Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker (novel books to read .txt) 📕

seemed to be the most sensible solution. Art protested at first, but when I reminded him that the only other suitable room was his study he soon relented and went up to the loft to bring down Nut’s sleeping crate, litter tray, and her food and water dishes.

Nut hadn’t seen our bedroom before, so we needed to introduce her gently. We left the door to her carry case open and left her alone in the room with the door closed, thinking it would overstimulate her if we were there too.

Art coughed into his elbow and then pressed his ear to the bedroom door. “Do you think we need to buy a lock?”

We made sure the door was properly shut before heading downstairs for some breathing room. My hands shook with the same jitters I’d had on Nut’s first day. We sat in silence in the kitchen, both of us not saying anything but listening for the creak of floorboards above.

12

Sometimes it’s the silence that wakes me. It penetrates the void, louder than sound. My first thought is always, “Please be here. Please don’t be gone. Please don’t have died secretly in the night. How can I lift your body when I’m soft as butter, as weak as milk?”

But as autumn began to burn, Nut would always be there asleep under the bedframe, the curve of her back a mountain of heather, rising and falling between me and the light of sunrise.

Our new system worked well, at least at the beginning. Art would check on Nut during the day when he went to the bathroom or to grab something to eat, and he said her routine had hardly changed from her loft-days. Sleep, pace, eat, sleep. We kept the blinds closed so she couldn’t be seen by the upstairs residents across the street, and lit the room with a daylight lamp. Whenever Art opened the door a crack and peeked inside, Nut would be either lounging sidelong on the floor or cleaning her flanks with long, sensual licks of her tongue. Every few hours or so she’d snap, and run around the room as if chasing a scuttling creature he couldn’t see.

Every morning, Art would heave Nut onto the bed and pin her there while I vacuumed the thick minky layer of hair coating the carpet. Now that Nut was a juvenile, she didn’t need it anymore, and even though we’d known this would happen I still couldn’t help but check again with Art (as I went over the floor for the second time that day), “Is this definitely normal? Should she be losing this much at once?”

The only damage I could see from Nut having free run of the bedroom was that she’d started to pull up the carpet by the door so she could gnaw the floorboards. One morning, she’d pulled out the patchwork blanket from under my side of the bed and dragged it halfway across the room. Art picked it up by one bedraggled corner.

“Where did this come from?”

I sat up in bed and made my face go soft. “Aubrey made it for me when I moved into my flat. It’s pretty old now.”

Art’s face twisted as he turned it this way and that. “Why’s it so… mad? Didn’t she know what she was doing?”

“She started off knitting it, see the yellow? But it took too long, so she sewed her old jumpers together to make the rest.” I could still see her sitting in lotus position, finishing one row on her needles then punching the sky in victory.

Art was still staring at it, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I think she wanted to see my face when she gave it to me. If she’d kept on knitting it, that day would never have come.”

“She never struck me as the future-facing type.”

“She can be. Sewn together this tight, that old rag might even outlast you.”

“Hmm.” Art rolled up the blanket and thrust it on top of the wardrobe where Nut wouldn’t be able to reach it again. “Not sure I’d be so proud of that, if I was her.”

Anyway, pulling out what I stashed beneath the bed was small fry, considering how big Nut was getting. I never caught her doing anything she shouldn’t, and by the time I went up to bed at around 11pm she’d already be curled in her crate, good as gold. She wouldn’t even stir as Art came in and undressed an hour or two later. She’d sleep through our morning alarms, and only stirred at the clink of her food bowl being filled.

But this peace didn’t last.

Perhaps it had been the stress of her time in the Grove that’d temporarily subdued her, but as the days went by Nut’s sleeping pattern became disjointed, and she began to rise earlier and earlier each morning. She started to take her morning run at just past 3am, stomping around the space regardless of what stood in her way. At first, when she got to our bed she’d run beneath the frame, but soon she became emboldened (or wanted a challenge), and instead of scrabbling underneath, she’d vault onto the bed and leap over our heads in one terrifying arc.

It was impossible to sleep like that, and we moved our pillows half a metre down the bed so Nut had a clear runway and we’d avoid being crushed by her night-time stampede. I was exhausted but didn’t want to let on, so painted on more lipstick and cream blush. Art looked terrible, and whenever he did drift off he mumbled incessantly. “What’s she saying?”, “Shhhh”, “Too loud.” Maybe no one else would have noticed, but standing side by side with him in front of the bathroom mirror revealed how pale he’d become, how his hair had darkened with oil. His lips were practically white.

I still couldn’t concentrate at work. My eyes couldn’t read the numbers fast enough, and shot side to side painfully in order to keep up. If I could