The Wall

The cat snarled. It was a tiny thing, the size of a large field rat, though fierce as a lion as it hissed and lashed out at the large hunk of brick and stone.

“Hush,” the girl said, scooping up the furious feline. She looked up at the wall, expression flat and unimpressed. “To be honest, I don’t know why you hate this wall so much. The only thing it does is keep beasts out.”

The cat cocked its head and stared at her, amber eyes wide and unblinking. The girl felt the incredulity in its gaze and laughed.

“Believe it or not,” she replied, “I’m not all that eager to indulge in a game of cat and mouse with a bunch of dragons. Or sphinxes. Or whatever else lives beyond this wall.”

The cat growled in frustration.

The girl sighed. “Yes, I am curious about what’s out there. Might not be all fire-breathing snakes, y’know.”

The cat looked smug as it jumped down from her arms and walked along the brick wall, occasionally nipping at it with its delicate claws. The girl followed it silently.

She stopped. "You're kidding."

She stepped closer to the wall, scarcely believing her eyes.

“It’s a hole.”

And that it was; a hole. A hole in the wall that had kept her little community of two thousand safe and locked away for five centuries, a hole in the wall that kept out the monsters and let them sleep safely. A hole. About three feet all around, a craggy circular opening in the smooth stone of the wall that was always there.

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” the girl asked casually, feet suddenly glued to the ground. “But I do want to look out...”

The cat meowed. The girl imagined its impatient cry: Then come on, human!

“I don’t know, cat.” The girl tore her eyes away from the hole. “The last person to go outside of the wall was Nancy Fey, and you know how she’s like now - in love with will-o’-the-wisps and attacking beds thinking they’re winged crocodiles.”

The cat seemed to sniff. When the girl looked, it was gone, pattering through the hole in the wall with its bottom bouncing, eyes bright and curious.

“Wait - stop!”

She stumbled, falling over her own legs as she dove to catch the stupid furry beast before it made it through the hole. Too panicked to think, she crawled on her knees, scrabbled to through the hole and reached out -

And scrambled back again as the cat screamed and snarled, lashing back against something dark, something clawed and sharp-toothed.

The girl wasn’t quite sure what to think when something crunched from beyond the wall and the cat went suddenly quiet.

“I-I suppose t-that was a - ” She started backing away. “A-a monster...”

Then her clever little tongue curled up and she ran.

The hole leered at her disappearing figure, as it had always done.

#yungseolee #fiction