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duensasfarastheeyecansee · 4 months ago

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Wildcats

Along a lane on one of the city's many hills sits a row of some of the oldest houses in the city. There are plenty of churches and civic buildings scattered around that are older, but old houses have a certain feeling to them that few other buildings are able to capture. After the fire or storm everyone wants to pitch in to save the old church, the city is happy to put down the money to restore city hall, even in the worst of times. Houses though, they mostly just get lucky; sticking around like that last coating of soup in a pot.

It is often noted that houses and their owners come to resemble each other. This is the case for Mrs. Moser. Her house is still covered in faded plastic siding cracked in places and patched with various glues and cauks keeping it as waterproof as any other house on the street. A crazy patchwork of asphalt and broken concrete leads in a relatively straight path to the wooden front steps, bulging out in the places or curving where the land has shifted and resettled. Approaching the front door of old places like this can be intimidating, the windows of old houses are small and made of thick layers of glass making it seem like the house is abandoned or haunted, always seeming dark from the outside.

Yet approach it someone does, a kindly looking middle-aged woman with a bored looking teen boy in tow make their way up the street towards the house. The boy is hauling a large sack over his shoulders and the woman has a few heavy bags over each arm. They make their way along the street slowly, moss has overgrown it and grass pokes out of the cracks that make up more of the road than the asphalt. It makes for a precarious walk which is not helped by the ongoing light drizzle that has soaked the land rendering the world slick and dim.

After making their way up the crazed front walk the woman gives a solid knock at the front door of Mrs. Moser’s house. After a moment there is a faint sound of movement from within.

“Now you be polite, Mrs Moser has done a lot for our family but she’s…Very old and from a different time, so just be nice.”

The teen rolls his eyes when his aunt turns back to look at the door; she had already told him some variation of this a dozen times while they trudged up here. The noises grow louder until Mrs Moser is clearly at the door ready to open up.

*click*

After the faint noise the door opens and Mrs Moser comes into view. She's quite the sight, her white wispy hair is wild but shorter than shoulder length, cut raggedly but not thinned at the top so that it forms a kind of crazy halo framing her face, one wide strip on the left side trimmed all the way to the scalp making it look even stranger. She is stooped and wore a baggy t-shirt faded with age and with a few holes long with a pair of sweatpants. The elastic on the sweatpants failed a long time ago and a few belt loops had been stitched on with a thin leather belt run through them cinched up tight. A pair of glasses are perched askew on her slightly squashed looking nose completing the picture.

Her wide eyes take in the pair and dart around seeming to survey the outside at random before she beckons them both to come in. They step through the door into the dark house. Mrs Moser closes the door and locks it tightly and then…

*click*

The teen glances back and sees the old lady had flicked a switch next to the door. His aunt did not even glance back so the boy assumes this is normal. His aunt takes out a small lantern and turns it on to light their way. The harsh LED light cuts through the gloom of the place as they follow Mrs. Moser through the house. She moves through the gloom ahead of them without seeming to need any help from the lanturn.

*click*

As they move through the house, switches are flipped along the way. The teen shoots a few sidelong looks at his aunt but she does not look back at him instead focusing on the ground ahead. Many of the rooms that they pass through are cluttered. One is packed full of mildewing books and magazines, another is plastic tents with dirt spread all over the floor. One is just full of bunk beds. This is the only one that they pause in, both of the women taking a moment, melancholy etched into both of their faces.

*click*

They enter a final room which is clearly the kitchen. It also seems to be the bed room and living room based on the bed in the corner and table and chairs that sit centered in the window. This is one of the first rooms with a large window. The rain continues to fall steadily, casting a gloomy atmosphere over the dilapidated neighborhood. Through the water-streaked glass, the distant silhouette of the city's hills is barely discernible. The better lighting of the room reveals an enormous painted mural on the wall of a scowling cat, written under it is “don't forget to feed the wildcats!”. Unlike everything else in the house the mural is fresh, the black paint almost glistening.

Mrs. Moser pulls out some ceramic mugs and fills them with water from a pitcher she has sitting on the table and hands them out. The kind looking woman sits down at the table and her nephew followes her after a moment of hesitation. The supplies they have brought are put on the floor by the table. After the mugs are handed out Mrs Moser sits down as well and starts fiddling with an old flip lighter, “Emi” scratched into the side. She speaks after a molment prompted by a searching look from the other woman.

“ The water is clean Sam, it came out the sink just this morning, the old lines still run sometimes even now, and I even boiled it, just for you.”

Samatha looks at Mrs Moser for a moment longer before taking a ginger sip from the mug. The teen on the other hand looks at the clearly handmade mug like it is a snake.

Mrs Moser leans forward with a malicious gleam in her eye “ come on kid, not gonna drink the water, what happened to kids these days, back in my day we had some Yolo spirit.”

The teen stared back with a determined expression, his voice laced with skepticism. "Firstly, the city's water supply is barely safe enough for bathing, let alone drinking, no matter how much you try to boil it. Secondly, the city system is only connected to the central area, so I highly doubt it reaches this far out. I can't fathom how anything is coming out of your sink. And even if, by some miracle, you have a well and a functioning pump, they've drilled into our heads since childhood not to drink the groundwater here. So, no, I won't be drinking it." As he spoke, he raised three fingers, emphasizing each point in his mini-manifesto.

He shifted slightly, his defiant gaze softening,"Oh, and my name is Will, by the way."

Mrs Moser chuckles while Samatha sighs deeply “ Well, I do apologize, it was rude of me not to ask your name. Counterpoint, this is purified rainwater run through a great system. And I boiled it, so there. You gotta trust this system too cause Sam helped me build it and she drank the water. Boom” The old lady made a motion with her hands like something on the table had just exploded in a mushroom cloud. Samatha is now staring out the window with wrapped attention.

Will is a little shocked at this point, virtually every one with even a little gray in their hair that he had ever met were serious to the point of dourness. Getting a smile of optimism out of that group was famously difficult.

Will drank a little of the water at that point, nothing tasted off in it. Mrs. Moser grinned widely as Samantha made herself busy packing away the various groceries they had brought up. Will asks Mrs. Moser “Why don’t you come down to the center and choose out your own groceries, they give’em out for free and most people are happy to help carry them?” Mrs Moser looks back at Will with the same grin she has been sporting since he accepted she could provide safe water.

“The food these days is free, and you're welcome for that by the way, you carry this up here for me because I gave you this food.” She looks over at Samatha who has paused in putting away the groceries and is not making eye contact. “Come on Samantha, no need to be embarrassed, haven't you told the boy about the grand adventures.”

“Eva, let's not talk about that right now.” Samantha quietly says.

Will looks back and forth between the two of them. “Mrs. Moser, were you involved in the protests back in the 30s, is that what your talking about? My aunt is a bit too young to have been involved in that.”

Eva Moser stood up, her eyes blazing, “Protests?! The Wildcats were not in the protests, we made a difference in this city, what are you taught in school these days?”

Now Will was on the back foot but he tried to answer honestly, “Uhh, there was not enough food and people protested so they give everyone a set amount of free food per month now.”

Eva cut him off before he could say anything else. “ Nonsense, oh there were some protests when people couldn’t afford food in the stores anymore.” Eva was shouting now, “ the food came into the port here and where did it go? out west to feed the ‘more important’ cities. We watched our friends starve. So what did we do.” Eva gestures to the bold, fresh mural on the wall. “Us Wildcats took the food for ourselves, we cut the rail lines, we bombed bridges, we put down those bastards who thought they could starve us. Well, NEVER FORGET TO FEED THE WILDCATS.” Eva was panting at the end of this monologue. Samatha has straightened up and is glaring daggers at Eva now.

“ Will, dear, could you go tidy up around the house for Mrs. Moser?” Samantha says. Will nods and excuses himself from the room. Even outside in the unlit house the conversation is more than loud enough to hear.

“ why have you not told him about this, he would be an excellent Wildcat, he has spark.”

“ Because that all was a long time ago; Eva you are too old for this, you need to move down to the center with us, they wont remember you down there if you can just keep quiet.”

There was a moment of silence and when Eva answered Will had to strain to hear from his seat in the dark room full of empty bunk beds.

“I can’t leave yet, not yet.”

“Eva, she isn’t coming back. Emily is never coming back. None of them are coming back,”

“No, Sam, there was no record of arrest, no one hung in the square, they caved to our demands: we got the food.”

“Eva, she is gone, my parents are gone, all of the Wildcats are gone, you know they’re dead. The bastards down hill just left you alone so that us kids didnt end up wards of the state, they left us alone because it was too much of a hassle to pry you out of this damn house. Its been over 40 years, Eva. Emily is not coming back. ”

“You don’t know that, I am still alive here, and if I’m still here, still able to look after you kids while they are out there getting the food. Well then. they werent much older than me, maybe one day someone will show up back at this door,” Eva’s voice cracks “ Emily told me she would be back, and I will always trust her, forever just like we promised.”

There is a longer period of silence during which Will studied the bunk bed he was sitting in. Someone had carved a few doodles in the wood, mostly some hearts and a few anarchy symbols.

Finally Samantha spoke up, “You’re nobody’s den-mother anymore, Eva, it’s over. My parents died in your madness and I have decided to agree with the others. I’m not coming back here again.”

“ No! Sam, it's not safe out there, this house is safe. No one ever disappeared from the house, talk to the other kids and have them come back here. I’ll take care of you as long as it takes for them to come back.”

“ Will is gonna come around once a month and drop off the food now that he knows the way. Goodbye Eva.” Samantha states in a firm, but brittle, tone.

Will stands up as Samantha comes into the bunk room with Eva following her.

*click*

He follows his aunt out of the house with Eva following along behind them.

*click*

As they get to the threshold, they turned and face Mrs Moser who stands in the door framed by the darkness of the house, the fire that had seemed to fill her in the kitchen having guttered out as her frightened eyes dart around the front stoop, searching for imagined danger.

Will could not refrain from asking one last question. “Mrs. Moser, why even bother flipping the switches in the rooms? The power is out, has been out.”

Eva looks back with a small smile “ Of course, they don’t work, but you have to stay in practice. You never know when they might come back on.”

#original fiction

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