Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills 6)

Just the thought had me screwing my face up. “Ew, I don’t want guano in my attic.”

Ever see the movie Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls? Joke all you want about guano bowls, but that ‘shit’ was disgusting. I’d been shat on by a bat when I was eight, and it was something else that I was scarred with for life, along with spiders.

It sounded like the ladder was going to break as Logan climbed up it, but it held firm for him until all I could see was his boots as he looked around the space above us.

“Damn, it smells a bit stronger up here, Bex. I don’t see any bats or shit on the ground, but that doesn’t— Wait, what’s that?” he went silent, leaving me hanging.

“What’s what?”

“Something’s glowing in the corner. Looks like a pair of— Oh, fucking hell. Jesus Christ!” he yelled, the steps jerking under him as he moved suddenly.

A deep growling noise joined his shouting.

“Is it an evil spirit?” I shrieked, lifting my hands to catch him in case he came tumbling down.

In my defense, the noises sounded like something was possessed, so my assumption wasn’t that irrational at that moment.

“Get off me, you furry bastard. What the fuck?”

“Is it a werewolf? I don’t know who to call for that. I don’t think Animal Control will know how to catch it.” I’ll give myself credit for the fact I genuinely did think hard about who would be the people to call about one.

“Call fucking Twilight, Bex,” he snapped, still thrashing around. “Tell them one of their cast members escaped.”

It took all of ten seconds for me to realize he was being sarcastic.

“There’s no need to be an asshole, Richards,” I yelled. “I’m trying to save your sorry ass here, and you’re—” I stopped, waving my hand at his feet. “You’re— What are you doing?”

“Trying to stop this cat from taking my head off. What does it look like?”

“Like your feet are tap-dancing on an old stepladder,” I mumbled to myself. Then I realized what he’d said. “Oh my God, there’s a kitty? Is it cute?”

The sound of something scratching the floorboards up there in the direction away from us sounded as he came quickly back down the steps.

His face and arms matched my house. I shit you not. He was covered in bleeding scratches and tufts of fur, meaning that a Saran wrapped house fit for a slasher totally suited him.

“What the hell?” I breathed, reaching out to carefully pick a chunk of hair off his shoulder. “What did you do to it?”

He’d been examining his arm, but when I asked that, he glared at me. “I didn’t offer it pot roast, Bex. Apparently, that’s a feline offense.”

I was tempted to stuff the hair that was still in my hand in his mouth for his sarcasm, but I held back. Just.

Pretending like I didn’t hear it instead, I pursued possible lines of insult for the cat. “Did you scare it or touch its stuff?”

“It’s stuff?” he asked incredulously. “You’ve got a feral cat living in your attic who lost its shit when I went up there, and you want to know if I pissed it off by touching ‘its stuff?’”

Throwing my arms up in the air and losing the hair in my hand, I snapped, “I don’t fucking know, Logan. I wasn’t up there to witness the exchange between you both. All I’m doing is trying to see if there’s a way to prevent it from happening again. The poor thing must be scared out of its mind.”

Way the wrong thing to say, apparently.

“Scared out of its mind?” he yelled. “It’s a fucking psycho! Why don’t you look at my arms and compare how many wounds I have to how many it doesn’t and tell me who’s scared out their mind.”

I didn’t want to add insult to injury, but I felt it pertinent to point his face out to him.

“You’ve also got some of them on your face. A couple on both cheeks, two on your chin, one on your forehead, and what looks like a puncture on your nose.” He raised his head to glare at the ceiling as I cataloged his injuries, enabling me to see three that I’d missed. “Oh, and there’s some on your neck, too.”

Lowering it back down, he glared at me like he was trying to melt ice with laser beams. “You done?”

I could neither confirm nor deny because a good friend would point out things like that to another, wouldn’t they?