This is where I put my writing, or at least some of it:)
the demon, the goat, my father, and my cat
My dad was Catholic.
I remember each night he’d ramble the verses of Psalms like he was a preacher and not a home-isolated mild bigot of a man. His favorites of the selection, though, were always from the Old Testament. Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah. In particular, the stories of demons are why I’m writing to myself.
Demons, like angels, are often misinterpreted. They’re seen as creatures that are just going to possess humans or come to them in their form. They don’t. Instead, they take the animals.
Isaiah 34:14
“The wild goat shall cry to his fellow,”
My family lived on one of two small hills in the woods. There was a slope between us and a little farm home an old man operated, I don’t know where he is now. One day I, a fool, explored the other hill, and I slipped into the barn when the man was cutting off the horns of his goats.He heard me scream soon after.
Though I knew horn cutting didn’t hurt the goats, my young mind saw the blood dripping and reacted accordingly. The worst part was that I still have that horn as a keepsake.
The man gave it to me as a way to apologize, which, frankly, I’m shocked didn’t raise alarms for my mom. My dad was, of course, very upset with not just a nuclear meltdown of a child, but also a very demon-related horn near his child. Despite all this, my mom insisted I kept it.
Other than that incident, I never really learned much about the old man,other than he knew my dad from years back. He wasn’t a recluse, he had people over on a constant basis, though they were usually the poor vagabonds who roamed the roads outside our hills. He’d take them in, and they’d come out refreshed and invigorated, as if they had a dose of energy injected.
It wasn’t until I was around 16 that I saw the next goat-get-its-horns-removed incident. At that point, my dad had retired to a little ranch in the middle of soul-sucking California, where he took care of a horse, an unholy amount of chickens and roosters, and a few other random assortments of animals. Many would be in and out, usually sold or adopted.
Though one time a goat stayed with him for a while, a young flashy white lad. I have zero clue why no one would’ve wanted him, but he had been checked out and returned (?) several times.
I remember one warm evening when I was still living with my mom, I came to help my dad. He was resistant to the idea of me helping him, but the goats had horns that could’ve broken his legs if it was just him.
So, him and I, in the matching boots he’d gotten me for my birthday a year prior, got to work. Some transition to show the passing of time. I wrangled the goat into a sort of container, one with chains and a lock that made it so it couldn’t move.
I was still fairly squeamish about the idea of goats and horns, so as soon as I finished, I went away to go play with the chickens he had around the place. s I was chasing around balls of feathery cuteness, I heard the goat scream.
Its screeches made me rush back to my dad. I was greeted with yet another scene of mild blood dripping and a severed piece.
My father was annoyed, of course, mostly at the fact I was so freaked out when I had just walked back to my father midway through cutting the horns off.
I explained that when the man had cut the horn of the goat before, two things were different, and to this day I can’t tell what was the worst detail. The first was that usually, young horns shouldn’t bleed much at all. The horns grow major arteries and at that point, cutting them would mean possible death for the animal.The old man’s boots were covered. I never saw his goats out, I knew with an, albeit faint, confidence that there was no chance that a goat could have survived that.
And second, the goat didn’t scream.
I remember my cries of panic and fear all too well, but the goat… it stood there, taking the threat of death with human-like resolve.
Either way, it should have been screaming, or reacting. But instead, the slits of its eyes were like window screens at night, void of any sort of reaction.
My dad and I only talked a few times after that, though he gave me an adorable cat on that same day. I named him Isaiah.
We began talking again on his deathbed. Though even then it was small talk about what shows he’d been watching on his deathbed. Or what he saw out his window like the orange leaves.Funny enough, the same day the man went under was also the same day Isaiah had “died.”
I say that in quotes as when my dad was finally getting ready to go, Isaiah fell into some sort of cardiac arrest, or something of the sort, yet as soon as my dad came at peacefully, the gift he gave me, came back to life. A miracle, he would’ve called it.
Mom passed a while back, so there it is me and Isaiah.
I came home after the final burial of my father, and I closed the door to find the fur goblin to be standing there. Isiah lifted his paw for me to see. Somehow, he had gotten a thumbtack stuck in him, as I pulled it out, the crimson blood of the feline was hard to see, but what was harder to bear, was Isaiah’s blank expression, devoid of pain.
After that, I didn’t really see Isaiah the same way, he’d always stare at pictures of my mom, meowing. I think he misses her, but frankly, they never met.
Worst of all, some days I swear I hear talking in one room, I open the door bracing myself even though I know it’s impossible, and sure enough, I see my cat, a gift from my father, alone.
Staring through a window
At the orange leaves.