My life officially became a horror movie the day we moved to Maple Street. And it was all because of the cat next door.
The house was fine, I guess. A little creaky. A little spooky. But mostly just boring. The most exciting thing about our new town was the fact that it had two different pizza places. Big whoop.
“Isn’t this great, honey?” Mom said, trying to sound cheerful as we unpacked boxes. “A fresh start!”
My fresh start involved trying to figure out which box had my video games.
That’s when I saw him for the first time. He was sitting on the fence that separated our yard from our neighbor’s, a perfect, fluffy, white cat. He looked like a cloud with legs. His eyes were a brilliant, sapphire blue.
“Oh, look!” Mom cooed. “He’s beautiful.”
Just then, our new next-door neighbor, a sweet-looking old woman with a cloud of white hair that matched the cat’s, came out onto her porch.
“That’s my Angel,” she called over, her voice like tinkling bells. “He’s the friendliest cat in the world. Aren’t you, my precious?”
The cat, Angel, let out a soft meow and trotted over to the old woman, who scooped him up. Her name was Mrs. Gable, and she and Angel were the unofficial welcoming committee of Maple Street.
And when I say Angel was friendly, I mean he was… weirdly friendly. Impossibly perfect. He never hissed. He never scratched. He didn’t even cough up hairballs. All he did was purr—a deep, soothing rumble—and bring good luck.
I’m not kidding. The day after we moved in, Dad couldn’t find his car keys anywhere. We searched for an hour. Dad was about to lose his mind when Angel appeared at the back door. He meowed, trotted into the kitchen, and sat down right next to the fruit bowl. And there, tucked behind a bunch of bananas, were Dad’s keys.
“What a smart cat!” Dad had exclaimed, scratching Angel behind the ears.
A week later, the neighborhood bully, a big kid named Ricky who looked like he ate rocks for breakfast, cornered me by the bike racks. He was about to give me a first-class knuckle sandwich when Angel strolled up and started rubbing against Ricky’s legs, purring like a little engine. Ricky froze. He looked down at the cat, and a strange, glassy look came over his eyes. He just… walked away. The next day, Ricky was holding doors open for people. It was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen.
Everyone loved Angel. Everyone except me. Something about him just felt… wrong. Too perfect. Too good to be true.
My suspicions went into overdrive about a month after we moved in. I was in my backyard, trying to land a kickflip on my skateboard, when I saw Angel sitting on the porch steps, watching me with those big, blue eyes. I finally landed the trick, but my skateboard went flying, knocking over my can of dark, bubbly cola.
The fizzy liquid spread across the concrete, forming a dark, shimmering puddle. Angel didn’t even flinch. He just stared at the puddle. I walked over to clean it up, and that’s when I saw it.
For just a second, I saw his reflection in the dark soda.
But it wasn’t a fluffy, white cat.
The thing in the reflection was twisted and wrong. It was made of shifting shadows, with too many legs and a face full of sharp, needle-like teeth. Its eyes—dozens of them—glowed with a faint, green light.
I blinked, and the reflection was gone. It was just Angel again, staring at me. He let out a soft meow and trotted back to his own yard, leaving me with my heart hammering against my ribs.
I tried to tell my parents. “There’s something wrong with that cat!” I insisted at dinner. “His reflection… it was a monster!”
Dad just chuckled. “Too much sugar and video games, son. Angel is a sweetheart.”
But I knew what I saw. I started watching Angel. I noticed that Mrs. Gable’s prize-winning roses—the most beautiful on the block—had dark, ugly thorns that were as long as my finger. I saw that after Angel “comforted” someone, they seemed… faded. A little less there. Ricky wasn’t just nice now; he was boring. He never laughed, never got mad. He just… existed.
The final straw was my little sister, Sarah.
She woke up one morning with a terrible fever. The doctors couldn’t figure it out. She was weak and pale, and nothing they did seemed to help.
Mrs. Gable heard the news, of course. She came over that afternoon, holding Angel in her arms.
“Oh, the poor dear,” she said, her eyes full of fake sympathy. “Let my Angel sit with her. His purr is very therapeutic. It can soothe any ailment.”
My mom, desperate, agreed. She let Mrs. Gable place the fluffy white cat on the bed next to my sleeping sister.
“NO!” I yelled, running into the room. “Get him away from her!”
“Leo, stop it!” Mom scolded. “You’re upsetting everyone!”
But I couldn’t stop. I looked at Angel, curled up on Sarah’s blanket, and I felt a cold dread wash over me. This wasn’t about comfort. This was about feeding.
I ran to my room and grabbed the one thing I could think of. The thing that had shown me the truth. My skateboard. It still had a little bit of dried, sticky soda on the wheels. It wasn’t much, but it had to be enough.
I burst back into Sarah’s room. Mrs. Gable and my mom were standing in the hallway. I slammed the door shut and locked it.
Angel was on Sarah’s chest now. He was purring, that deep, rumbling purr. But it wasn’t soothing. It was hungry. A faint, gray mist was swirling up from Sarah’s body, flowing into the cat. Angel’s blue eyes were glowing with that same, sickly green light I’d seen in the reflection.
“Get off her!” I screamed.
The cat turned its head to look at me. It opened its mouth, but it wasn’t a meow that came out. It was a low, ancient hiss that made the air grow cold.
I held up my skateboard, pointing the soda-stained wheels at him like a weapon. The cat’s eyes narrowed. It recoiled slightly. It didn’t like it.
I took a step closer. The cat hissed again, and its form began to flicker. For a second, I saw the shadow-creature, all legs and teeth, before it solidified back into the fluffy white cat.
It was working.
I lunged forward, not thinking, and shoved the sticky part of the skateboard right against the cat’s face.
SCREEEEECH!
The sound was ear-splitting. The cat exploded. I don’t mean it blew up. It dissolved. It burst into a cloud of shimmering, gray dust and green light, which swirled around the room like a miniature tornado before simply vanishing with a soft pop.
The room was silent. Sarah took a deep, shuddering breath, and the color started to return to her cheeks.
It was over.
The aftermath was weird. Mrs. Gable became a grumpy recluse who never came outside. Ricky went back to being a rock-eating bully. Life on Maple Street got… normal. A little less perfect, but a lot more real.
A few weeks later, Mom decided we all needed a fresh start from our fresh start. “I know what will cheer this house up,” she announced one Saturday. “A pet!”
We ended up at the local animal shelter. We walked past cages of barking dogs and hissing cats. Then, in the very last cage, we saw him.
A tiny, adorable, fluffy white kitten. He had big, sapphire-blue eyes and a purr that you could feel from a foot away.
“Oh, he’s perfect,” Sarah whispered, her face pressed against the cage.
The shelter worker smiled. “He’s a special one. A real little saint. We were just about to name him, actually.”
My parents were already filling out the adoption papers. I knelt down to look at the kitten. He stared back at me, tilting his little head. He let out a soft meow and put a tiny white paw up against the cage.
And for just a split second, I saw it. A faint, green glow deep inside his perfect, blue eyes.
A wave of calm washed over me. A deep, peaceful, empty feeling. All my fears, all my worries about the cat next door, just… melted away. Why had I been so worked up? It was just a silly story I’d imagined.
“What do you think, Leo?” Mom asked, her pen hovering over the paperwork. “What should we name him?”
I smiled. It felt… easy. Effortless.
“Angel,” I said, my voice sounding distant and calm. “His name should be Angel.”
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