The call was simple, deceptively so: a routine welfare check on an old, reclusive woman named Agnes, whose neighbors had complained about “a strong, ammonia-like odor” and “unusual noise.”
Officer Javier Reyes adjusted the strap of his mask. The air was thick, even outside the condemned apartment block. The stench was not ammonia; it was something metallic and organic, hot and dense, pressing against his sinuses.
“Miller,” Reyes murmured into his collar, his voice hollow in the empty stairwell. “You ready for this?”
“I’ve handled worse,” Officer Miller replied, the tremor in his voice betraying the lie.
They found the apartment door ajar, the lock long since defeated by neglect. Reyes drew his service weapon but hesitated, replacing it with his heavy-duty police flashlight. The dark corridor inside was silent, but the silence felt alive, like a held breath.
Reyes pushed the door open completely.
He swept the flashlight beam into the deep, cavernous living area. The light didn’t illuminate a space; it pierced a curtain.
There was a moment of silence, a vacuum of sound before the explosion of movement.
The beam of light landed on the floor, and suddenly, the floor wasn’t the floor anymore. It was a churning, shifting carpet of fur and bone, a colossal, whispering multitude. Hundreds of eyesāgreen, gold, and amberāreflected the light back, creating a glittering, low-to-the-ground galaxy of predators.
Reyes instinctively shouted, “Holy, they’re everywhere!”
The sound of their voices triggered the chorus. A thousand tiny, guttural soundsāa mix of hungry meows, desperate chirps, and the collective hiss of displaced panicāerupted, washing over the two men like a wave of pure static.
Miller stumbled, kicking a laundry hamper that was not a hamper, but a pile of cats. “There must be a thousand! Keep moving, watch your step!”
They advanced slowly, their boots crunching on what Reyes refused to look at too closely. The cats flowed around them like a dark liquid, brushing against their legs, weaving between their steps. It wasn’t an attack, but an impossible obstruction, a living, furry quicksand.
Reyes fought the urge to shine his light straight up, afraid of what the beam might reveal clinging to the ceiling. The air was now stifling, hot with body heat and thick with dander.
“We need to find her, Miller, and get out!” Reyes yelled, his voice strained. “We’re surrounded, man! Completely surrounded!”
He knew, with a sickening certainty, that this was not a welfare check. This was an extraction from a fortress built of well-meaning madness, guarded by a shimmering, endless army of the forgotten. They were simply two tiny points of light, trying to push through the impossible density of a cat-hoarder’s thousand-eyed kingdom.
