Kyla wipes the black smudges from the corners of her eyes while watching him sleep. His breath is deep and thunders softly in his chest. But he is not fully snoring. Kyla is glad about this. She chews the inside of her lip as she counts through the positions they tried last night. She’s not finished but she stops when she tastes iron. A small black shadow just dashed under the bed and Kyla has bit her lip.
This is a terrible, terrible sign. Kyla is not a lover of cats. She doesn’t remember him ever mentioning he had a cat, much less a black cat. She fights superstition at every chance but everyone in her family believes in the same one thing. The Castellucci family carries the curse of the ‘gatto negro’ for a hundred years. For every story with a black cat, Castellucci blood is spilled. In the early years the blood flowed from the gash from a knife or the rip of a bullet. There were a few bloodless deaths involving infants smothered in their cribs. They say this is the merciful side of el gatto nero. But there was still twenty-five years left on the curse. This was a very bad terrible end to a great first date Kyla thought.
8 min in bed, 2.25.13
inspired by a conversation snippet at dundas & ossington
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