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Madness

Gertrude Weaver was solidly but compactly built, old queen. She typically wore a black coat over a blue or white blouse, depending on the occasion, and around her legs hung either black slacks or a severe, black skirt cut from a stiff fabric. Her pumps clicked insistently against the driveway as she walked up to the door to her sister's house, passing by the tall cactus plant that graced the front yard. Tucking her umbrella under her arm, she reached out and rang the doorbell.

Within fifteen seconds, the door swung open, and her younger sister came to greet her. "Oh, Gertie, thank you for coming on such short notice!" The harried-looking queen was wearing a plum and gray outfit that might have looked attractive on a good day, but her present circumstances seemed to be taking their toll.

The older queen smiled tightly and leaned forward to share a curt hug. "Now, Tammy, don't be silly," she scolded. "It was incumbent upon me to at least be ere. But where is my little Zeke? I brought some yum-yums for him."

"Oh, come right in," said her younger sister, forcing a smile. With that, she brought Gertrude into the house with her. As they stepped into the living room, they were confronted with the scene of Zeke struggling against his father to avoid having his braces snapped on, apparently having recently escaped from them.

Gertrude closed her eyes and sighed in exasperation. "Mr. Carver," she said, "I thought that you had decided to do away with those horrible things. Didn't you say yourself that they were causing him ulcerations?"

The older tom stopped struggling with Zeke for a moment, and he said, "Gertie--"

"Ms. Weaver," Gertrude corrected.

"Ms. Weaver," he corrected. "Look, we have decided based on recent incidents that we regret ever taking them off. He is no animal, you know."

Gertrude snorted. "He is no animal, Mr. Carver, but he is a feral-born tom; for that matter, he's my favorite of your offspring, and you should show more appreciation for him." She fished in her purse for something, and she produced a little biscuit. "Come over and visit your auntie, young Ezekiel!"

Zeke quickly writhed out of his father's clutches and ran up to her, his solid weight landing in front of her with a thud. He sat there very stoically and nicely while Gertrude balanced the treat carefully on his nose.

"Now, if you'll be a good boy and sit still for a while," she said, "I have as many of those for you as you could want. Take your pick: one or a half-dozen."

As she completed this, Tammy stepped over and removed the biscuit, apparently to the great annoyance of both Zeke and his aunt. "Gertie," she said, scolding Gertrude with the biscuit held between her fingers, "please don't. We try to discourage Mitch from doing that sort of thing, and we don't need you trying to ruin him too."

The older queen scowled at that. "Ruin him?" She shook her head in disgust. "By teaching delayed gratification? Little sister, you are being foolish and taking away a chance for a moral lesson. Speaking of cubs in need of moral training, where is young Mitch, anyway?"

"He's packing," Mr. Carver snapped.

"Gertie," Tammy intervened, "let me or Joel here make up some tea, and perhaps we could catch up for a while."

Mr. Carver stood up quickly to leave. "You and Ge--your sister do that, honey. I think we have some green tea left." With that, Mr. Carver disappeared from the room.

As the tom left, Gertrude turned to her sister and asked. "Now, Tamitha," she said, "if I had not been afraid you would act rashly, I don't think that I would have agreed to separating the brothers. It sounds to me like they were out bonding."

Tammy shook her head, closing her eyes. "Gertie, none of your seven were feral-born. I don't think that you understand what we have been dealing with, here. It seems that Mitch has always seen Zeke as a burden, not just on him but on the family as a whole. It's almost like he goes out of his way to sabotage our efforts to normalize Zeke." She shrugged. "I think it's metamorphosed into some misguided attempt to protect us from him or something, and I really don't know what to do except to try to separate them."

"But doesn't he play with young Ezekiel?" Gertrude said. "I've seen them play together during their visits with me, and Zeke seems to want to play a new game of some sort every time he comes on his own."

Tammy laughed humorlessly. "You mean you don't see it, Gertie? You really don't see it, with all that experience you taut." Tammy waved her paw exhaustedly, rolling her eyes. "Gertie, Mitch is supposed to be playing with Zeke inside, trying to encourage him to make use of his paws. Instead, he has Zeke out there tearing up his clothing in the bushes and fetching frisbies from the air like some trick dog. I wanted to try to get away from it too, Gertie, but Mitch has undermined us every step of the way. Did I tell you that it was really because of him we had to do away with the braces?"

Gertrude shook her head in the negative. "No," she said. She really was surprised to hear of this, having always thought Mitch was a stout, responsible sort.

Tammy covered her face. "We had him up on crutches," she said tearfully, "And Mitch kept taunting Zeke and trying to get him to chase. And when Zeke tried to run--" she broke off.

Gertrude took a long look at her little sister. She had heard something several years ago about a trip to the hospital, but Tammy had refused to elaborate on it. Now that she put the pieces together, though, she realized she could have guessed. Gertrude was about to reach out to lay a gentle paw on her shoulder, but Mr. Carver suddenly appeared with a young visitor at his arm.

"Tammy, we've got more company," he said, looking quite irritated at the fact. Standing next to him was a young queen about Mitch's age, apparently trying her best to look impassive but showing deep lines of worry. Gertrude found her to be very cute in her way. She was heavy-set and heavy in the front, but she was shapely enough that she didn't quite cross the line into being "fat."

"Hi," the young queen said with surprising meekness. "I got a call from Anthony, and I was coming over to see whether Mitch was okay. What is this about him leaving?" She turned to Gertrude and nodded in greeting. "And hello," she said.

"I don't think it's established at the moment whether Mitch will be leaving or not," Gertrude said sternly. This earned her angry glares from Mitch's parents, but the queen ignored them. She continued, "Now, what is your name, dear?"

"I'm Michelle," she said, neither hesitating nor attempting to pre-empt. "Michelle Ranger." She looked around the room, and she spotted Zeke. "Is that Mitch's brother?" she asked.

Gertrude walked up to her and beckoned for Zeke to come over. "Yes!" she said. "Let me introduce you."

"Gertie, no," Tammy interrupted. "He has trouble dealing with new people. You know that."

As if to belie his mother, Zeke paced slowly over to Gertrude, and he sniffed his nose tentatively as he approached the new female. Michelle raised her paws briefly as received the unexpected greeting, not sure what to make of it. However, she relaxed as Zeke paced back and forth for a moment, turned around once, and lay himself down at a spot on the floor near the entrance.

Michelle found a seat next to Gertrude, and they were introduced properly. "I'm trying to get the Goddard scholarship for the arts," she said proudly. "I have to maintain a 4.5 GPA to have any hope of getting it, though. I ran into some bad luck over the Summer, trying to find a good model for my honor's project."

"Oh, really?" Gertrude said. "And what was the project again?"

Michelle's ears pinked, and she looked around the room once as if looking for help. However, she composed herself and replied awkwardly, "Well, it's really based more on technique than anything else. It's complicated, and I don't even know if the idea is taught at all outside my art class."

Gertrude cocked her head to the side, and a knowing glint flickered behind her eyes. "I posed for a nude once," she said.

Mr. Carver spoke up at that. "Now, Ms. Weaver, in my house--"

The older queen fixed him with a glare, and he quieted.

Before they could continue, they were interrupted by a disturbing shriek resonating through the house.

~~ *** ~~

Zeke panted mentally as he struggled to shape his thoughts. He carefully rehearsed to himself the individual identities associated with the figures around him. The identities kept melting into each other, though, and he would eventually resign himself to giving them descriptive titles like "friendly female" and "big male." Descriptions were easier. Descriptions fit together with the All. Trying to pinch off things from the All left him feeling nauseated and out of breath.

There was suddenly a dissonant sound, and the figures around him began to shift unnervingly. He stepped out of the way as "big male" and "big female" fled the room. He started to try to figure out why, but he got distracted as he realized that there were half the number of occupants in the room as there had been previously. He toyed with the idea of setting up an association between loud, shrieking noises and the occupancy of a room changing by a factor of one-half, but the association didn't really sit well with him.

The friendly female and the new female were standing at the door, and he wondered what they were doing. Something wasn't sitting right with Zeke, so he padded over to them to try sniffing at their ankles. He wasn't sure what this would accomplish, but he usually felt more at ease after executing this particular exercise.

When the sniffing exercise failed to effect any outcome, he tried simply imitating his subjects. He stuck his head out into the hall and looked out in the same direction they were looking in, and he tried to find something in the hall that would capture their interest so. He saw three figures in the hall. One was screaming and struggling violently, and the other two were trying to hold it still.

Zeke recognized the one who was struggling, and he felt something simmering in him. It felt a little bit like rage but more controllable, and it caused the lights in his head to dim. The dimming was good for a change because he could shape his thoughts more easily when the lights were dimmer, but he found that the lights kept wanting to go bright again every time he let the anger-feeling flow out of him. Therefre, he reached out and pulled for more of the anger feeling, and he felt a growl building at the bottom of his throat.

~~ *** ~~

Michelle had been worried since the moment she had heard about Mitch's trip to the hospital, and she was starting to regret coming to pay her visit. What she was watching was surreal. Her friend's eyes were glazed over with a kind of hysteria she had never seen before, and he was emitting ear-piercing screams. She had never seen a creature in such a state of despair.

Ms. Weaver's lips tightened. "Well, that's the end of it," she said tartly. "He's snapped."

Michelle looked at her. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"He's lost touch with reality," the older queen explained. "And it's really the worst psychotic break I've seen. Good luck pulling him back after this episode."

"How do you know?" Michelle asked.

"It runs in his father's family." The queen sighed and pulled out her phone. "Dear, you stay out of harm's way. I'm about to call in emergency services and see if I can explain what is going on well enough to get Mitch here some medical attention." With that, Ms. Weaver disappeared back into the living room.

As space at the doorway cleared, Zeke stepped forward. Michelle looked down at him and saw some tension in the feral child's back, and that worried her. Not wanting to see a bad situation made worse, she reached down and tried to hold him by the collar. "Zeke. Stay."

Zeke turned to fix her with a glare, and a rumble came up from his throat. "No," he said. The sound was imperfectly formed, but it was shocking enough that Michelle's grip on the feral child's collar loosened enough to allow him to surge his way forward.

Mr. Carver was completely unprepared for Zeke's attack. Instead of the claws and teeth Michelle would have expected, the tom had his paws balled up into tight fists, and he was raining punches down on his father's face. "Bad! Bad! Bad!" he roared repeatedly. "Bad! Bad!" The assault only slowed down when Mitch finally broke free of his mother's grasp, and he bolted past Michelle in a strange, four-legged gait that she had seen only in some of the more normal-looking ferals.

"Mitch!" she shouted. She followed him as he bolted into the kitchen, and he barrelled headlong into the door to the basement. It popped open as if there had been nothing holding it at all, and the stricken tom dived headlong down the stairs, half-belly-flopping and half-scrabbling at the floor with his paws as he struck bottom. There was enough light coming in from the vents for Michelle to see his silhouette vanish off to the side.

As Michelle tried to fumble for a light switch, Ms. Weaver's paw caught her arm. "Think about what you are doing!" the old queen snapped.

"But Mitch is in trouble!" she shouted tearfully.

Ms. Weaver straightened. "And how is he supposed to know you are going down there to help?" she said insistently. "He could just as easily attack you as he is to understand that you are going there to see to his welfare."

Michelle looked into Ms. Weaver's eyes defiantly, and Ms. Weaver finally broke down and let her go.

"Sweetie," she said, "if you want to take the risk, be my guest. But I suggest approaching him slowly."

Michelle nodded numbly, and she began making her way down the stairs.

~~ *** ~~

Mitch's mind felt like it was blasting at high volume, and it seemed like he was being wracked with every breath that he took. Everything was trying to weave itself together and pull itself apart at the same time, and nothing was really making sense. He huddled in a cold, dark, mouldering corner of the basement, curled up defensively in a fetal position.

He was seeing the universe in the same way he had been seeing it the previous night and for a while in the morning, only it was magnified and out of his control. Every sound seemed to have a shape, and every color seemed to have a taste. Most confusingly of all, it all seemed to make more sense this way than it had before, which it turned out wasn't that much at all. It would have been an interestng new perpsective on things, but it was all so dissonant and loud.

He saw a familiar shape crawling its way toward him, though, and he realized it was Michelle. He considered backing away. He had turned into a feral. He would never have a chance with her as a feral. He had to get her to understand somehow. A feral couldn't be anything that was good for her. He had to protect her.

All of these thoughts were shut down, though, as she scooted up to him and laid his head in her lap, shushing him and petting him gently. Everything was going to be alright. Mitch didn't know how, but somehow he knew that everything would be alright now. He didn't know how he would get used to being like the feral-born, but it would work out somehow.