The Alley Cat (also the cat refers to “solid air” which just means windows)

My life was pretty average most of the time. Just a typical alley cat fighting for survival. But it used to be a lot easier.

A few weeks ago, I was living next to a food place. It was such an exciting resturant, with excitement flowing from it everywhere. And the people there filled the trash cans in their alley with tons and tons of delicious food. I never felt as hungry as any other alley cat while living there. It was paradise. 

But then, another cat came, and it wanted the entire alley to itself. Usually I could fight off other cats who wanted my paradise, but this cat was too big and tough for me to beat. I lost horrifically and sorrowfully left my once-home. 

Ever since then, I was traveling to find a new alley. But most were taken by hundreds of cats, who ate up all the food there and there were hardly any space. Exactly the reason why I hadn’t wanted to share my own alley. Finally, I found one that was decent, though a hundred times worse than my old one. It rarely had any food, and only occasional prey, like mice. I had found an old blanket to put into my old alley, but of course that was taken by the cat too. In this alley, I only slept on a trash can pile built up by humans.

The buildings weren’t interesting either. Only dull buildings with dull people I could see from the solid air they were behind. The only interesting human is one that likes to stare at me a lot.

I never thought much of humans, since hardly any thought me nice. But the one who looked at me every day, somehow, I thought she had a connection with me. Would she be nice to me? Would she like me? Would she maybe give me some food if I ever met her across the sold air? SHOULD I meet her across the solid air? I didn’t know how to break solid air, but perhaps the human does. Or maybe perhaps I should just see her up close. There’s a tree close to the roof. Maybe I could climb it, jump onto the roof, and sit on the tiny bit of surface between the solid air and the human. Maybe she would like that. 

I was contemplating one day when I heard a movement. I looked at the building next to the building with the interesting human and saw a shadow near some solid air which I think was a human. After a few seconds of wondering I heard a loud crash as sounds and pieces of solid air fell on the ground. So it was breakable after all. Then soon after that a loud beeping sound came from the building with the interesting human.

aI shrunk back, afraid. People started to come out of the building, panicked. I looked around, my mind full of fear and alarm. I wondered if the human I was wondering about was among the crowd. But I was frozen, too afraid to move. I hoped desperately that everything would calm down and that everyone will be alright. 

[my character is a girl, by the way]
Carmin~ 

I don't think I've ever climbed down a ladder so fast. 

An irritating, high pitched alarm fades into the background as I run.

All of the buildings are 2-4 stories tall. There are advertisments and signs all over, and here and there there are a few old-fashioned roadsters parked in the road. 

It looks like it's about 5 o'clock in the morning, and besides the hushed alarm a few blocks away everything is completely silent. There are puddles of a dark, oily-looking liquid on every alley and street.

And I'm running like my life depends on it.

Finally I skid to a stop in an alley and try to catch my breath. The person in sunglasses runs a few feet past me, quickly glances around the next street, and ducks back into the alley.

"Do we need to keep going?" I whisper breathlessly.

"Not far- you've actually ran out of steam in a pretty convinent spot," they whisper back. "There's a safe coffeehouse just down this street. They should be opening any minute." 

"...A 'safe' coffeehouse? Are there coffeehouses that aren't safe?"

"Uh-huh. Oh, shoot- uh, don't run through the puddles next time." They point at my feet.

I look down and notice that my feet and ankles are stained jet black... Wait-

Every time I have this dream I'm wearing the same clothes I wore to bed, but now I'm wearing some formal linen pants and a blouse that I've never seen before.

"Wait, where'd I get these clothes from!?" 

"What? I don't know, S&P's?"

"No, it's- forget it, I'll explain later. Why shouldn't I run through the puddles?"

"It makes you look like an outsider. 
...Also you might get an allergic reaction to it. Yeah- We'll deal with it later. Come on."

A car that looks like it's from the 1940's buzzes past us, kicking up a few splashes of dark liquid. They wait impatiently for it to pass, then gesture for me to follow them.

We run across the street, dodging puddles, into a small brick building with a painted sign hung outside.

"The early bird café".

Actually, nevermind my reservation. Sorry.

I know it's kinda late but I'm going to join because this is really intriguing.

------

I had been in this dream world for three weeks.

I was trapped in a car each night, unable to open the doors or move it. Nobody had helped me either, despite my yelling and banging on the windows. But suddenly, tonight? The keys had appeared in the ignition, and I wasn't in the driver's seat anymore.

Instead I was in the backseat, and when my dream started the car was moving. 

The car looked to be from the 1970's. That was a little weird, but the strangest part was that it was moving without a driver. And it was picking up speed, quick.

I tried to reach towards the front of the car to put it in park, but then I realized my hands were bound together with a bright yellow ziptie. 

I began frantically scraping the ziptie on the seat, trying to get it off, but it wasn't working. Panicking, I began to desperately wiggle my hands out of it. After ten minutes of wild struggling, the ziptie came off. 

The car was going well over eighty miles per hour now. Buildings flashed by. I tried putting the car in park, tried pulling the keys out, even tried pressing the break pedal down--but nothing worked. The gearshift was stuck, the keys wouldn't turn, and the break pedal simply wasn't there. Neither was the gas pedal, too. 

Getting a little panicked, I even tried to open a door to jump out, but the doors were all jammed. Now realizing I was trapped, I quietly sat in the back and fastened my seatbelt. 

But then the car began to slow. It parked on the side of a street, and at once all the doors opened. 

I quickly got out, sighing in relief. As soon as I had exited, the car's doors slammed shut and it drove away, spraying up strange oily liquid. 

I looked around me. Office buildings, apartments and skyscrapers were all one could see.

~~~

[Rogue mentioned an alarm... that made me think of this, so let’s see where it goes!]

I sit in the security booth, staring tiredly at the screens. One person scribbling in a journal, one person looking out the window, one person muttering to themself... same view as always. Nothing exciting ever happens here. I wonder again why I couldn’t get an interesting job: washing dishes, typing notes, refilling shelves— but no, they had to assign me the most boring job in the history of the universe.

Would anyone notice if I slept for just a minute? I’m so tired, and the room is so boring, and it’s not like anything is going to happen anyway. Yawning, I lean my head back and close my eyes for just a minute.

When I wake up, the room looks just the same as before. Boring old screens: one empty room, one person sitting in a corner, one person— wait. One empty room? I look closely at the screen, catching sight of some broken glass, and hastily press the alarm button. I suppose I ought to get up and investigate, but this chair is so comfortable, but that would be interesting, but I don’t feel like it, but I really ought to... I force myself out of the chair and stumble up the stairs to the room with the missing window.

[If it becomes useful, my character is a 20-ish woman with large bags under her eyes, dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans.]

Myra~

I rise to my feet quickly, staring at the figure in front of me. It's a man, a little older than I am. We look at one another warily for a moment.

"What's-" I begin, confused. "Who are you?" Instead of answering, the mysterious man turns and runs the other way. "Wait!" I call, and he stops, turning slowly around.

"Are you part of the dream?" he asks quietly. I shake my head.

"No, I'm in a dream. I work- worked- well, was trapped, really- in that office." I point to the offending building. As I do so, I realize that the alarms I had heard were still blaring, louder now that I was outside of the office.

"I have also been trapped in a dream," says the man. "Tonight, however, is... different."

"Same here," I respond. "This is the first time I've been out of the office. But those alarms don't sound good, so I say we should get out of here. It seems like we're in the same boat. Do you want to come with?"

~Alley Cat~ 

People were flooding out of buildings all around me. Sounds were blaring out everywhere. My emotions were in a flurry, turning from whether I should run away or stay 

But then, I saw the human who was interested in me with a stranger besides him. They talked in their gibberish human language before they left the alley. I wondered where they could be going. Maybe I should follow them. Perhaps they could give me food. I looked back at the alley. It was even more of a mess than it was before. Perhaps the humans could give me a better life than this. I

I then followed the humans noiselessly in the shadows. I was planning to find a time to show myself. If it works and they are kind to me, I will stay. If they shoo me away, I will go back and stay at that boring old alley and stay for the rest of my days.

???~

I send the girl in, looking back to make sure nobody's following. Suddenly, I notice a cat rubbing against my legs. It looks up at me.

"You wanna come with?" I ask it, knowing fully it can't understand me. "Let me see your eyes, cat." I reach down gently and lift its chin. It stares up at me with vibrant emerald eyes. "Good. Let's go." I pick it up and enter the Early Bird. The girl is at the counter, waiting for me. The boy behind the counter looks up at me.

"Hey, no unregistered animals allowed." The boy growls, pretending he doesn't know me. It's protocol, after all.

"This cat will be registered within the hour. I'm on my way to getting its licence." He shrugs, his apron shifting with his shoulders.

"Anyway, what can I get for ya?" He leans forward on the counter, propping himself up with one hand and holding a pen to a pad of paper with the other. His long lashes brush his freckles as he looks down at the paper.

"A Code Newbie, please." I reply. The girl looks confused.

"I-I don't see that on the menu-" She starts. The boy looks up at me.

"Gotcha. Right this way, please." He opens the entrance to the area behind the counter, and I walk in. The girl follows, and I see her fingers fondle the cat's ears as it peeks around my arm.

~

I love cats. Cats are cute. I'm honestly more of a dog person though... Actually scratch that I just adore animals in general- 

The streets are strangely empty.

I'm not sure why. It possibly has something to do with the alarm I can hear in the distance. I.hope I didn't set off the alarm. 

As I get closer to the center of the city, there's a tollbooth blocking my view path. There's nobody inside it , and so I step over the barrier. It's just a dream anyways, so it doesn't matter if I happen to break the law.

Now that I'm at the center of the city, I still don't see any people,but there is an abundance of alley cats. The majority have green and yellow eyes, but I notice a few strangely malicious looking ones with bright blue eyes.

~~~ 

Carmin~

The person at the counter leads Sunglasses and me into a small (and somewhat messy) back room. The walls are lined with boxes of coffee, milk crates, the occasional filling cabinet, and a simple, scuffed up wardrobe.

Cafe Worker gives me a once-over and starts rustling through a drawer in a filing cabinet while the cat casually leaps up onto a stack of milk crates. 

The cafe worker is an average-looking young guy with a newsboy cap and a casual demeanor. He fishes a few papers out of the drawer, opens the wardrobe, and tosses me a bundle of clothes and a bar of soap wrapped in paper.

"ANTI-MUMIDE DETERGENT," reads the soap label. "FOR USE IN REMOVING MUMIDE AND ITS COMPOSITES. COPYRIGHT 1439. DO NOT EAT."

"There's some fresh clothes," Cafe Worker says, "and soap to wash your legs off. Better get to doing that before you can react to it. Bathroom's across the building. You good with just a sink?" 

"Uh, yeah, that's fine," I say. "What am I a newbie in, exactly? And what's mumide?"

"It's gonna be the death of you if ya don't hurry up," he laughs. Then his smile fades. "You're a newbie in our... organization, I guess ya could call it. And mumide's the oily stuff you splashed around in. You'd better go. The two of us need to do a few things." Sunglasses nods at me.

"Alright," I say. I walk out from behind the front desk and duck into the bathroom.

The mumide seems to be more gel-like than it did on the road. I hastily scrub it off and put on the new clothes. Simple trousers, a somewhat lacy button-up shirt, and boots. I wrap the soap up again and walk back into the cafe.

The door's blown open a tiny bit, and I can hear the other two talking quietly in the other room. I walk to the side of the door and plaster myself against the wall to listen.

"Alright, that's all set then. She a dreamer or a mutant?"

I stiffen. 

"Dreamer. Prisoner, not a writer." 

"'K, d'ya know her name?"

"No, I didn't get the chance to ask."

"Okeydoke. Uhm, then we just need..." Cafe Worker pauses to rustle through the cabinet again.

I glance at the door just as a dark grey cat strolls in. I nod at it in greeting, but instead of ignoring me like a normal cat, it starts glaring at me with its bright blue eyes.

Wait, didn't the cafe guy check the cat's eyes when it came in?

"Guys," I say, flying into the back room and throwing my stained clothes into the corner. "A cat just came in with bright blue-"

Cafe Worker looks at me with an expression of horror, grabs a bag off a hook on the wall, and shoves some papers into it. He throws me a pair of sunglasses similar to the other person's.

"We have to get it out of here. Now!" 

???~

"We need to get it out of here, NOW!" He yells. The cat smiles.

Now, normally, cats can't smile. However, when they've been Taken, which is common considering they're souls are different from ours, they are Changed. To be Changed is to be... It's almost like being possessed. You become a monster, but much, much worse. Anyone who's been Taken has blue eyes, those who have been Saved have green eyes, and those who haven't done either have any other color eye.

The cat begins to foam at the mouth, and its skin ripples like waves, expanding and contracting like a diseased heart. The girl puts on the glasses, hiding her eyes, which are not blue. "Whoa, what are these glasses-" She begins, but is cut off by a slash from the monster before us. Behind me, the black cat with green eyes licks a paw nonchalantly.

~ 

The blue-eyed cat~

People with huge circular eyes come out of a doorway. They're moving so fast... they look like a blur of motion.

I can move faster than them.

I can complete the purpose I woke with.

I will kill these beasts.

I snarl at the big-eyed creatures and slash at them with my claws. They manage to dodge my attack. I glare at them until it feels like my eyes are singing and all I can see is blue light. I can't see them, but I can hear screams and clamor. Overcome with courage, I run forward and lash around blindly, hoping to deal a fatal wound. I don't miss. I gash someone's leg. They shout.

Something sharp pricks my side. I spin around to prepare for another attack, but suddenly my mind will not focus. CONCENTRATE, I tell myself. You must destroy these monsters...

My sight returns just as everything begins to swim around me. One of my prey takes off their bug eyes in concern.

All at once... everything is a smear, of paint and light and scent and calm... I don't have time to be calm, I'm in a war...

...the world dissolves...