When I was in high school, I found an abandoned little black kitten. It was weak and shaky, so I brought it in and tried to nurse it with a toy bottle filled with warmed evaporated milk and water. It took the bottle, and several more over the day. But it was sickly, and seemed t have a cold. It slept with me, so I could keep it warm. It started to grow, in size and strength but it’s cold didn’t get better. At one point, it started sneezing blood. This was a bad sign, That night, I went to bed, positioning myself on my back with it curled in the crook of my arm. Every few seconds, it would sneeze and spray a little blood on my arm. (no big deal) I drifted off to sleep like that, until about 3.45 in the morning. I know the time because I could see my alarm clock. I was wide awake, and scared because I _knew_ there was something there in the room with us, something I could not see. I looked all around the room, until I found what was wrong. Up in one of the corners of the room was an area of blackness, It was darker than anything I’d seen before, and it was shifting, like a tiny roiling little storm cloud. When I saw it, I was frozen with terror. It was the antithesis or light/life/ and me. I don’t know how long I was locked up like that, with the kitten sneezing onto the dried and drying spatters of blood on my arm. But it must not have been too long, because the thing flew at me. It grew as it came, faster than anything I’d ever seen, It grew, and it was bigger than my room, then bigger than my house, then my town, state, country, and there I lost track, because as massive as it was, it was still in my room, and falling toward me, I hugged the kitten in tighter, and put my other arm out at it, and said something like “GGGgnnnNNNaaaaagggg! It landed on me, blacked out the world, and then it was gone, passing though us. When it was gone, the light in the room went back to normal. I didn’t get out of bed, because I knew that whatever had happened,m it had stopped happening.
So, I pet the kitten, listened to their grasps for breath, and went back to sleep. The next time I woke, it was morning. I went to school, and my mother took the kitten to the vet. After school,the kitten had been put down. the vet said they’d never seen a case that bad with a living animal. It’s lungs had been almost completely consumed by cancer or something, but the thing that sticks with me it that the vet was excited about it because it could not have been alive at that point, with lungs so badly deteriated.
Personally, I think my being there somehow interfered with the smaller death, come for the kitten. I got in its way, and it couldn’t take us both. Or maybe it was a dream? It’s possible, but no. It was absolutely not a dream.