Working at the Morgue Seems Pretty Good

I think it’s a job that offers some unique perks

I think that complaining a little bit can be a positive thing. I don’t think it’s good or healthy to be a whiny ass, but a little bit of complaining can help you vent your frustrations, put things into perspective and so on. And I also think that enjoying a little down-time in your life, just relaxing once in a while, can be good too.

But if you’re talking about your job, you can often catch some crap by complaining or gloating about such things.

For instance, if you complain about how you have too much work to do, people tend to tell you that you shouldn’t complain about that; it just means that business is good. You should be happy about that! It’s good for job security, likelihood of pay raises and so on, so don’t complain! Such responses really take the fun and pleasure out of complaining.

Likewise if you gloat a tiny bit and tell someone that you’ve had a really relaxing time at the office, with very little work to do. Then they tend to say that you shouldn’t be happy about that, telling you that you’re just being lazy and that you should look for some career advancement if your current job is too easy. Again very irritating responses, taking all the fun out of being lazy.

But imagine if you work at a morgue. If you complain to your friends about how busy you’ve been, they can’t turn it around on you and say it’s good to be busy. Because if you are busy it means that there were a lot of bodies coming in, and that’s a tragedy. Very hard to put a positive spin on it.

And if you seem very happy about having nothing to do, people can’t say that you shouldn’t be happy about that. It doesn’t mean that you are lazy or un-ambitious, just that you’re glad that there aren’t a lot of people dying.

Of course, these perks apply to work in hospitals and clinics too, especially emergency rooms. It’s always good when there’s less to do there. But the morgue does offer an additional thing beyond that:

Regardless if things have been slow or not, when you end your shift and your friends ask how your day was, you can always make them really uncomfortable by replying with the joke “It was really dead.”

Of course you also have to get used to the fact that you have to deal with death every day, but every sweet deal has its downsides.

Click here to read the rest of "Working at the Morgue Seems Pretty Good"

Working at the Morgue Seems Pretty Good

I think the morgue offers jobs with some unique perks

I think that complaining a little bit can be a positive thing. I don’t think it’s good or healthy to be a whiny ass, but a little bit of complaining can help you vent your frustrations, put things into perspective and so on. And I also think that enjoying a little down-time in your life, just relaxing once in a while, can be good too.

But if you’re talking about your job, you can often catch some crap by complaining or gloating about such things.

For instance, if you complain about how you have too much work to do, people tend to tell you that you shouldn’t complain about that; it just means that business is good. You should be happy about that! It’s good for job security, likelihood of pay raises and so on, so don’t complain! Such responses really take the fun and pleasure out of complaining.

Likewise if you gloat a tiny bit and tell someone that you’ve had a really relaxing time at the office, with very little work to do. Then they tend to say that you shouldn’t be happy about that, telling you that you’re just being lazy and that you should look for some career advancement if your current job is too easy. Again very irritating responses, taking all the fun out of being lazy.

But imagine if you work at a morgue. If you complain to your friends about how busy you’ve been, they can’t turn it around on you and say it’s good to be busy. Because if you are busy it means that there were a lot of bodies coming in, and that’s a tragedy. Very hard to put a positive spin on it.

And if you seem very happy about having nothing to do, people can’t say that you shouldn’t be happy about that. It doesn’t mean that you are lazy or un-ambitious, just that you’re glad that there aren’t a lot of people dying.

Of course, these perks apply to work in hospitals and clinics too, especially emergency rooms. It’s always good when there’s less to do there. But the morgue does offer an additional thing beyond that:

Regardless if things have been slow or not, when you end your shift and your friends ask how your day was, you can always make them really uncomfortable by replying with the joke “It was really dead.”

Of course you also have to get used to the fact that you have to deal with death every day, but every sweet deal has its downsides. Click here to read the rest of "Working at the Morgue Seems Pretty Good"

Addendum to ”Totally Innocent Toys?”

A while back I did a post called Totally Innocent Toys?, where I posted some pictures of some really creepy, badly designed toys. Since then, people have sent me some more, that they think I should post in addition to the ones I had. So, here I go.

This one is in exactly the same genre as the Pikachu-vagina in the last post. It’s damned creepy and I can’t imagine why anyone would design something quite in that fashion. Unfortunately I don’t know any source for this one, since it came to me as an e-mail attachment, so tell me if you know who deserves credit for this nasty looking picture. I only know that it makes me exclaim the well-known adage “What the hell ass balls?!”

Then there are... these... They claim that they are lighthouses. I’m not so sure, but if they say so I guess I'll have to accept it. Found here.

Speaking of male reproductive organs though; here are some more cocky pictures. They aren’t toys, but they are clearly aimed at the little children. And they are also very, very wrong.

Here we have Jesus showing his manliness to devout little children. Found on Flickr.

And here is some sort of hanger, in the form of a bear showing his even greater manliness. Found on the excellent FAIL Blog.

Click here to read the rest of "Addendum to ”Totally Innocent Toys?”"

My Nomination for the Scariest Video Game Character Ever

There are many scary videogames. There are many scary characters. Some would argue that the zombie dogs, as well as various other creatures and characters, from the Resident Evil games are very scary. Some can’t sleep while thinking of that little girl in F.E.A.R., and some people similarly think that the “Little Sister” character from BioShock is someone to fear (while the heavily armored “Big Daddy” from the same game is mostly laughable). Some people fear anything in the Silent Hill games, and a dear friend of mine thinks that Mario is damn right creepy. But I think that another character from various games in the Mario franchise have them all beat.

Freaking Yoshi. That stupid little dinosaur-thing is one of the creepiest things in the world of videogames. Not because of the stupid voice or silly appearance, but simply because of its outlandish biology.

This thing can eat almost anything, and mostly eats fruits and enemies almost half the size of the whole dinosaur. And it can eat lots and lots of them, without gaining in size at all. Now, that isn’t all that strange in the world of videogames. A lot of video game characters can eat many times their weight with no apparent effects. No, what scares me is what happens to the enemies that it swallows.

In some games you can use Yoshi’s freaky tongue to pull an enemy into your mouth, and then squat down to pop out a damn egg. Somehow it seems like Yoshi’s reproductive system (Yoshi is usually said to be male; did I mention that?) is directly linked to the digestive tract, so that food can be made into eggs. And not just egg shells over the corpses of your newly digested enemies; no, as far as I understand they are actual, functional eggs. At least one game I’ve heard of (though haven’t played) lets you put the eggs in nests to make Yoshi-young from the corpses of the beasts you eat.

That is freaky, and it all goes with an amazing speed too. But Yoshi doesn’t really seem to care much about the eggs though, even though there could be its precious sons and daughters in there. No, Yoshi uses its own eggs as a freaking weapon and throws them at enemies, switches, and whatever else needs to be reached or killed.

I’ve got to go back to killing some zombies or something, in some other game. Games with Yoshi in them scare the crap out of me. That is one freaky dinosaur.

Click here to read the rest of "My Nomination for the Scariest Video Game Character Ever"

Dirty Haiku Poems

A friend and I were discussing haiku poetry. For some unknown reason she got on the subject of dirty poetry and mentioned that while dirty poetry exists in all forms it is very unusual to see any obscene haiku poems. Naturally I took that as a challenge.

So, just for the fun of it, here are some of my attempts at it. Some are meant to be funny, some are meant to be sensual and some are merely dirty. Perhaps you will grant us some dirty haiku of your own in the comments?

Be advised; some of these are obscene. You have been warned.

A hot summer night
Her warm wet folds spread and swell
His probing tongue licks

Grass under our knees
Bodies moving fervently
In the style of dogs

A white world outside
Snow and cold depresses them
They fuck to forget

Moans fill the cold night
Legs tremble and buckle in
Orgasmic delight

Firmly tied to bed
Perfect enjoyment during
Complete abandon

A warm spring breeze blows
Soft moans echo through the air
As she blows me too

Dry leaves in the yard
A couple rolling around
Having dirty sex

In the spring she gave
The sweetest proposition
“Fuck my pussy hard”

Sweat forming droplets
Bodies in heat glistening
Moving rapidly

A walk in the woods
A sudden revelation
Public sex is great

Click here to read the rest of "Dirty Haiku Poems"

I Have Found the Magical YouTube Video

This, dear ladies, gentlemen and others, is a true story. It might seem inconceivable, it might always seem irreverent in its complete departure from the natural order of things, but I assure you that it is what actually happened, even though now it all seems like a dream…

Late last night when I, as per usual, could not sleep, I was roaming around the magical world of YouTube to entertain me. I do not consider myself a part of the YouTube-generation, but I do highly enjoy the site when small injections of entertainment is required.

I was watching various viral videos, most very whimsical, some with a professional veneer, and they were titillating my senses with their variety of views of the world.

Everything was new and everything was like it has always been. The videos were entertaining, but rarely surprising, and the comments below were just as they always are, like all frequent visitors have learned and accepted that they are.

Suddenly I felt a yearning for some classical music. I made a few searches and listened to a couple of versions of some of the more accessible examples of music from days long since gone.

I came across several amateur renditions of Fur Elise, I listened and I enjoyed. Watching hands move across a piano holds strangely little fascination to me though, so while listening I mostly occupied myself with scrolling down and perusing the comments. The YouTube comments holds some sort of morbid fascination to me, so when I don’t have any reason to actually watch the video I often read them like that.

It was the usual snippets of vile bile and wildly uninteresting spam and I was once again wondering why I was even reading them. Then, suddenly, something struck me like a blow to the stomach. While reading the comments to one particular video something was extremely strange.

I rubbed my eyes. I was amazed. Awestruck. Since it was the middle of the night and I was actually starting to get tired I thought I might be dreaming. I had to stop myself and start reading again from the top just to make sure that I wasn’t mistaken.

After a while I could feel certain that I was neither dreaming nor mistaken. What I had first thought was true; there were hundreds of comments, but not an angry or hateful word. There were just… Compliments. Nice things.

The woman playing was not perfect. She was good, very good, much better than I have a chance to ever be. I am duly envious of her talent and the hard work she must have put in. But still, even I could hear some of the mistakes made. Normally any little mistake would be repeatedly pointed out in the comments in vile and insulting ways. Now people saw past trivial mistakes and somehow just complimented her for being talented overall.

I looked through all the comments. It wasn’t just that no one was pointing out the mistakes. No one was saying “Gee, get a fucking life, nerd”. No one wrote that she was fat or ugly (not that much of her could be seen, but that is rarely a problem for those who enjoy posting comments like that) nor was anyone saying that she was “fukking smexy” and that they would like to sex her up.

There was no sign of the usual “Why do you bother putting this shit up? I could do better when I was three years old!”-type of comments. There wasn’t even one person telling her to give up any aspirations of ever getting good and no one told her that the video had wasted their precious time.

My jaw was figuratively on the floor. There wasn’t even any spam!

And now, it all feels like a dream again. I can no longer find the video and though I feel certain that it did exist I can’t really grasp that it happened. It truly must have been a magical video, somehow forcing people do be nice and behave. That video should be used to resolve international conflicts, if it can make people commenting on YouTube be polite and civilized.


Seriously though. I do understand that this has probably happened before. There have probably been many times when a video have gotten at least mostly positive comments. But I think anyone who regularly reads the comments on YouTube agree that (and I do apologize for my language) “What the fuck is up with YouTube commenters” is often a very valid question to ask.

It seems like a majority of the people commenting truly do not enjoy a single video they watch but they still keep coming back, spreading their hatred in the comment-sections of video after video. Not to mention all the people claiming that videos were a waste of their time, while they still take the time to actually comment. It’s all very confusing to me.

Click here to read the rest of "I Have Found the Magical YouTube Video"

What is the Deal with Superman's Muscles?

Did DC Comics miss out on making a much more interesting superhero?
In the interest of not being very serious, I ponder the physique of the man who is considered by many to be the greatest of superheroes.
There are a lot of things one can ponder regarding Superman. Superdickery.com asks the important question “Why is Superman such a dick?” (excellent examples of superdickery here, here and here), and David Shultz wonders why Superman’s powers are growing so fast (maybe even faster than God’s are shrinking, even though Shultz’ diagram at the end doesn’t take God’s shrinking powers into account). I have a different question though.

I wasn’t really a fan of superhero comic books when I was a kid, but I did read some of them. I never really liked Superman though. He was just too strong, too fast, too good, too invulnerable; just too perfect. It felt boring.

Then I started thinking; every single time you see drawings of Superman, especially in his later incarnations, he is really bulging with muscles. He is ripped. He is the Man of Steel. He has muscles coming out the wazoo (probably). But the question is, why?

From what I know about the man of oh-so-little fashion sense, his strength comes from utilizing the energy from our yellow sun. When he is subjected to its life-giving rays he becomes super-fast, super-strong and super-able-to-disguise-himself-with-just-a-pair-of-glasses.

Because he has super strength, many feel that it is natural that he should have gigantic muscles. But is that really so? If it is anything resembling human muscles, they could never do all the things that Superman does without tearing asunder. It would just be too much strain, no matter how massive they are. So it feels like he would be using some kind of mystical (solar-powered) energy to perform his feats, not his muscles.

Besides that, again if he functions in any way resembling humans, muscle mass is usually gained through exercise, but I’d say that Superman almost never works out. Nothing he does seems taxing to him!

Just imagine what a basic set of cardio exercises would have to be for Superman. The guy can fly from on side of the world to the other in moments, arriving without being out of breath or sweaty, with no visible signs of having done any physical activity at all. Not to mention that he once flew so fast around earth that time went backwards (for no apparent reason). That has to be really, really fast, and he still didn’t look like he had gotten even a basic workout from it.

And we shouldn’t even talk about things like weightlifting. The man can lift just about anything and only shows any strain from it when it’s needed for dramatic effect. He could never pump up any good muscles without finding some steady point to stand on and weight lift the entire freaking planet.

Now I realize that everything I’ve said is contingent on him working in a human-like fashion. Maybe they explain this at some point and say that his muscles are formed by the yellow rays from our sun, and that’s why they are so huge; saying that he doesn’t have to work out to have huge muscles.

But I say, so what? That might be a reasonable explanation (within the confines of the DC universe), but it isn’t much fun. At least not to me. I think that Superman would be an infinitely more interesting Superhero if he had all his powers, but was chubby and flabby from lack of proper exercise.

Click here to read the rest of "What is the Deal with Superman's Muscles?"

Short Story - Drifters

Fiction with a bit of humor, romance, silliness, spirit possession and cats.

This picture originally inspired a totally different story about the female protagonist of this story. But as I was fleshing out her character in my mind she happened to meet a boy, and this is a piece of romance and character exposition that came from her baring herself to him.

“Well,” said Ella to her prospective beau, David, “the thing to know about me is that I am stark raving mad. That really explains a lot about me.”

David gave a short laugh at that. He had always enjoyed a girl with a sense of humor and he felt that it was a good joke, in his kind of bad taste. He also felt that there was no way that she might actually be crazy. Sure, they had known each other for less than a week, but they had spent several hours a day during that time in the same café, talking over overpriced hot beverages and getting to know each other, and he felt confident that he knew at least that much about her.

In fact, David felt that she might very well be his dream woman. She was brilliantly intelligent, very sweet and caring, and she had the most comforting smile he had ever seen. Of course, none of those qualities excluded the possibility of her being nutty as a fruit cake, and in fact he was well aware that she was a bit quirky by anyone's standard. But she seemed to be quirky in an endearing and strictly non-crazy way.

He smiled at her and took a sip of his coffee.

“Okay,” he said, "I'll bite. Tell me, why do you believe that you are mad? I'm warning you though; you'd better give me a good reason if I am to believe you. You have already more or less disproved any crazy qualities to yourself in my eyes. Crazy people would very rarely say that they are crazy; if they knew that they were having delusions they wouldn't be much of delusions, would they?"

“True enough,” she said, smiling a nervous smile, “but I still don't think I am entirely sane. You see, I talk to my cats.”

He looked at her. He sipped his coffee and made a show of thinking the statement over.

“You do, do you? Well," he said, having anticipated the traditional exchange of dialogue that would come at moments like this, "I'm guessing that I'm supposed to say that's not crazy at all; tell you that a lot of people talk to their pets. Then you're going to interject that the difference is that your cats actually respond, leaving me to figure out if you are acting crazy to be amusing, acting crazy to scare me away after finally having realized that you are too good for me, or if you actually believe that your cats speak to you.

“For my money I would guess that you are joking around. That would seem most like you, and besides, I would very much prefer it to the alternatives.”

He smiled again, a broad smile. Her smile was beautiful as ever, but it was starting to look more strained. This completely failed to deter the self-confident smile he wore secure in his belief that she was merely kidding around.

“Well, you are right and you are wrong,” she said slowly. “I mean, I was going to say that I have actual conversations with my cats. I am however not joking, nor do I want to get rid of you. It's merely a statement of fact. I talk to my cats and they answer.”

She said it in such a deadpan way that his smile actually weakened a bit. She seemed to believe what she was saying. Which was disturbing, and not disturbing in a good way as most of her little quirks seemed to be.

“It's not something that started recently,” she continued. “I've been talking to cats for most of my life. At first I was certain I was crazy; as a little girl I spent a lot of time trying to convince my mother that I was actually hearing our cat speak to me. Mom was certain that I was just trying to get out of school. It seems like she thought that I would find psychiatric sessions preferable to class.

“In reality, I was genuinely worried that I was losing my mind. Being that young and feeling that your elevator no longer goes all the way to the top floor was distressing to say the least. In time I managed to convince myself that I in fact wasn't crazy though, and I soon learned that it is better not to share my experiences with anyone. Now I keep quiet about it and most of the time I actually believe that my experiences are real. There are just a couple of things that makes me lapse back into disbelief in my own experiences at times.”

David was scratching the back of his neck, quietly assessing the situation. His smile had long since faltered and he didn't seem as sure of himself any longer.

“Oh?” he said, desperately trying to sound casually interested rather than deeply disturbed by the conversation. He failed miserably, of course, cleared his throat and tried again.

“Oh? So… What are these things that make you feel as if you might be wrong?”

She toyed with her tea mug, looking almost intolerably cute to David. He did not wish her inadvertent cute wiles to trick him into accepting anything he shouldn't accept.

“There are two things,” she said, holding up two fingers. “First of all, my cats have told me, in detail, how it is that they can speak to me. This might seem like a good thing if I am to believe that it is reality, but think about it. If I tell you 'Yes, my cats speak to me, but it's ok, they've told me how it works' it just makes me sound more crazy. Therefore I choose to take their explanations as evidence that I have in fact lost the majority of my proverbial marbles.

“Secondly, I take great comfort in being mad as a hatter. I much prefer it to the alternative.”

David couldn't help but to laugh again. He still wasn't sure if she was just taking a joke too far or if she genuinely believed what she told him, but that statement was amusing either way.

“You prefer it to the alternative? What, you prefer it to being sane?” he asked, somewhat incredulous.

“Yes,” she said in an asserting voice, “I really do. I mean, the world is obviously crazy, just look around us. Crazy wars, weird religions, reality shows, Fox News… It is all more than a little bewildering to me and it just feels better if I think that I'm deranged. Then I can imagine that if I wasn't off my rocker it would all make sense to me, or at least take some comfort in that even if the world is crazy I might be able to out-crazy at least large parts of it.”

A slight pause passed by, unnoticed by the universe at large, but very noticeable at that particular table, in that particular café. David looked at his coffee with such interest that he looked as if he was watching a movie playing in his cup.

Finally he raised his eyes and looked at her, flashing her an uncertain but disarming smile.

"Fair enough," he said, laughing softly again, "I guess you are right about that."

From there they shifted the conversation in totally other directions and had their usual good time until it was time for them to go their separate ways for the night. They agreed to meet back there the next day, as usual.

As they parted, David had almost no thoughts of the weird conversational interlude about talking cats. He was smiling as much as he always was after having been in her presence and looked strongly forward to the next day's meeting. A small voice in the back of his head tried to remind him of the exchange, but he was good at ignoring such voices and his walk had an actual skip to his step as he sauntered happily towards his home.

------------------

The next day, as he walked into the café as usual after work, he saw Ella already sitting there. Normally this would be the cause for further silly, content smiles to spread across his face, but this time the strange conversation from the day before came screaming back to him.

On her shoulder a cat sat perched, observing its surroundings with obvious disinterest.

It was a beautiful cat, a Persian Blue as far as David could tell, and it seemed quite comfortable in its position on his favorite girl's shoulder. In fact, they both seemed so relaxed with the situation that it all looked almost completely natural. David did however not feel relaxed; he felt that the foreboded too much strangeness.

As he walked towards her he tried to keep his smile steady, despite his bad feelings about it all. He couldn't help but notice that there was almost no one in the room who seemed to take much notice of the cat on her shoulder. Not even the personnel seemed to care, even though he felt convinced that pets weren't really allowed in there. As he sat down he had started to wonder if the world was indeed as crazy as Ella seemed to think that it was.

“Hi,” she said, giving him a happy smile, completely disarming his confusion and effectively dispersing the feelings of foreboding, “how are you today?”

“Oh, fine, fine, just dandy. I'm feeling good today; I'm just perfect actually, all is good… Although, I do apparantly seem to have a tendency to ramble a bit more than usual.”

She laughed a short sweet laugh.

“That's nice. Here, let me introduce you to one of my cats; Carl. Or lord Fluffypaws, as he prefers to be called nowadays. He is a bit silly.”

The cat looked up slowly and looked David straight in the eyes for a moment, then yawned slowly.

“Eh hehe… Good day, milord,” David said, and flashed Ella a bright smile, trying to reassure them both that he found nothing wrong in the situation.

“So,” he said inquiringly, “does he understand me? Or are you the cat-whisperer, the only one who can talk to them?”

“He can understand you alright,” she answered, giving lord Fluffypaws a pat on the head.

“In time he might even trust you enough to answer you.”

Her response sounded so honest and level-headed that he couldn't bear to assert his disbelief in that possibility. For the time being he decided to accept this as another endearing quirk in her personality and not let it bother him. A beautiful cat on her shoulder was after all better than many of the quirks his previous love interests had had.

“But,” she said, “actually it isn't the cat who would be answering you. I told you before that the cats have told me about how this whole thing works. Would you care to hear about it, even though it might further emphasize my marble deficiency?”

He thought about it. He felt insanely curious about the whole thing, but also a little bit scared about what he might find out about her mind. If this was a joke she was definitely taking it too far, and if it wasn't he didn't know what to think.

“Yes,” he said anyway, “please tell me the wondrous tales about your cat communications.”

He smiled and she smiled back, taking a long drink of her tea before starting to speak.

“Well,” she said, “the thing is that I can't talk to any cat. Cats are intelligent animals, but not intelligent enough to understand more than a few words at most and they lack the physical ability to form the sounds of human language. Sadly, they could never speak to us.

“No, the ones I've been speaking to are actually possessed, for lack of a better term.

“There are old souls out there. Drifters, they call themselves, because they drift almost randomly around the earth, unable to direct their movement much or affect anything physical. They have lived for centuries that way, maybe even millennia. Maybe forever; no one knows. When they drift around they are barely self-aware and they slowly forget their past.

“When they come across organic life forms however, they can share the mind of that form. They need a structured brain to give their thoughts form, to be able to think and act consciously.

“Cats' brains seem particularly well-suited to their needs. Carl tells me that it might be that cat personalities are so well in sync with the typical Drifter personality; they are lazy, self-involved, vain (which is so weird for an incorporeal being), pranksters and incredibly affectionate when it suits them. They are possibly all trying to hatch some evil plan to take over the world too, although that's mostly my own speculation.

“Either way, these spirits often possesses cats. Have you ever had the feeling that at times a cat understands every word you say, acting as if it responds to what you're telling it, but then in the next moment it acts as if it understands nothing? In such occurrences it is most likely a Drifter messing with you. They love pulling stunts like that, making us silly humans believe that cats are smarter than they are.

“They usually don't confirm their presence though. I don't know why they started talking to me. They answer very vaguely to that; they just say that I am special. I'm guessing that they were really just bored and decided to mess with my mind by making me try to figure out why I am so special. Again that's just my own speculation though.”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Really,” she continued, "sometimes I feel that all my experiences during all these years have been colored by the fact that they like to mess with my mind. Either that, or that I really am crazy. Maybe both.

“Anyway. What I was trying to say is that the cats are not talking to me. These spirits are, through some sort of telepathy. As I understand it they can, since they are not corporeal or bound to the bodies of the cats, reach out and touch a piece of their minds to mine and transfer their thoughts, as if speaking to me.”

She fell into a thoughtful silence, looking at him, seemingly pondering how he was taking the revelations so far.

“So…” David said slowly, “How come you're telling me this? I mean, you told me yesterday that you had learned to conceal this from people. I'm not trying to sound insensitive, or as if I agree with the crazy-assessment, but that does sound like it might be a good idea. I would think people in general would take this information rather badly…”

“Well, that's actually the reason why this particular kitty came with me today.” she said, giving another short laugh. “He likes you. He's actually the reason that we are talking at all.

“You don't know this, but I actually saw you the day before the day when we first spoke. Carl was out on a walk with me that day, and he told me that he had noticed that same special quality that the Drifters seem to like about my mind in yours. He told me that I should talk to you.

“I'm not good at initiating contact though, and I felt that if I started accosting you with a cat perched on my shoulder you would directly deem me a crazy cat lady and not be all that susceptible to my awkward flirting. So I came back the next day, sans cat, hoping that you would be here.

“And now… Well… Now I've fallen head over heels in love with you, to be perfectly frank, and I felt that there was no way for me to go on pretending to be sane. If you want to break of all contact with me because of my feline conversations, I felt that I'd be better off knowing that now rather than later.

“So… Do you think that you can continue seeing me?”

She flashed him an uncertain smile that disarmed whatever little rational thought that David had left in him after the words "in love with" had knocked most of it clear out of him.

He still needed a few seconds to think it over, but in the end he smiled at her, smiled at the cat and continued the conversation as if nothing weirder than usual had been said. They sat immersed in idle conversation in hours as usual, though with the addition of a feline observer, who actually didn't seem to mind the situation at all.

This went well for Ella and David from there on. Their daily dates progressed into more and more closeness and they fell deeper and deeper in love. Rarely were Ella's kitty conversations mentioned more than in passing and David felt that he could fully accept them, even if he still didn't really believe that they were real.

That May they got married, in a beautiful springtime ceremony amongst the trees. They bought a small house and moved in together, David, Ella and her five cats. David had never been happier.

Two weeks after the wedding, Ella's cats started talking to him.

Despite having been told so many times that sooner or later they would start talking to him, he never really believed it, so it all came as quite a shock for him.

Even after they started talking to him he wasn't very sure that it was actually happening. He felt as if he might as well just be making himself believe that he heard them talking to him; he felt that maybe the intense love he felt for Ella made him share her psychosis rather than admitting that she is actually crazy.

He pondered this long and well after his first serious conversation with lord Fluffypaws. He couldn't decide if he actually believed that he had been talking with the cat for an hour that afternoon; somehow it felt more reassuring to imagine that it was all in his head.

After a lot of thought and introspection he came to the conclusion that it didn't matter either way.

Either he was now living with cats possessed by roaming spirits, or he was clinically insane. He quickly came to realize that either was preferable to living without Ella in his life. So from that day on he pledged to act as if he believed it all too; if it was all a dream he had no wish to wake up.

Click here to read the rest of "Short Story - Drifters"