By Sharyl Heber

3:00am.  Catmandu and I slip out of my room.  Cat can’t stand the combat either.
Ma’s latest speaks with his fist.  Tonight’s topic… she’s a worthless trollop.  She rages back on his drunken stupors and disgusting halitosis.
This is my life on earth.  Six months and twenty-two days till I’m legal to leave.  
“Come on, Kitty-Cat,” I whisper. “Let’s disappear.”  I’m careful not the let the screen door slam.  We head for the meadow where all we can hear are frogs.  The night hugs us with a sticky eighty-plus degrees and air flavored with eucalyptus.  The moonless sky, a cosmos rich with diamonds.
Perfect.  We settle into our favorite summer spot— a fort made of waist-high weeds stomped down to stubble.  “Where to tonight?” I ask.  Catmandu is a seasoned interstellar vagabond.  She and I have visited many stars over the years.  We come out here almost nightly, even in the winter when well-adjusted folks are comfy-warm in their beds.  I think Cat needs these sessions more than I do.  She paces with the screaming at home and jumps when she hears a glass break or the drywall crunch.
“Your turn to pick.”  I give her a nudge.  Cat stretches her neck and looks westward.  I follow her gaze and get a lock on our destination.  “All-righty then, that reddish sprite with the twin blue sisters.  Why that one?” I ask her.  “What happens up there?”
Cat circles in place then settles into the nook of my arm.  We languish for a bit, pondering the respite of a far away world.  I can’t get tonight’s gremlins out of my head.
“Uh-oh, this is a prison planet.”
Cat purrs in accordance.
“I’m serious, I think the folks here have done some nasty things.”  The guards are monstrous big with clangy metal outfits.  The walls have jagged bloody spikes.  You’d be disinclined to act up.  Usually the stars we favor have forest streams or magical libraries.  We pass a line of scary looking thugs in chains with iron masks locked at the neck.
“We’re breaking out of this hoosegow, pronto.” I say.
Cat reaches up and puts her paw on my face.  She lets loose a claw that draws blood on my cheek.
“Really?  You want to stay here in this hellhole?  A slammer-planet with butchers and sadists?”
Cat climbs up on my chest and levels her nose close to mine.
“At least, let’s plan an escape.”  My vague sense of discomfort is solidifying into full on panic.  Can you get incarcerated for just thinking about offing someone?
I plot my new stepdad’s demise nightly.  Now I’ve got goose bumps on top of my sweat and I’m pretty sure I could run to the next town and back without much trouble.  Clothesline, Ma’s happy pills, a trip down the stairs.  Fire poker is currently looping.
“Oh, gimenyfreakingchristmas!”
Do cats smile?  I swear to God, she’s grinning at me.
I don’t need a telescope to see what’s coming.  My inner compass springs just south of Criminal.  I gotta get out of here.
“Let’s go over to Gran’s.  Now.”  I give Cat a shove so I can stand, but she digs a sharp feline ultimatum into my chest.
“Tonight?  Are you crazy?  No way.”  I try to push her back.  I can’t breathe.  “Only six more months,” I remind her, but Catmandu’s not budging.
A dark, nebulous prophecy creeps into my vision.  Cat retracts her claws and settles down on me again, resolute in meat-loaf position.
“A billion stars,” I tell her, “and you had to pick this one.”

Sharyl Heber is a novelist, screenwriter, poet and a member of the SLO NightWriters Board of Directors.  She has served as the Director of the SLO NightWriters Golden Quill writing competition and as judge for the SLO Coastal School District student writing competition.  She has won awards of her own for prose and poetry.  One of her screenplays, Keepers of the Dream, rose to upper levels in Miramax’s first Project Greenlight.