Trying to spice up the opening chapter by jumping forward with a teaser from a key plot point. First draft, first post, keen to hear any and all of your thoughts! Genre would be 'internet satire'
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The dead cat is surprisingly heavy. Even entombed in Will’s backpack, one of those fancy new ergonomic ones that
absorbs weight and neutralises strain, the cat, covered in glad wrap and with blood slowly leaking from its ears, feels like it’s being pulled downwards by some unspoken force. Perhaps the earth senses death and is dragging it back home, Will thinks.
He hadn’t meant for it to die. He didn't want to kill it. But they say sometimes you don’t know your own strength, and that’s a fact. It’s also a fact that cats don’t have robust windpipes, and while it may not yet be as famous an idiom, it still could have been useful information for Will when he found himself in his ex’s house with his fingers wrapped tight around her tabby’s throat.
But that’s in the past now, so no use wallowing. He did what he did and now it’s done. What's important is getting back to his house before the sun rises, and beating the morning light. Only darkness will hide his face as he walks along the empty pre-dawn Bondi streets. Only darkness will provide him cover when he takes the cat from his bag and hurls it out over the cliff behind his backyard and into the yawning ocean below. Only darkness will absolve him of his sins.
Will quickens his pace as he walks up the final, rolling hill towards home. He holds his thumbs under the straps for support, like a five year old on his first day of kindergarten, and the cat thuds against his back with each step. The rows of sandstone apartments along his street lie silent for now, but he knows that soon their residents will begin to stir. A lone seagull squawks overhead. Is it late to bed, or early to rise? He moves faster again. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Up ahead, to the east, he sees a long slither of purple begin to crack through the black sky. He’d reach for his phone to check the time, but his hands are already busy supporting the weight of the bag. It must be close to 5:30am, he guesses. Quart to six at the latest. At this time of year the sun will be up in half an hour.
He remembers a dream he had last night - or was it the night before, now? It's the one where there's a little baby, not six months old, chubby and dressed in an old-time naval costume, like you'd see in the history books. It's lying on a table and all around it people are attaching helium balloons to it, dozens of them one after another, red, blue, yellow, green, purple, every colour imaginable, and as they do the baby begins to float, and rise into the air. As it takes off the crowd stands back, and people are taking photos with their smart phones, snap snap snap, and the lense shutters are so loud and constant they sound like clapping. The baby rises up and up, almost out of sight, off with the nor easter, but even from a distance Will can make out its milky white skin, its bloated cheeks, and the big smile on its face.
Baby goes up, cat goes down. What a world.
The stealthy whoosh of a passing peloton snaps Will from his reverie. Gotta focus, he thinks. Gotta get this shit done. He stops, takes a deep breath of the sweet salty air, and begins to run the final hundred metres.This is going to be tight.
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