By all accounts, Jennifer was an average ten year old girl, living in an average family. She was a creative girl with a vivid imagination who loved to draw. She had a cat, who she loved very much, named Piper. She was the only child of loving parents, and she was doted on by her mother and father. Outside of their closest neighbours, no one would have expected that anything was less than ideal in their household. Their neighbours knew better.
Jennifer’s parent fought often. They would get loud, screaming at one another. Jennifer was a scared little girl, and not knowing what to do when her parents got into it, she withdrew into her own world. She would draw little cartoons in her diary, where her and Piper would travel the world and go on adventures. She and Piper would win Nobel prizes, and Oscars, and Emmys, and Grammys, and be interviewed on TV, and be on the covers of magazines. They would both become doctors, so they could heal sick people. They would help people who needed it, and would stop people from being hurt. They would go to the White House and meet the president and convince him that wars were bad, bringing peace to the world.
Jennifer, being a little girl, wasn’t allowed to wander very far from home. Piper, being a cat, was allowed to come and go as she pleased. Jennifer would hear Piper leave the house to go on her own adventure, and Jennifer wished she could join her, longing for the freedom that her cat had. She wished her wish so hard and so often, that she started having dreams that she was Piper. At night, Jennifer dreamt that her soul would swap places with Piper’s. Piper would sleep in Jennifer’s body, and Jennifer would explore as Piper.
At first, she was like a kitten discovering the world. Learning how high she could jump, and how to use her tail to keep her balance when walking on a fence. She learned to focus her hearing so she could sense with a great deal of accuracy where even the faintest noise was coming from, and how she could follow smells in the air as though she were following a line painted on the ground. She learned that she could freeze, letting her sneak up on mice and birds so she could pounce on them and run away. She wasn’t really hunting them, she didn’t want to hurt her friends after all.
However, there was an incident where she had been playing hide and seek with her tiny companions, and she learned about how her claws worked, viscerally. She hadn’t thought about how she needed to keep them retracted while she was playing, but she was still part cat and sometimes cat instincts would take over, and she accidentally ripped one of the mice with her claws. There was blood, and gore, and she felt sick and scared. She woke up screaming, and her mother came to comfort her.
Her mother held Jennifer, listening to her explain between sobs how she and Piper switched places every night, and how she accidentally hurt a mouse that night. Jennifer didn’t want to hurt mice, but when she smelled the blood, she felt a feeling that she didn’t like and woke up. Her mother smoothed Jennifer’s hair and told her that it was just a dream, and that she didn’t actually hurt a mouse. Her mother told her that if she was ever having a nightmare again, to know that it wasn’t real, and if her dream was too scary, she could just wake up, call for mommy, and everything would be okay. They stayed on the bed, holding each other, until it was time to get up.
Her mother threw out the dead mouse that Piper left by the door that morning, mentioning it to no one.
Jennifer and Piper continued to swap their consciousnesses when Jennifer would sleep. As time went on she became more capable as a cat, and she learned how to play without using her claws. She enjoyed her nightly escapades, and would explore the neighbourhood, pushing herself to cross one more street, to see a bit more of the world, that she couldn’t yet explore on her own. Jennifer was happy.
One night, while out exploring in Piper’s body, she saw her father leave the house quietly and go for a walk. Curious, Jennifer followed him. She used the skills she had learned as a cat to remain unseen, but to always know where her father was. He walked for a few blocks, went up to a house, pulled out his phone, and sent a text. Moments later, the door to the house opened, and her father slipped inside. Night after night, Jennifer watched the same scene play out.
One morning at breakfast, she mentioned that had been having the same dream every night for the last few weeks. She described it to her parents, and asked what was in that house. Her father glared at her and her mother, and her mother fought back tears. Jennifer could sense that she shouldn’t have asked about her dream, but wasn’t sure why. The family ate in silence. Eventually, they finished eating and went their separate ways. Jennifer spent the day drawing in her diary.
The dream changed that night. It started the same way, with Jennifer-as-Piper waiting outside for her father to leave. He didn’t, but she heard yelling coming from inside the house. She snuck back into her own room and hid under bed, while Piper-as-Jennifer slept in it. Jennifer could hear her parents yelling at each other.
Her father was shouting at her mother wondering who told her about the house. Her mother was shouting back trying to assure him that she didn’t know what Jennifer had been talking about. There were threats to leave, declarations of never having been in love, and accusations of infidelity. The argument was louder and more intense than Jennifer had ever experienced. She could hear sirens, faint in the distance, and the air stunk of fear and anger. The fight thundered on until it thudded to a stop.
Jennifer could only sense one parent breathing now. She could only hear one of their hearts racing. She waited under the bed frozen with fear, listening to her father’s footsteps come towards her room. She saw the light spill in from the hallway as her bedroom door pushed open, and she saw the silhouette of a hammer gripped in her father’s hand. Jennifer had never been so scared, and she remembered that her mother had told her that if a dream was too scary she should wake up and call for mommy.
She woke up screaming for her mother. When she opened her eyes, she saw her father looming over her drenched in sweat and blood, eyes wide, ready to swing a hammer.
THE END