“The Cat Wall”

Part I

Bob came to the vague realization that something had gone wrong the moment he opened his eyes and found himself standing in an infinite white void. There was no light source, yet he could see. No walls, yet he could feel the space around him. No sound, save for the faintest ringing, like the aftermath of a particularly loud concert.

He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten here, but there were a few strong clues pointing toward the possibility that he had, in fact, died.

The first clue was the distinct lack of a body. He could feel himself moving, could shift his weight from one foot to another, could lift what should have been his hands before his face, but there was nothing there to see. The second clue was the overwhelming certainty that he should be panicking but wasn’t. Some detached part of his consciousness seemed to be smoothing things over, nudging him toward acceptance with an eerie calmness that made the whole thing feel like a dream.

And finally, the third clue: The door.

It had not been there a moment ago, but there it stood—an arched wooden door, floating upright without walls to support it, a brass knob glinting in the absent light. He was certain that behind it lay the answer.

He reached for the handle, hesitating only slightly before pulling it open.

* * * * * *

It was not what he had expected.

Bob had never been particularly religious, but he had always assumed that if Heaven existed, it would be grand. Blindingly white. A chorus of trumpets, maybe. Instead, he stepped into a small, dimly lit office, the kind you might find tucked away in the back of a tax preparation service.

A battered metal desk sat at the center of the room, papers stacked haphazardly on its surface. A water cooler gurgled in the corner. And behind the desk sat God.

Bob knew it was Him, because who else could it be? The old man wore a gray cardigan over a button-up shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, reading glasses perched on the tip of His nose. He was flipping through a manila folder, shaking His head in disappointment.

“Bob,” He said at last, not looking up. “We need to talk.”

Bob cleared his throat. “I—uh, so. This is Heaven?”

God let out a long, tired sigh, closing the folder. “Bob. Buddy. You didn’t make it to Heaven.”

There was a long silence.

“I didn’t…?” Bob trailed off. He was struggling to reconcile the words with his expectations. Surely, there had been a mistake. “But I wasn’t a bad person!”

God finally looked at him, raising an unimpressed eyebrow.

Bob pressed on, his voice growing desperate. “I never killed anyone! I gave to charity! I—I recycled!”

God laced His fingers together and leaned forward. His tone was patient, in the way a school principal’s might be right before delivering a month’s worth of detention. “Bob, you were a selfish, smug bastard. You cut people off in traffic. You lied to waiters. You left passive-aggressive notes on your neighbors’ doors. You were the human equivalent of a damp sock.”

Bob gawked at Him.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

Bob shook his head. “No. No, I refuse to believe that every single person who did those things went to Hell.”

“Of course not,” God replied. “But you? You did them all the time. You didn’t even think about it. You weren’t evil, Bob, but you were insufferable—and frankly, that’s worse.”

Bob was still reeling when God snapped the folder shut, stood up, and stretched. “Anyway. Time’s up.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, right, one last thing.” God smiled faintly. “All cats go to Hell.”

That was the last thing Bob heard before the floor dropped out from beneath him.

* * * * * *

He landed hard on his back, gasping as the air—did he even still breathe air?—rushed from his lungs. Hell was not fire and brimstone. It was a warehouse.

Rows of metal desks stretched into the distance, each occupied by an unfortunate soul being handed a clipboard by a disinterested demon. The place had all the charm of a particularly grimy DMV. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

A demon in a wrinkled button-up shirt materialized beside him, glancing at the clipboard in its clawed hand.

“Name?”

“Uh, Bob.”

The demon scanned the page. “Right, right. Bob. Yep. Got you down for…” It frowned, turning the clipboard around and tilting its head. “Oof.”

Bob sat up slowly. “Oof?”

The demon gave him a pitying look. “Rough deal, buddy. You got the Cat Wall.”

Bob blinked. “The what?”

“The Cat Wall.” The demon shoved the clipboard at him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Best of luck. Try not to breathe through your nose.”

As Bob was hauled to his feet and shuffled toward the exit, he passed a woman clutching a clipboard of her own.

“What’d you get?” he asked.

She glanced down at the paper, then back at him, her eyes dark with despair.

“Customer service.”

Bob’s stomach turned.

* * * * * *

The walk to his assignment took longer than he expected. The warehouse gave way to a sprawling wasteland of crumbling buildings, broken machinery, and rivers of what he was really hoping was just oil. He tried to ask his escort for details, but the demon simply shrugged.

“You’ll see.”

It was only when they reached a towering, rust-streaked gate that Bob caught his first glimpse of it.

And dear God.

It was a wall.

A wall made of cats.

It stretched into the distance, seemingly endless, its surface a writhing, pulsating mass of fur and limbs. Some cats meowed, some howled. Some were clearly alive, blinking in confusion or licking at their fur in futile attempts to groom, while others—well, others had been there longer.

Bob was horrified.

The demon gave him a shove. “Well. Good luck.”

Bob could only stare, clipboard limp in his hands, as he took in his new eternity.

Part II

Bob had seen some horrifying things in his life—freak highway accidents, a co-worker’s raw chicken sandwich, his neighbor’s toenail collection—but none of those compared to the absolute, undiluted nightmare that was the Cat Wall.

He had always imagined Hell as a place of grand, cosmic suffering. Fire. Chains. Demons wielding pitchforks and laughing maniacally as sinners screamed in agony. Instead, he had been assigned to this.

The wall loomed before him, stretching out in both directions farther than his mind could process. It did not appear to have been built so much as grown, an undulating, pulsating expanse of fur, flesh, and far too many tails. The cats—if they could still be called that—were fused together, some facing outward, some crushed beneath others, their bodies shifting in an ever-changing, agonized tapestry. Some hissed. Some meowed. Some, disturbingly, did neither.

The smell, however, was the worst part.

It was the scent of fur matted with filth, the pungency of unwashed animals, and beneath it all, a deep, cloying rot. He had smelled something similar before—an alley cat that had died behind his apartment complex, its body left to fester in the summer heat—but that had been one cat. This was thousands. No, millions.

Bob clutched the clipboard in his hands, using it as an inadequate shield between himself and the horror before him.

A figure loomed beside him, clearing its throat.

Bob turned, finding himself face to face with a demon who, for lack of a better description, looked like the physical embodiment of a corporate middle manager who had been thrown into a meat grinder and somehow survived. His skin was mottled gray, his horns small and unimpressive, and his expression one of smug superiority. He wore a pair of cracked glasses perched on the bridge of his crooked nose and had a voice that somehow oozed mediocrity.

“Welcome to the Cat Wall,” the demon announced with an air of undeserved authority.

Bob swallowed thickly. “I hate it.”

“Good,” the demon said, clasping his hands together. “That means you’re right where you belong. I’m your supervisor, but you can call me Foreman. Everybody calls me Foreman.”

Bob eyed him. “Because you’re the foreman?”

Foreman nodded sagely. “Exactly.”

There was a pause.

“So…what exactly am I supposed to be doing?” Bob asked, gripping the clipboard a little tighter.

Foreman gestured to the wall as though he were presenting a new, cutting-edge product. “You’ll be inspecting the Wall.”

“For what?”

“For flaws.”

Bob squinted at the writhing mass. “What exactly counts as a flaw?”

Foreman leaned in slightly, as if imparting some great secret. “All orange cats.”

Bob stared at him.

“Wait. What?”

Foreman sighed, shaking his head. “Bob, Bob, Bob. You’re new, so I’ll be nice about this. Your one job is to remove orange cats. Any time you see one, you take it out of the Wall and mark it on your clipboard.”

Bob glanced at the clipboard. The only thing written on it was a single phrase, REMOVE ORANGE CATS.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Bob frowned. “Why orange cats?”

Foreman shrugged. “Dunno. Boss says so.”

Bob looked back at the Wall. He had so many questions.

* * * * * *

As it turned out, Hell’s most common workplace hazard was having to make direct eye contact with an infinite mass of screaming cats.

Bob spent the next several hours—at least, he assumed it had been hours, as time no longer made sense—scanning the wall for any glimpses of orange. The task was harder than it seemed, given that the Wall was constantly shifting, its living components struggling against the tide of feline bodies.

Occasionally, a cat would emerge from the writhing mass, its head poking free just long enough to give him a look that he could only describe as personal judgment before it was pulled back into the fray.

At some point, he saw it. A bright orange tail, twitching from the mess of fur and limbs.

Bob sighed, reached forward, and yanked.

The cat emerged with a high-pitched YEOWWWWWLLL, claws unsheathing as it attempted to fight back, but its weakened state made the struggle brief. With some effort, Bob pried it loose, cradling the squirming, clearly unhappy animal in his arms.

Foreman clapped once. “Nice work, rookie! Now toss it.”

Bob hesitated. “Toss it where?”

Foreman pointed over his shoulder. “Over there.”

Bob turned.

There was a pit.

A deep, bottomless pit.

Bob opened his mouth to argue, but Foreman waved him off. “Trust me, it’s fine. That’s where they go.”

“Go where?”

“Somewhere else.”

Bob was not comforted.

Still, lacking any alternative, he took a deep breath and hurled the orange cat into the abyss.

It didn’t even have time to yowl before it vanished.

* * * * * *

As the shifts continued, Bob started noticing things.

First, the pattern. Every orange cat he removed was immediately replaced. It was as though the Wall itself was correcting for the loss.

Second, the disappearances. The moment a cat died within the Wall, it simply vanished. One second, it was there, crushed beneath the weight of a hundred others. The next, gone.

And then there was Steve.

Bob hadn’t noticed him at first—another human worker, slouched against the side of a rusted-out vending machine. His uniform was filthy, his eyes bloodshot, and he radiated the aura of a man who had been doing this job way too long.

Bob cleared his throat. “Hey, uh, Steve?”

Steve grunted in acknowledgment.

Bob hesitated before gesturing toward the pit. “So, where exactly do the cats go?”

Steve exhaled slowly.

“Someplace worse.”

Bob felt his stomach drop. “Worse than this?”

Steve turned his head slightly, his gaze dark and unreadable.

“You ever wonder what cats dream about, Bob?”

Bob had not.

Steve nodded to himself. “Yeah. You will.”

Part III

Bob had spent the last however-many hours trying to work out a logical, well-structured plan for his escape. Unfortunately, Hell was not a place that lent itself to logic. Or structure. Or even the bare minimum of common sense.

He had watched dozens of cats disappear into the abyss, each of them swallowed by the unknown. There was a system in place, one he didn’t fully understand yet, but he knew one thing for certain:

The cats were getting out.

Wherever they went, it had to be better than this.

Hell, in its infinite bureaucracy, had created a loophole. The cats were leaving, and nobody was stopping them. Which meant, theoretically, if Bob were to pretend to be a cat, he could slip through that loophole.

That was the plan.

A bad plan.

But a plan nonetheless.

* * * * * *

Bob had never been good at arts and crafts, which was evident in his absolutely embarrassing attempt to fashion a cat costume.

There were no supplies in Hell, no fabric or thread, so he had to work with what was available. He stole a tattered hoodie from a pile of discarded garments near the employee break station. He turned it inside out to expose the fur lining. Then, using a combination of dirt, sweat, and blind optimism, he sculpted a set of crude cat ears from clumps of fur he had pried off the Wall.

The end result was less “cat” and more “deranged man wearing a filthy hood.”

He hunched over, tucking his arms in close, and tried a test meow.

“Meow,” he said, flatly.

It was terrible.

Even he knew that.

Steve, who had been watching from a safe distance, exhaled through his nose and shook his head. “I give you five minutes before you’re caught.”

Bob ignored him.

There was no time for doubt.

Bob shuffled toward the nearest group of demons, his movements stiff and unnatural. They were standing near the base of the Wall, engaged in some halfhearted attempt at looking productive while clearly waiting for an excuse to leave.

When he approached, they turned to stare at him.

Bob crouched down, lowered his head, and gave them his best “innocent cat” look.

“Meow,” he said again, just as lifeless as before.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then one of the demons furrowed its brow and jabbed a clawed finger in his direction.

“Hey! You! Get back in the Wall!”

Bob blinked, barely resisting the urge to gape at them.

Another demon squinted. “Yeah. Wait. He looks kinda weird.”

Foreman approached from behind, scratching his chin thoughtfully as he surveyed Bob’s obviously human posture. He tilted his head to the side, as if considering something deeply.

“Hm. He does look weird.”

One of the other demons shrugged. “They all do, sir.”

Foreman considered this and then nodded in agreement. “Yeah, fair point.”

Then, to Bob’s growing horror, he reached out and scratched him behind the ear.

“There ya go, little buddy,” he said in a patronizing tone. “Back into the Wall with ya.”

Bob’s jaw clenched as he repressed every ounce of rage in his soul.

But it worked.

It actually worked.

* * * * * *

Bob took slow, deliberate steps toward the writhing mass, his heart hammering against his ribs. He forced himself to move like a cat—or at least what he thought cats moved like.

With a final, reluctant breath, he threw himself forward.

The second his body touched the surface, the Wall absorbed him.

Pain.

Suffocation.

A thousand claws raked across his body, teeth snapping at his limbs, the weight of fur and flesh pressing down on him from all angles. He tried to scream, but the sound was immediately swallowed by the yowling, shrieking symphony of agony around him.

The stench was unbearable.

The pressure crushing.

This was not what he had expected.

He couldn’t breathe.

The claws tore at him, the mass of bodies shifting, pulling him deeper.

This had been a mistake.

Just as the pain reached its peak, just as he thought he would lose himself entirely, the Wall rejected him.

It spat him out.

And then—

Everything shifted.

Part IV

The first thing Bob noticed when he regained consciousness was that nothing made sense.

There was no air, and yet he felt like he was breathing. There was no ground, yet some force held him aloft. The concept of direction had ceased to exist, and the space around him was not black, nor white, nor any color he could describe. It shifted constantly, forming patterns he recognized for fleeting moments before twisting into something altogether foreign.

Shapes flickered at the edges of his vision—cats.

Or, at least, things that had once been cats.

They darted through the void, their bodies warping in impossible ways. Some of them stretched longer than they should have, their tails extending infinitely in one direction, their heads snapping into focus somewhere else entirely. Others moved in a way that suggested they were rewinding and fast-forwarding through time simultaneously. One moment, he saw a cat sitting calmly, licking its paw. The next, the same cat was lunging toward him, its mouth distended in a silent, endless yowl, only to suddenly reappear at rest again as if nothing had happened.

The world around him wasn’t stable.

This was not an escape.

This was somewhere worse.

* * * * * *

Bob was not alone.

Something was watching him.

At first, he mistook it for the void itself. But then, as the flickering, shifting light bent around a central point, he saw it.

A cat.

A massive cat.

It was incomprehensible, its form changing each time he tried to look directly at it. One second, it was a colossal house cat, black as shadow, pupils narrowing into slits as it studied him with detached curiosity. The next, it was a thousand smaller cats fused together, each face blinking out of existence as another took its place. Then, it was something worse— a shape beyond physical understanding, something his brain actively rejected, forcing him to look away before he lost what was left of his sanity.

It spoke, though its mouth did not move.

“What are you?”

Bob’s throat went dry. “I—I’m Bob.”

The thing regarded him for a moment before its form shifted again.

“You are not supposed to be here.”

Bob would have agreed, but he was too focused on not screaming.

Around him, the smaller entities had begun to react.

Where before they had simply existed—phasing in and out of reality, living in a fever dream of perpetual movement—they were now paying attention to him.

Their ears flattened. Their tails bristled. Their backs arched.

He recognized the behavior instantly.

These creatures did not like him.

* * * * * *

Bob did not know what Hell for cats was supposed to be, but this had to be it.

He tried to move, but the shifting nature of the space around him made it impossible to tell where his body ended and the world began. The void seemed to react to his presence, twisting itself in new and impossible ways, stretching his surroundings into a labyrinth of pure chaos.

And then—

The first cat lunged.

Bob barely had time to react before it phased through his body, leaving behind a sensation that was neither pain nor touch but something far worse. It was cold, like his soul had been bitten.

Then another.

And another.

He stumbled backward—or at least, he tried. The space around him folded in on itself, reshaping in real-time, forcing him forward instead of back.

The Eldritch Cat loomed over him, its form fluctuating wildly.

The other entities were closing in.

And Bob, for the first time in his miserable existence, did something he almost never did.

He begged.

* * * * * *

“I get it!” Bob yelled. “I was wrong! I shouldn’t have come here! Please—just, somebody get me out of this!”

A voice—one he had heard before—chuckled.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Bob.”

Bob’s stomach dropped. “Oh, come on.”

The space around him cracked, splitting open like shattered glass. From the void above, a hand emerged.

It was God.

He was sipping a coffee.

“Let me guess,” God said, voice dripping with amusement. “You want out.”

Bob barely hesitated. “Yes. Oh my God, yes.”

God hummed thoughtfully, taking another sip. “Well. I don’t normally do favors, but this is just too funny.”

Bob did not appreciate being a cosmic joke.

God exhaled, tapping His fingers against the rim of His mug. “Tell you what. You need a new job anyway. I’ll send you back to Earth.”

Bob’s breath hitched. “Wait. Like, alive?”

God smiled.

“Well.”

* * * * * *

Bob woke up.