Even in the thick fog, the tear was sharp and easy to make out. I approached it cautiously, calling for Rufus the whole while, hoping he might just reemerge.
Of course, he didn’t.
I stuck my head in the tear in reality and felt the by-now-familiar breeze. I looked down, but I didn’t see any bottom. I honestly didn’t see anything at all. Below was as black and empty as above.
I stepped in anyway. It felt like I imagine stepping through a slightly-electrically charged rain shower would feel, or like walking through static. For a second, I felt I was standing on something. I turned back and saw my own back yard, hazy through the fog but familiar, and then like the cartoon character who realizes too late that solid ground is an illusion, I fell.
Down, through the blackness, down through the never-ending slightly cool breeze, down through silence like the grave. I fell so long that I ceased to be afraid of falling. It was obvious to me at that point where Rufus was—somewhere beneath me, falling as well. Possibly we would just slide down the backside of reality forever, until we starved and death ended our travels.
Hours went by and still I fell. I passed the time wishing I had left a note for Bart, wishing I had told him I loved him, and then reassuring myself that a brother never doubts a sister’s love. I felt sorry for myself that I would never see my niece grow up. I felt deeply ashamed at what I was certainly about to put my parents through.
They would give me a Christian funeral. I hoped my friends would have sense enough to read Whitman in my honor later.
I cried, too, in part, just to give myself a noise to hear. But eventually, I grew tired of the sound of my voice and I fell silently.
That’s when I realized I heard something, a faint whooshing sound. I strained to see if I could hear it better and in front of me, as if someone had turned on a light switch, was Abraham Lincoln, illuminated with his own inner glow.
No, not quite Abraham Lincoln. It was the head of the Great Emancipator, but his body was absent. In its place was the body of a vulture. He regarded me with some interest.
“President Lincoln?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
“Are you falling, too?”
“My dear, I fly on the wings of liberty!” He responded, giving his great wings a slow, majestic flap, which caused him to bob up out of my line of sight for a second.
“Is there firm ground somewhere?”
“Of course, my dear,” he said. I wondered how he put on his hat with wingtips instead of hands.
“Could you fly me to it?”
The great man wrinkled his brow and pondered my question. Then he frowned.
“No,” he said, but mostly to himself. “I don’t think I can handle the burden of another woman.”
“But Mr. Lincoln…” I objected. It was too late. He had already flown off.
Various other presidents came to check me out—Hayes, Garfield, Teddy Roosevelt, Johnson, both Adamses. None of them would help. But then Jefferson came by and who ever knew him to pass up a chance to get his hands on a woman?
“Mr. Jefferson!” I cried out, but even he ignored my plight.
I continued to fall until finally, the scraggliest, most broken buzzard you’ve ever seen made its way over to me. The head on the bare neck of that great bird was a scowling madman with a shock of white hair that was all cowlick.
“Ma’am, I heard you could use some help.”
“Andrew Jackson! Yes, thank God. Please. Help.” Because say what you want about Andrew Jackson, he’s not going to leave a fat woman in distress. He grabbed hold of me with his giant talons and began to carry me off. I cried out in relief. “Why wouldn’t anyone else help me?” I asked.
“Ma’am, I believe they mostly feel that the modern world has become strange and unsympathetic to them. They shy away.”
“But you helped me,” I said.
“To me, the world seems little changed in that regard. I don’t hold it against the current crop.” We flew on. “If you don’t mind me asking, miss, why are you here?”
“I’ve lost my dog.”
He seemed to be relieved that my answer was so simple.
“Big and yellow? Likes to chase rabbits?”
“That’s him.”
“I can point you in the right direction.”
Tiny Cat Pants 