempt to cover and imprison it with my hands while screaming as loud as I can until help arrives.

But as soon as I made a move, this thing jumped out from my bed and rushed to the bedroom's entrance door. I only managed to make out its unclear silhouette. Something odd, something  was totally wrong with the 'cat's' moves. No idea what, but something was definitely qrong. I jumped up, put on my sneakers and steered towards the door. When I made it into the hall room, there was no one there. Where the hell did this cat go? I made a quick glimpse into the window. Fuck. So many years passed, but i still regret making this decision. I saw HER! That goddamn crone! That witch was outside! Standing behind the window, with her frizzy gray hair dancing madly with all this wind outside, aiming her madness-filled glare at me! Her huge black eyes were so frightening! I'm not sure what had made me more scared. This cat or her eyes. I never saw her like that these 3 days. I made a giant back leap from the window, and she started to run back to her land area. I was unable to get back to sleep for hours but I managed to somehow sleep. Of course I slept badly! This must not come out as a big surprise after what I've just experienced!

The next morning, I woke up pretty late. My wristwatch showed 1:16 PM. Because I hadn't bothered to bring anything with me (except clothes and money), the fridge was empty. I went to the shop to buy some bottled water and crossed the fence surrounding the witch's land. She was sitting there on her bench as usual. Her hair was combed, and she was still talking to her imaginary cat silently, no any sign of yesterday's nightly events whatsoever. I almost decided that it had just been a bad dream after all, but her clear as today's sunny sky words reached my ears as I approached her.

She asked, 'What's wrong with you these days? Always attempting to escape, but why? I didn't play with you enough, and you got bored? Is that it? Look what you've done! You almost scared this poor guy to death!'

That was the last straw! I could'nt even feel fear, all I felt was resentment. Nothing more than simple pure anger. This goddamn witch had an invisible cat! A ghost-like cat capable of penetrating solid walls? Oh man! This was so ridiculous, I couldn't even fear it. I barely held myself together and  managed to avoid swearing at her right in front of my fellow co-renters. I'm done here! I'm moving out of this place! Fuck the money I wasted to rent this place! I'm outta here! I'll never come back anymore! I'll rent another condo somewhere else next year! Good riddance, people! Good riddance, damned witch! Good riddance, you stupid cat! It was nice to meet you all, now fuck off and don't disturb my once-peaceful life anymore! And so I left the place.

Later, I started to search about this grandma on the Internet. Googling didn't return many results. All I could find out was an old case which barely made it to newspapers headlines. No one cares about some auntie sent to a psychiatric asylum in a hospital ward by court's order at some remote resort place. There were presidential elections underway. Unfortunately, I couldn't read her story; it was removed from news websites for being outdated. All I had was some Google-cached headlines and no text fragments. Great.

We all like to break promises at some point, don't we? I didn't have much money, the resort place I was at last year was the cheapest one in terms of price, etc., etc. Needless to say, I returned to the same place again. After meeting the locals, I learned that the crone passed away just before my arrival. I should never say this as a devout Catholic, but for some reason I felt great relief, though it's a sin to feel positive about another human being's death. But I just couldn't do anything about it, this feeling was beyond my control, so I hurriedly shoved the thought out of mind. 10 days passed happily and surprisingly smoothly. I was glad that I had nothing to worry about during this visit.

On the 11th day, I made friends with an indigenous guy whose name was Olaf. We had pretty much everything in common, kindred spirits as you would usually call it. A day later, we were sitting on our chairs in some tavern and enjoying good beer while chatting about different stuff. Our conversation was going well, and i decided that the dude was OK to share my experience with. He wouldn't tell me that I needed to visit a psychiatrist specialist at least, that's for sure. Olaf didn't believe me of course although, to my amazement, he didn't say that I was crazy. He told me that a lot of kinda odd stories surrounded this crone, and all local people felt the same relief when they knew she died. She had a bad reputation here.

I asked why. He told me everything. 30 years ago this woman was accused with 1st degree murder. She did in--(killed)-- her own husband. She was acquitted of felony, but the judge forced her to a therapy course at a psychiatric hospital. It took her 16 years to suppress her animalistic instinct, but she was never really able to fully cure. For 14 years, she was safe and totally fine, excluding this little 'talking-to-her-invisible-cat' behavior. I grilled--(in this case, it means ask)-- him further about this homicide case. And things started to become painfully clear to me little by little this moment. I remembered exactly what was weird about the cat's movement. It was'nt running like a normal cat. It was rolling like something round. Like a soccer ball. What has it got to do with the murder of her own husband? What's the connection? When I heard about its Modus Operandi, I fell off the chair. I quickly stood up, apologized to the guy, and said that I had to leave now because I remembered some unfinished business I had forgotton about. The dude was surprised but he thankfully didn't start to inquire and just said 'good bye' to me.

I steered towards the house thinking about this on my way. I decided to leave this place forever. This time I will do it for sure. I won't break my promise this time. I started packing my clothes together. Once I'm done with it, I'll head to the airport to leave this place once and for all immediately. Why? Because it wasn't an invisible cat. It wasn't any pet at all. As Olaf said, neighbors called the police after they heard screams inside her house. When police arrived, they found her husband's decapitated body in her bathroom. Covered by blood, the crone herself was sitting on her bed. Her husband's head was held on her knees by her hands. She was simultaneously patting it like a cat, whispering to it silently, swallowing words, and making her speech indistinguishable…