Chapter 36: Fluffles
DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD.
Zayn stared at the title of the book in front of him and felt a certain emptiness well inside him — the same emptiness that always accompanied him when he reached the end of a truly remarkable story.
While the book hadn’t let him down, the fact that he could never experience it for the first time again consumed him, gnawing at his mind.
For this particular book, though, he was quite satisfied. It had thoroughly thrown him for a loop and perfectly hidden the fact that the character the reader followed was the killer all along!
He thought back to each time he’d been cleverly deceived by not only Olga Tokarczuk, but also Janina, the character she’d created.
By creating a character who was both utterly deranged and deeply understandable, Olga Tokarczuk had written a true masterpiece.
He knew he would spend the next week placing himself in Janina’s shoes.
What would he do if his neighbors were to kill Fluffles?
...
He stroked the fur of the white Persian cat he’d spent all his money on two years ago. She purred quietly in his warm embrace.
Zayn loved Fluffles.
She was the one who had pulled him out of the depths of despair and never left him behind. But...
What if the hunters Janina thought had killed her dogs weren’t assholes? What if it hadn’t been a result of ignorance and contempt? What if they were good people who hadn’t done anything wrong and, despite taking precautions while hunting, had accidentally killed Fluffles? What if they apologized and showed genuine regret?
Would he let the "animals of the forest seek their revenge"?
...
He and Janina might be awkwardly alike, but that wasn’t something he should ever admit. Then again, even if he did, it wasn’t as if he would be ashamed.
Zayn put the book down on the nightstand in his apartment — the only table he owned. He had to reach up to set it down because he didn’t even have a bed frame.
Most of his money nowadays went straight to his university fund, rent, food, and the debts left by his sister’s treatment. All the assets his family had ever owned had already been liquidated, so he didn’t have any money to spare. Zayn had tried to reach out to his extended family and some friends at one point, but everyone he had ever thought loved him had ignored him and treated him as if he didn’t exist.
The last time he’d even seen them was at his sister’s funeral, where they had shown up only so they could tell people that "someone close to them had died" and have others feel sorry for them, not because they loved Alina.
Zayn felt abandoned by the world, but he wasn’t going to give up on it or turn his back on it. He had made a vow, after all.
He’d promised Alina he’d never take his own life or willingly give it away, and that he’d try to treasure the world.
There were a couple of times when the pressure had mounted and nearly broken him, but whenever he pictured the cute, adorable face of his little sister...
He knew he’d get quite the earful in the afterlife when he reunited with her.
He didn’t want their first conversation after they reunited to consist of him receiving one of her little spiels about how he needed to treat himself better and love the world more.
Then again, hearing her voice would have been a blessing Zayn would have traded anything for.
’Fuck cancer.’
The silent killer.
That damn killer that showed up in the night and killed the good people while leaving the bad to prosper and laugh. It slowly tortured and choked an innocent person, forcing them to endure every physical and emotional pain a human could imagine...
’People say imagination has no limits. Well, neither does cancer. It takes and it takes.’
"All we can do is imagine a world without it."
That was the limit of imagination...
Zayn gently lifted Fluffles off him and placed her on the bed, then rolled off the mattress and onto the floor.
Fluffles had been Alina’s dying wish. She didn’t want Zayn to be alone.
Fluffles’ actual name was Alina, yet Zayn always found it too hard to say aloud, so he’d taken to naming her after her coat of flowing, thick, soft-to-the-touch white fur.
Alina had urged Zayn to buy Fluffles using the money he’d receive from her life insurance, encouraging him to splurge and not worry about a funeral, saying, "Nobody would come anyway."
Of course, Zayn had still held her funeral, but a part of him wished he hadn’t. Seeing the people who had shown up just for show, crying tears of mock sorrow, had pissed him off and torn a hole in his heart.
They’d never reached out to Alina before she died, so why had they come now?
Zayn didn’t understand — he never would.
How could people... how could the world be so heartless?
Zayn quietly walked over to the kitchen area of his studio apartment in some godforsaken corner of Munich and pulled a glass out of the cabinet. Then he looked over and locked eyes with the framed picture held against the fridge by a magnet.
Tears brimmed in Zayn’s eyes every time he looked at the picture.
It was of his entire family before their world had gone to shit. Before his sister was diagnosed. Before his mom died in a car crash. Before his dad committed suicide.
Zayn hated the world and everyone in it. To him, it felt like they had all betrayed him.
That, obviously, wasn’t true. The world had never been on anyone’s side to begin with.
But...
Regardless of the validity of his feelings, Zayn would always hold a seething hatred of the world for everything it put his family through.
Yet...
The people he loved had once lived in that world and shared it with him — and for that, he loved it.
It was a terrible paradox.
Even the place Zayn lived in felt cursed by the world. It had been purchased using the money he inherited from his parents and the proceeds from the subsequent liquidation of their assets. Of course, he hadn’t received any life insurance from his dad...
Not that he ever blamed his father for what he had done.
The pitiful man had lost more than Zayn ever had in the first place.
Zayn reached his free hand toward the fridge handle. Before he could grasp it, a wave of dizziness overtook him, sending him stumbling as if someone had just clocked him in the head.
The glass slipped from his grip and crashed onto the floor, shattering.
A sudden pressure gripped his chest, and Zayn fumbled around in a panic, stepping across the glass shards.
He didn’t know what cardiac arrest felt like, but this had to be it.
Zayn crashed into the fridge and began to fall.
He tried to grab the door handle for leverage, but he missed and instead ripped the picture from the fridge.
Even though he felt like he was dying, Zayn dove to save it, but he was too late. The glazing shattered upon contact with the ground, leaving Zayn crying and bloody on the floor... alone.
"H-help..."
Zayn tried to scream, but only managed a whimper as he lay with his face pressed against shards of glass.
He slowly reached out and took the portrait in his hands, shakily bringing it toward his face. There was a single crack running over the image that blocked out only his face, as if he’d been the only one to die.
Fluffles, drawn by the commotion, rushed over and began meowing repeatedly, licking Zayn as if each stroke of her tongue might heal him.
"Fluffles... Alina... Help..."
Nobody responded. Nobody ever would.
Nobody except the cat who licked her master’s face and cried.
In the next instant, a blue light filled Zayn’s vision and obscured the photograph.
Zayn thought it was death’s cold embrace finally taking him — finally granting him the secret wish he had always held.
He just hoped someone would find Fluffles and take care of her.
But...
Death would’ve been a kind mercy compared to the fate that awaited this already broken man.
Or perhaps fate had chosen him precisely because he was already on the brink of breaking.
Either way, the world needed a savior. A savior who would fight against the world to ultimately save it.
Fate was cruel...
It had chosen a man who couldn’t run.
It had chosen a man who had made an irrevocable vow to live.
The blue light faded, and Zayn lay on the grass with an empty hand outstretched before him — the photo had disappeared from his grasp.