Page 7 of Sinners Retreat

Gary approaches me with a smile. If he knew what I’d originally planned for him this weekend, the grin would melt from his face.

Then again, maybe I can still take care of him after all.

“Hey, man,” I say as I slap my arm over his shoulder. “How would you like to take a trip this weekend?”

Chapter Three

Kindra

The black cat stares into my soul as it squats in the litter box and proceeds to shit, its spindly tail flicking back and forth. Its ears lie back against its head, and its eyes stare into the distance. Whatever is coming out of its ass end seems to require more concentration than a calculus equation, because that creature is fucking focused.

“What possessed you to put the litter box in your living room?” I ask over the sound of kitty claws raking grit over a turd the size of a Snickers bar.

Cat—the person, not the animal that is now climbing out of the blue plastic box—shrugs. “I used to have two cats. The other would piss all over the furniture, so I put a box in every room thinking it would help. It didn’t, so I had to get rid of him.”

I blink up at her. “You mean . . .”

“What? No! I would never hurt an animal. He lives with a nice elderly lady now. Her house already smelled like cat piss, so I figured he’d be right at home. What kind of sick fuck do you think I am?”

“There’s no reason to take offense. I only ask because you want to be a serial killer, and sometimes they use animals for...practice.”

Her eyes go wide. “I’m well aware, but I love animals. People, not so much.”

I agree with her sentiments wholeheartedly, but I don’t say as much. I don’t want to give her the wrong idea. This current arrangement isn’t a friendship, as much as she seems to think it is. Allowing her to believe we have things in common will only bolster her belief that we should be pals.

As she retreats to the kitchen, I glance around her sparsely decorated living room. My eyes land on some mail sitting on the unbalanced coffee table in front of me.

“Your real name is Caterina?”

“Did you think my parents would actually name me Cat?” she calls from the kitchen.

Fair.

Picture frames line a small coffee table, and from the center, a creepy family photo stares back at me. Cat, her mother, and her father sit on a family couch with furry felines crawling all over them. There have to be at least five cats in the picture. It’s mayhem.

“I thought maybe the feline fascination was genetic,” I say as I study the photo of them in horrid nineties garb. Even the cats had little headbands.

No wonder she’s a bit . . . eccentric.

My foot knocks into a box. She’s lived in this city for six months, but moving boxes still clutter most of the living room. When I agreed to come over this evening, I didn’t expect to sit within a cardboard fort. Maybe I should just move the conversation along so I can get the hell out of here.

“You booked our flights and paid for the retreat, correct?” I ask as she fiddles with something in the kitchen. Glass clinks together, and something spills.

“Yes, everything has been taken care of. How do you take your coffee?”

I look back at the litter box and recall that she has one in every room of the house. “I’m not very thirsty right now. Besides, it’s almost midnight. I’ll never sleep if I have caffeine this late.”

Cat enters the living room and plunks down beside me on the couch.

I motion toward a stack of U-Haul-emblazoned cardboard. “You planning to move again soon?”

“No. I thought I might have to, but I got a job today. Now I won’t have to give up my apartment and head back to Portland. Isn’t that great?”

To think I was so close to ridding myself of the little tick...

“Yes, wonderful,” I say.

“Don’t you want to know where I’ll be working?”

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