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enjoy this Kyle Hemmings writing in the free Down in the Dirt Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Cat People				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Cat People

Red Beryl

Kyle Hemmings

    I’m standing before the smoking mirror watching Kat slap each side of her head. In her magical cat’s eye thinking, she believes this is a crude way to dislodge the tumor discovered by the uptown doctors with stone eyes who tend towards BIG. The tumor was a red beryl lodged near the pineal gland. Kat was told she needed surgery and it probably wouldn’t work. The little men with stone eyes should be here any minute to take her away.

    “Doesn’t love have anything to do with it?” says Kat, her words skipping over each other. “I mean, it’s my body, my future. It’s not a gift from some crystalloid god whose eyes always get dry at sacrifices.”

    “It’s by order of the King of East Village Flats and sub-lets. You know you’re a danger to yourself and others. You keep seeing light where there isn’t. You see light in the cracks. It’s giving you convulsions and some grandiose delusion of stars that you talk about in your sleep. It’s the gemstone in your brain and it’s making you blind to what lies under or between things.”

    “Darkness, darkness, that’s all they know! I haven’t killed anything. I don’t destroy painted dogs, not even a swoosh over cockroaches. Those doctors will use me for research. They’ll sell my tumor on E-bay. Oh, honey how long will you wait?”

    “Until you come home, Kat. Until your eyes are a darker shade of hazel.”

    “When they get done with me, Pixie-Bob, I’ll be one of the insect people, building dirt pyramids from the inside for life.”

    A knock at the door. I embrace Kat and stroke her hair. I whisper in her ear, they can’t take away what is you. I won’t let them.”

    She looks at me bleary-eyed and wilted lip.

    “When I come back, I might not know you, baby.”

    The little uptown men with stones in their eyes, place a hand on Kat’s shoulders. She fights, lurches forward, like some exotic bird too soft and outraged for its own good. I grab Kat, pull her head against my chest. She’s making all kinds of strange animal sounds, coos and vow wows, drool from her lips, then starts to convulse. Her eyes in and out of reckoning. It’s frightening me. One of the uptown men calls for a stretcher. “Kat,” I whisper, “cough into my hand. “ She obeys. For a moment, her eyes turn colorless, then, a darker shade of hazel. She has become conscious again. I kiss her on the cheek and tell her It’s going to be alright. I wave as Kat watches me from the back of the ambulance. I look down at my fist and unfold it. There in the palm is Kat’s gem. I’m beginning to see stars.

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