By Mark Hough

“Daddy, please take care of Snowbell while mommy and I go out,” pleaded little Betty as she fingered her Dora the Explorer necklace and adjusted her purple Dora pocketbook; as she and Emily stood by the door ready to go. “I know Snowbell is very bad sometimes, but I love her.” Betty

“Don’t worry sweetie, she’s in good hands,” replied Wilbur, anxious for the pair to leave so that he could enjoy the rare solitude of the couch and fireplace and his dog.

After the last good-byes, Wilbur eased into the much-sat-on couch staring at the fireplace, enrapt with the flames as they chewed into the embered chopped-wood like millions and millions of tropical fire ants, devilish flames licking and spitting up and out from the red and orange ants, hisses and pops filling the living room.  Wilbur liked to stare at the fire, making him think of what the cavemen must have felt as they too stared into the heat and drama of the fire. A mesmerizing ballet of color and smoke, the demons of saber-toothed tigers kept at bay at the cave’s entrance.

Buck lay, curled, tight as a tuba, between Wilbur and the fire, his saber-toothed blond coat mopping up the heat and the color from the fire, his feathered tail tucked around his nose – tufts of hair puffing up with every dog sleep-breath, his silken ears beckoning a child’s caress or kiss. Here were two friends sitting, lying contentedly; two in peace – unlike most of the rest of the world, Wilbur and Buck had achieved contentedness at this moment. Wilbur had poured himself a glass of his cherished, well-hidden from friends, very old single malt scotch, neat with just a splash of water. He placed it on his grandmother’s survived-since-the-Civil-War-and-intricately-carved-by-his-great-grandfather side table delicately situated next to the couch. He took an earthen sip and slurped the savory-mossy- singed amber quaff, sweetly settling over his tongue.

Emily and Betty had gone out only moments before for a movie at the 16 or 32 or more screen multiplex and then a special dinner at Applebee’s or Olive Garden or Carrabbas or TGIFs. Wilbur couldn’t remember which. “Wilbur you never listen to what I tell you,” complained Emily frequently.  They had gone to a movie about an animated mouse Wilbur thought or, perhaps, a strange robot with big eyes or a penguin. Betty loved Penguins, she girl-squealed with delight when she opened a Penguin gift from Daddy, aka Santa, last year.

Wilbur and Buck were left at home to keep the fire ants fed and to stare into the primordial blaze’s depths like their predecessors of millennia past. Wilbur reached down to move his private package to a more comfortable position since it could not itself. Wilbur thought of his penis. He had not seen much of it lately. He knew it was there, he used it to pee, frequently, but his belly prevented him actually looking at it. It was left to sit flaccid like Buck asleep on the couch. Wilbur thought how the New York City subway map made Manhattan look like a flaccid penis with Brooklyn as an obvious scrotum and Battery Park as the tip where the pee came out.

Then Wilbur’s mind drifted back through time to college, before Emily and Betty, before Buck, before his follicles retired and his belly expanded, before the jowls, before Colgate Palmolive and its ugly office tower, before commuting and trains and before all things married and back to his beloved Suzy, Sooozy, as he would gutturally moan like a caveman.

Suzy’s sandy blond hair would wisp around her pouty oval face touching on the occasional freckle or pimple, sometimes sticking for a moment on her full lips before she brushed it away with a nod of her head and a pass of her hand. Wilbur always wanted to kiss those lips, those beckoning advertising, aching-to-be-kissed lips. He wanted to kiss all of Suzy: the tight and cantaloupe ovule breasts, always ready to leap from her chest; her athletic, firm, dancer-legs that Wilbur wanted wrapped all around him, her butt which also rounded its confident self out into the world; but most of all, her doe brown and jealous green eyes that undressed you very slowly.

Suzy was not tall, she only came up to Wilbur’s chin, but, bound within every cubic inch of her body, every molecule, every quark, was a sea of sex and sensuality. You could not look at Suzy, or smell her smoky hair without starting a smoldering fire below. Sometimes Wilbur would spot Suzy across the quad and realize that, even at ten or twenty yards away, his erection machine was taking over. She seemed always to be in practice dance clothes, bags of old torn tee shirts and oversized jock socks, which only accentuated her curvaceous geography.

Oddly, it was Suzy who first approached Wilbur as he sat waiting for a volleyball game to begin in the quad. Before he knew what was happening, Suzy was sitting dangerously electric-close to him. She pulled her sweet, corn golden-knees, showing just below her tights, up under a pouting chin. Wilbur was frozen with erotic fear, unable to move a muscle, as if a spider had stuck him with paralyzing venom.

“I want to play volleyball,” announced Suzy to no one in particular, but certainly to Wilbur, since, he now realized, there was no one else nearby. She had chosen Wilbur.

Wilbur realized his mother would be alarmed that he had not introduced himself properly yet. “Hi, my name is W-ilbur,” he stuttered as he stuck out his sweating palm.

“I know, I’ve had my eye on you, Wilbur,” she said without taking his hand. She pursed her kiss-less lips on her bare knees and gathered her legs tighter. Wilbur could see small goose bumps rise on her ecru calves laughing at the breeze; and bits of leg hair returning from their last shave – a shave that Wilbur could only erotically imagine: the steam from the shower caressing her every curve; the pink girl-razor sledding its way up as she’d pull her leg up to reveal only what he could imagine.

Wilbur could feel the sweat move from his hand through to his forehead. His heart began to race and his loins grew anxious and bold. His penis awoke from its nap on the couch.

Even in front of the fireplace these so many years later Wilbur could feel the excitement from the center of his lap. And since this was just now a memory, Wilbur could skip the flirting and chit chat, which he didn’t remember anyway. With a woman like Suzy you didn’t focus on dialogue.

Wilbur returned to his memory when his younger, fully-follicled self and Suzy were soon rolling on the grass, mouth to mouth, pressing their faces into each other, tongues searching out and exploring teeth and gums, hands frantic in search of something to grasp. Then Suzy would pull back and bite his lip or ear and he would grab her neck with the front of his teeth like a rabbit. Their warm breath twisting together around their necks in a swirling dance to the baying moon.

Back on the couch, Wilbur began to feel the blood descend to his groin and ascend to his joweled face, his mind began to quicken, his butt tighten. Next Wilbur began to remember, as he sat by the fire flush as two decades before, he was in Suzy’s dorm room lying back on her bed - Suzy was slowly, deliberately, trancelike, snake-charming, taking off her Carolina sweat shirt.

She had somehow managed to get a double room to herself and had pulled the beds together. Wilbur sat somewhat uncomfortably in the middle of the two beds and slowly edged himself onto one bed so as not to crash through the crack at the wrong time.

There was, he remembered, an Indian like sheet that she had hung towards the front of the room separating the beds from the sink and front door; and another over the window. Both casting an orange, chutney, curry hue to the room. She had put on Ravi Shankar on her cassette player. Wilbur had never heard a sitar before. The incense she lit would stay with him for the rest of his life; whenever he would walk down Broadway or through Soho and pass the Jamacan incense vendors he would smell that signature aroma and think of Suzy and the blood would begin its descent again to his groin as if trained like Pavlov’s dogs to awake from the couch.

Over the next two decades, whenever he smelled that incense, he would wonder what happened to Suzy and where she was, he always planned to look her up – and never did.

Suzy kneeled over Wilbur on the bed straddling him tightly. He could feel the muscles and power of her legs and that his own signature-brand genitalia was as firm and convinced as he’d ever know, as if barking for attention. Suzy pulled down her leotard, her identical soft ripe casaba breasts with hard red nipples popping out simultaneously as if to greet him with a perky smile. Wilbur instinctively reached up and grabbed both breasts and nipples. He wasn’t sure if he should do this but it seemed like he should and Suzy reacted with a deep moan and threw her sandy blond wisped head back, another strand sticking to her moist lips as she bit into them. She reached down and pressed his hands deeper into her breasts, her nipples hard fought against his hands. He pulled his hands back a bit and pulled the nipples sharply towards him, all red and aglow with fire and life. She flipped her head towards him and bit his ear and ground her leotard crotch into his, sending his mind into another special Ganesh-like dimension. His head swam in her after-dance-class smell, the incense and a new curry-musk smell beginning to build from her below.

Wilbur thought of throwing another log on the fire and pouring another scotch, so as to prolong this memory, as often he would try to prolong himself with Suzy by biting his lip or banging his head or thinking of dead cats.

Suzy pulled off Wilbur’s sweatshirt and tee shirt and tossed them over to the Indian blanket by the window, where they would rest until the morning. She unbuttoned his jeans, zipped down the zipper and deftly pulled off both jeans and the checker boxer shorts his mother had bought him for his birthday the summer before, with one swami-magical motion. His penis popped up as if a jack in the box and begged like a puppy for more attention.

Suzy stepped back, looked at his pleading puppy-penis and smiled a smirk and pulled the full-as-the-ocean sandy blond hair from her lips. She then, just as deftly as with his jeans, pulled down the rest of her leotard and tights and stepped out of them – they too would lie there until late morning. Beneath her produce-sized breasts ran a perfect arching and aching belly with just the hint of roundness and form and design. There was a little tuft of more ocean beach blond hair beneath that, framed by historic legs of muscle, sinew and finely stretched fair skin with just an occasional freckle to complement her face. (Wilbur would spend many an afternoon and evening counting and kissing those freckles amid giggles and coos.)

Suzy straddled Wilbur and slowly, carefully placed her tuft of blond sea-flower on his poor begging dog-toy, desperate as it was for attention. She pushed down with her tuftette, he could feel her moist and soft inner flesh as she brushed up and down, but she would not let him in. Instead she pulled up and moved that moist, soft, musky saffron tuft to his face and placed it, like a longshoreman’s crane lading a shipment of Chinese toys to Targets around America upon his lips and the waiting American consumer.  All he had to do was kiss, lick, bite, suck – every move brought more little squeaks and moans from Soooozy. Wilbur always thought a woman’s vagina a wondrous and strange thing, so many had written about it as a flower or fig or artichoke, Wilbur thought it more like skunk cabbage in early moist spring waiting by a cool stream – layers of brilliant leaves hiding a small purple flower within. Wilbur reveled in his pleasure making and was almost disappointed when she pulled the tuft off of his face and quickly moved down to placate his begging impatient manhood.

Wilbur again thought of putting another log of millions of fire ants on the fire when he heard a scampering in the other room, even Buck raised a sari-silk ear. It must be Snowbell, he thought, that stupid little kitten, Snowbell Jr., so elegantly named by Betty in memory of her first cat, Snowbell Sr. - who was so inelegantly flattened by a cat-box-turd-brown UPS truck the month before. So as to placate the inconsolable little girl Wilbur and Emily surprised her with what they thought was an identical kitten. But, unlike the sedate, curled-up Snowbell Sr., Snowbell Jr. was a maniacal terror cat, careening throughout the house for much of the night, tormenting Buck and tearing away at couches and sheets and pillows, jumping unimaginable heights to shred window shades and curtains. “Fucking, goddamned cat!” Emily would scream. “Fucking goddamned cat!” Wilbur would echo.

Wilbur tried to return to the memory-spot where Suzy was pushing him deep inside her dark and uncharted self, her most inner place, and a very comfortable home for Wilbur. But he could hear the thump of Snowbell’s paws slam down the hallway to him, a Kamikaze cat about to launch an attack on his waiting aircraft carrier.

With the speed and ferocity of a sleek Puma, tiny Snowbell leapt into the air, all four grey and white kitten paws raised for ambush, kitty claws fully armed. She then fixed her slit-eyed feline gaze upon Wilbur’s content, full and still-dreaming-of-Suzy privates and environs. She landed with a slap and the claws pierced the jeans and tore down into the tenderness and blood-swollen intricacies of Suzy’s service.

Wilbur screamed, “Fuck! You fucking goddamned cat!” and grabbed Snowbell by her grey striped, stick-straight-up-as-an-erection-pencil tail and began to hurl her across the room.

Snowbell swung her little pussy cat whiskered head around and launched her teeth on Wilbur’s finger. In the middle of the bite, she looked up at him with beaming slit-vertical green eyes and sunk her teeth in deeper. Blood dribbled like a horror creek across Wilbur’s hand.

Again Wilbur repeated, “Fuck! You fucking goddamned cat!” for he could think of nothing else appropriate to say.

He flung the fucking-goddamned cat toward the fireplace and, in the process, knocked over his single malt scotch and sent grandma’s survived-since-the-civil-war, great-grandpa-carved table splintering to the ground. Pieces of wood not seen in 150 years now settling into Buck’s sleeping coat.

Snowbell flew through the air, and, as cats so often do, righted herself in midair – and rearmed her terrorist claws. She then landed precisely on Buck’s tufted, snoring, blond, square block empty-of a head.

Wilbur winced at Buck’s helpless yelp; it fueled his anti-kitten rage.

Buck staggered up, dumping Snowbell towards the fire ants hungry for a cat; and reassembled his sleeping self on the couch with a snort and dog fart.

Wilbur was not so forgiving. The “fucking, goddamned” kitten had interrupted his beloved Suzy, torn into his manhood and memories, knocked over a perfectly good glass of single malt scotch, broken grandma’s cherished table and, worse of all, attacked his dog.

Wilbur launched his greatness toward the little ball of grey and white with a roar, “You fucking cat!” Snowbell dashed across the rug and over the couch out of reach, Wilbur continued his pursuit, and again the cat deftly outmaneuvered his jowl spitting wrath.

This was repeated a number of clumsy times, each time Snowbell grew more confident of evading capture and each time Wilbur become more aware that if someone were to venture by on Maplewood Avenue - only to see the fire ant silhouette of ranting Wilbur flailing around the room - they would surely blame it on bad Scotch.

Snowbell took a brief break atop the couch, over Buck; and, as cats so often do, she slowly began to bathe. First, as cats always do, she stretched out her rear leg and began to lick and nibble at her paws. Soon she would lick the front paw and over the head wash and then the tummy would be washed.

Here was a small cease fire, a détente, a chance for peace and calmer heads to prevail...

Midway between cleaning the rear paw and switching to the front paw, Snowbell slipped – very uncatlike and cat-embarrassing - and fell backwards onto Buck.

This time, however, Buck had had quite enough; he barred his teeth and snapped back towards the impudent furry interloper. A violent “snap” from the sleeping giant, a toss of his tufted head and Snowbell was flipping like a badly-tossed Frisbee into the air.

Almost immediately Wilbur noticed a bright red geyser of pulsing kitty cat blood spurting in pinwheels from Snowbell’s all-white neck. Snowbell landed, uncatlike, on her back, her legs sticking straight in the air, she kicked her hind legs twice and then lay motionless on the Crate and Barrel twilled rug amidst the 150 year old pieces of table and puddles of precious Scotch. The blood got darker and darker as it seeped out of her neck into her freshly cleaned chin and then into Scotch soaked carpet. Buck lowered his blood-splattered head and pulled his tail between his rear legs, like he always did when caught with his head in the garbage pail – he slipped quietly into the kitchen.

It took a moment for Wilbur to gather it all in: Suzy was waiting somewhere, legs and lips anxious for his return; the good scotch and family table lay in ruins; and now his daughter’s beloved new kitten was dead. What to do? Wilbur knew he must think quickly, the ladies were due home from the multi-multiplex within the hour.

Wilbur had been a lifeguard during high school - and Roseanne Loeffle still would not go out with him – he was calm under pressure, clearheaded. Always ready to jump in the water to raise the unfortunate. Wilbur knew how to act in an emergency.

Wilbur flew to the basement by the laundry machine and grabbed as many old, torn towels as he could. Emily would notice if the good towels were missing.

Wilbur would wrap the dead kitten in a non-denominational towel and then clean up the couch and carpet with the red can of Rug Doctor Upholstery cleaner that he knew was also in the basement because Buck had tossed whatever he had found in the garbage up on the carpet just the day before and the Rug Doctor had come to the rescue. “Oh daddy, that’s gross!” screamed Betty, forgetting her projectile vomiting of sweet peas across grandmother’s Christmas table centerpiece a few years ago with Rug Doctor again saving the day.

Wilbur would wet Buck with a cloth and send him outside, but what of the cat? Should he admit the truth? Surely Betty would hate Buck and Wilbur for the rest of her life, perhaps even into therapy and beyond. If Wilbur did his job well enough no one would even know there was a cat, only a faded memory of whiskers.

So Wilbur decided to lose the cat. He would take the dead kitten in the tattered swaddling rags and bury it in a far corner of the back yard. No one would be the wiser. He will say that Snowbell had leapt out of the back door when he let Buck out to pee. Wilbur will say he looked all over for Snowbell; maybe he would even call the neighbors. But then he thought better of that, lest they actually see him digging a cat grave in the back yard – there must be a Maplewood township ordinance against kitten burials.

Wilbur wrapped the bloodied Snowbell in a tattered old out-of-Betty’s-fashion Elmo beach blanket, careful to close and fold each corner and stuff the pencil tail into the Dora towel. He carried the parcel out back, down the gray worn back steps and into the dark lawn slopping down to the tilting wooden fence separating Wilbur from the New Jersey Transit railroad tracks. The rickety old fence from way before Wilbur and Emily bought the house, held up by wire and some metal stakes Wilbur drove into the ground over the years, keeping the rest of the world and New Jersey Transit at bay.

As Wilbur delicately and stealthily walked down the lawn, trying to keep his footing in the broad moonlight, he thought of Snowbell’s mother. Did she even know she had a kitten and where she was, did a cat know when their progeny dies?

Wilbur grabbed a soiled spade from beside the grey garage with one hand and cradled the towel and dead kitten in the other. At the far corner of the lawn, by the rickety fence, where Wilbur dumped leaves and brush from weekends cleaning and raking and escaping the routine, where no one had been for a long time or would visit for a long time to come, Wilbur placed the cat towel down and began to scrape away; and dig and scrape. After some dings on the rocks and some sweating and digging and prying away roots from the giant maple overhead he felt he’d gone far enough. Not as deep as he’d like, but he couldn’t spend any more time. Betty and Emily would come chatting and giggling through the door at any time. He still had to clean Buck and the couch.

Wilbur looked up at the moon, he always tried to see where on the moon Apollo 11 had landed, somewhere in that brightness he thought, he could remember when his parents awoke him for “a small step for a man…” He looked back down at the little mound he’d left in the ground; he brushed some leaves over it. It would be deep winter soon and no one would bother the grave for a while. He would come back in the spring.

The winter would dig deep into the ground and surround the rocks and roots and still them until some warm spring day. The winter would envelope Snowbell and keep her until spring.

The moon hung low over the rickety fence. Somewhere, Wilbur thought, Suzy was looking up at the same moon and thinking of the same nights with him. She would be warm and exactly like she was – waiting for him to return. Wilbur hoped Suzy had never killed a kitten.