“Solace”

The calendar on her fridge still showed May, though the heat pressing through Marla’s windows said otherwise. Her air conditioner had wheezed its final breath sometime in April, and the repairman she had called never showed up. She stopped following up after the second voicemail. It didn’t seem worth the effort.

Most days, she stayed inside her small cottage on the edge of town, curtains half-drawn, windows streaked with pollen and dust. The floor tiles curled slightly at the corners, and the ceiling fan creaked when it turned. Everything in the house felt tired—but Marla didn’t mind. Her job, copyediting for a handful of self-published romance authors, required little of her. The hours were erratic, the pay inconsistent, but it suited her. She hadn’t had to speak to anyone in person for weeks. Occasionally, her sister called, always during dinner, always with that half-cheerful, half-pleading tone that made Marla feel both loved and accused. She’d answer, sometimes.

Outside, the neighborhood had grown quieter than usual. Lawnmowers no longer buzzed on Sunday afternoons. No children shouted from backyards or rode bikes down the crumbling sidewalk. Cars passed less frequently, and when they did, they moved slowly, their windows rolled up, their faces blank behind the glare of their windshields. The town, it seemed, was becoming increasingly withdrawn.

The only thing growing was the heat, warping the wood and souring the air. In the evenings, the cicadas started early and ended late, their endless trill filling the silence.

Marla didn’t mind the stillness. She had learned long ago that life was quieter after certain losses. She kept her habits small and her world smaller. Coffee at seven. Emails at nine. A short walk to the mailbox by noon, if she remembered. It was on one such walk—barefoot, slow-moving, the sky already growing hazy with heat—that she first noticed the cat.

It sat at the end of her walkway, perfectly still, staring at her—a large gray shape, its eyes the color of old coins.

* * * * * *

The cat didn’t run when Marla stepped closer.

She paused a few feet from it, feeling the heat rising off the pavement through the soles of her feet. The cat’s fur looked oddly plush for summer, its coat thick and unruffled. It didn’t blink. Its eyes remained fixed on her face.

“Are you lost?” she asked.

It didn’t respond. Of course, it didn’t.

Still, something about the silence between them felt… conversational. She crouched, wincing as her knees popped, and extended a hand. The cat leaned forward slowly and pressed the top of its head against her fingers. Its fur was warm—almost hot—and startlingly smooth.

“Well,” she muttered, “I guess you’re mine now.”

She opened the door behind her. The cat walked past her legs and into the house without a sound.

She didn’t think to check for a collar.

It didn’t take to food. She offered tuna, then dry kibble she’d had in the pantry from a stray that passed through last fall. The cat didn’t sniff it, and didn’t approach the bowl. Instead, it circled the living room once, stopped beside the foot of the couch, and stared at her until she sat down.

“Is this what you want?” she asked softly, easing herself onto the cushion.

He jumped up beside her without hesitation, turned a slow half-circle, then climbed into her lap. He was heavier than she’d expected.

She didn’t move for nearly an hour.

That night, he followed her into the bedroom. She left the door cracked, out of habit, and when she rolled onto her side beneath the fan, she saw his silhouette by the doorframe. She patted the blanket once, and the cat sauntered over.  He stepped onto the bed in total silence, padded toward her chest, and lay down squarely over her ribs, aligning his paws over her heart, with his head resting just beneath her chin. He never made a sound, purr, or twitch. He just stayed there, watching her, as Marla felt the weight of him sink through the blanket.

That was the first night she slept without dreaming.

The next morning, she named him Solace. It came out of her mouth unbidden, as if she’d always known it.

He didn’t react to the name, but even so, he followed her from room to room that day, never straying more than a few feet from her heels. And when she lay down that night, he climbed onto her chest again, as before, like he belonged there, as if he’d done it a hundred times already.

* * * * * *

Solace didn’t leave. If anything, his presence became more of a fixture over time.

He no longer sat by the door, gazed out the window, or lingered in thresholds. He was always with her, nestled between her feet during breakfast, curling around her ankles in the hallway, and each night settled silently onto her chest to rest.

It felt natural. That was the strangest part.

Marla’s days began to blur together. Her sleep came more heavily now, and she rose later than before—at ten, or sometimes nearly noon—constantly sluggish and always thirsty, unwilling to move for hours after waking.

Solace never stirred until she did, and when she shifted beneath his weight, he would look at her expectantly.

Her limbs grew heavier as the week passed, and her appetite waned. Food lost its appeal, though she forced herself to chew dry toast and drink warm water. She stopped checking her email. The manuscript she was editing for a woman in Montana sat unopened in her inbox. It no longer seemed urgent.

Once, she caught herself staring at the wall for nearly twenty minutes without blinking.

On the fifth morning, the sun hung low and bloated behind a scrim of pale clouds, its light drained of warmth. Marla opened the front door to find the street empty. There was no traffic or mail truck. Even the birds seemed to have gone silent.

She walked to the edge of her porch, squinting toward the neighboring house across the street. Mrs. Denton usually watered her garden at this time. Her marigolds had spilled past the borders of their flowerbed the prior spring, and she fussed over them with quiet devotion, but the yard was overgrown now. The hose lay curled and cracked, windchimes hanging still in the stale air.

Marla stepped off the porch. The sidewalk was warm beneath her bare feet. She wandered toward the corner store, just to check.

Three blocks down, she saw someone. A young man with blond hair walked toward her on the opposite side of the road. He moved slowly and stiffly, like he hadn’t slept. A tabby cat clung to his shoulder, its claws sunk in gently, head close to his ear. The man didn’t speak or look at her. He didn’t seem to notice her at all.

Farther ahead, she saw a woman pushing a stroller. A sleek black cat padded along beside her, brushing against her calf in time with her steps.

Behind them, an older man in a polo shirt shuffled down the sidewalk with a cat perched on his back. It sat between his shoulder blades like a bird of prey, unmoving, its tail twitching in rhythm with his stride.

No one looked at each other. No one spoke.

Marla stopped and turned around. Behind her, Solace stood, waiting on the porch, his yellow eyes narrowed. He leapt down and walked calmly to her feet, rubbing once against her ankle before stepping ahead of her, leading the way home.

She followed without a word.

* * * * * *

Before long, the cats were everywhere. On rooftops, on fences, in windowsills that had always been too narrow to perch on. Marla saw them sunning on cars that never moved and sitting motionless in the middle of driveways, their heads turned toward doorways as if they were waiting to be let in.

They didn’t chase birds and grasshoppers, paw at moths, or even eat so far as she could tell. They simply were. Everywhere.

Solace remained her shadow. He no longer strayed even a room away. If she turned suddenly, she would find him already watching. He rarely blinked, and never purred.

One night, she awoke to the sensation of Solace on her chest again. She tried to sit up and couldn’t. The cat seemed heavier than ever. And this time, he no longer rested on her ribs but pressed through them, sinking deeper.

As he stood atop her, she became keenly aware of a pulling feeling. With each of her exhalations, Solace’s chest appeared to expand. At first, she suspected their breathing had become synchronized. But something was wrong. Her limbs responded sluggishly, like she’d been drugged. She moved one finger, then two, and even that took considerable effort. Employing all the strength she could muster, her chest only rose slightly beneath the weight.

It was then she realized that the cat was not simply breathing in air. He was siphoning her’s, one breath at a time. And there was nothing she could do about it.

* * * * * *

When morning came, she had recovered somewhat but barely remembered the night; nonetheless, she didn’t question the aching hollowness that clung to her limbs. She remembered what had happened, every terrifying moment.

That afternoon, she tried calling her sister.

The phone rang four times before a wall of static answered. She could hear someone on the other end—labored breathing, followed by a soft clicking sound, like claws on plastic. Then her sister’s voice emerged through the noise, faint and strained, saying something Marla couldn’t understand, before the phone disconnected.

She didn’t call again.

By the next day, the act of standing had been torturous.

Marla tried to leave the house only once after the cats had fully arrived. It was early morning, and the sunlight hadn’t yet bleached the sky into that thick, endless white. She stepped out onto the porch and descended the first two stairs before her knees buckled.

She crumpled forward onto the grass, the blades sharp and hot beneath her palms. The sky tilted. The sidewalk shimmered. A low ringing began at the back of her skull and bloomed outward until she couldn’t hear the birds, the breeze, or the cicadas. Everything folded inward, and she closed her eyes, just for a moment.

When she opened them again, she was back in bed. She didn’t remember walking. She didn’t remember rising, moving, or climbing the steps, and yet, there she was, in bed, with the sheets drawn to her chin.

And there, lying across her chest, with one paw pressed flat against her throat, was Solace, his gaze fixed on something beyond her face.

She reached for him with trembling hands, her fingers floating upward as if underwater. She brushed his side and felt warmth rise from him like coals.

Marla tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Her body still answered her, but in strange, delayed increments. She thought of moving and waited to feel it happen. A second passed, then ten. Then her arm would twitch, or her foot would slide an inch against the mattress, as if her nervous system had grown unresponsive.

* * * * * *

That night, she dreamed of bodies. On beds, on couches, on sun-bleached grass. Some curled in a fetal position on hardwood floors. Each had a cat on them: stretched across their ribs, their necks, their backs. Watching. Feeding. None of the bodies struggled. None breathed. But they didn’t look afraid. Their faces were slack and faintly smiling, their mouths parted slightly, as if forming words they would never say.

She recognized some of them—people from the grocery store, the neighborhood, or memory. The young man with the tabby. The woman with the stroller. Her sister.

Marla woke with a start and nearly screamed, but even that proved impossible. Solace still lay across her chest, and he had grown heavier again. Worse yet, his fur no longer felt like fur. His body was warmer than it should have been, and beneath the thin skin of his flank, something unnatural pulsed.

That’s when she began to understand: the cat’s presence itself was making her weak. She only felt well when he wasn’t near, which was not often. And yet, even with this knowledge, the idea of a night without him seemed unbearable, even terrifying.

He was draining her of life, day by day, one breath at a time.

And she no longer had the strength to fight it.

* * * * * *

She waited for the heat to dip in the late afternoon before trying again.

She would walk, she had decided. She didn’t know where. It felt like something she had forgotten how to do, and that was reason enough.

Solace watched her dress from the bed. He didn’t move when she stood, and didn’t follow her to the door. He remained exactly where he was, nestled into the hollow her body had left behind.

Marla stepped outside—and found the town silent.

The sun filtered through a gauze of gray haze. A parked car up the street had moss growing on its tires. Marla passed the house next door—its porch light was on, though it was still daylight. The windows were open, and beyond the screen she could see someone reclining in an armchair, arms folded neatly in their lap. A white cat lay across their chest. Neither of them moved.

She kept walking.

At the corner, she paused beneath the warped stop sign and looked down the hill toward the park. The grass had turned yellow, and the trees drooped under the weight of the heat. She saw three people spread across the benches and lawn, each one still and slumped, their limbs arranged in unnatural ways. One had collapsed across the edge of the sandbox.

A cat lay curled on each of them. One black, one orange, one gray, all of them as still as statues. And they were staring at her.

She moved on.

At the edge of town, Marla passed the community center, where its glass door hung open. Inside, the receptionist’s head lolled against the back of her chair. A ginger tabby perched across her collarbones like a scarf.

The post office door was locked. A plastic sign inaccurately proclaimed “Back in 5.”

The market was dark, its shelves half-stocked and its register drawers ajar. Marla saw a man asleep at the butcher’s counter, his forehead resting against the glass. A cat crouched behind his neck, nose against his ear.

Marla didn’t try to speak to anyone, for fear of attracting more attention to herself.

Legs shaking, she reached the park again and lowered herself to a bench beneath the oak tree at its center.

She didn’t remember bringing Solace, and yet there he was, waiting for her. He leapt into her lap, circled once, and settled across her thighs.

She closed her eyes.

And when she opened them again, she was home.

* * * * * *

The next day began like the others.

She opened her eyes to dim light and silence. The fan above the bed had stopped spinning, and dust hung in the air like ash suspended in syrup. Her mouth was dry, and her breath came shallow, though she barely noticed.

She didn’t reach for her phone. She no longer needed clocks.

Solace lay beside her, his body pressed against her side instead of across her chest, his head resting against the hollow of her throat. She could feel the faint pull of him, like a tide moving through her ribs with each breath she gave.

She rose sometime after the sun passed its peak. Her movements were slow, but they no longer frightened her.

She poured a glass of water, though she didn’t drink it. She changed her clothes and brushed her hair. These small rituals felt abstract now, as if she were performing them on behalf of someone else, someone she had once been.

At dusk, she drew the curtains closed and bolted the front door. The world outside no longer held meaning. The town, the trees, the sky—none of it mattered. What was real lived inside the house. What was true waited in her bedroom.

She wasn’t certain where these thoughts originated, but they arrived all the same, and she hadn’t the strength to refute them.

She returned to her bed without ceremony.

Solace sat in the middle of the bed and faced her, tail wrapped around his paws, his body rigid in anticipation.

She took a seat on the edge of the mattress and looked at him for a long time. There was no sorrow or final protest. The fear had gone days ago, replaced by something soft and warm and terrifying in its comfort.

She lay down.

He stepped forward slowly, no longer with the casual grace of a housecat, but with the gravity of something old and exacting. He climbed onto her chest with ease, each paw placed precisely between her ribs.

His body was even heavier now, more than it had ever been. Her lungs compressed beneath the weight, and her heartbeat slowed.

Solace lowered his head until their faces nearly touched, and Marla allowed her eyes to close.

In the stillness of the moment, as she breathed weakly, she became dimly aware of a sensation like warmth being drawn outward—wisps leaving her through parted lips, trailing into the space behind the cat’s teeth. Of something essential leaving her.

She thought, vaguely, of a line from an old dream: When the breath forgets its body, the body forgets its name.

She couldn’t remember her name now, only Solace.

And in that final moment, rather than fear, she felt something perilously close to love, even as she grew paler by the moment.

One last time, she raised a hand to stroke the cat, and exhaled, her final breath consumed by her feline companion the instant it escaped her body.

Satisfied at last, Solace nestled into Marla’s chest and purred.

* * * * * *