Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the dining room…

As cliche as the following statement may be, the scream echoing up the stairwell was enough to make my blood run cold. Hell, it was more than that. It was enough to make me wet myself.

Therefore, it was a damn good thing my bladder was empty, or I would have had some serious explaining to do. This would not have been easy seeing as I am both too old and too young to be in diapers, so I’m thinking I would have been hard pressed to come up with a suitable excuse in the eyes of the redhead.

And, speaking of the Fiery Tressed Queen of the Evil Underworld, her worship THE E K herself, the scream sounded again. There were no two ways about it. My wife was screaming. However, even in my half-awake state I could tell that she was screaming at someone – or something – in anger, not in fear. Given that even Satan himself is terrified of E K, this stood to reason.

A loud crash, followed by a scampering thud wafted up behind the scream, and it was quickly joined by the sound of claws trying to gain traction on hardwood just ahead of the vicious thumping cadence of a pair of Mary Janes. I fumbled over my head and switched off my CPAP, then extracted myself from the mask. Squinting in the darkness while turning my head from side to side, and holding my mouth just so, I eventually managed to get a blurry image from the segmented LED’s on the alarm clock to show up in the general vicinity of my retina. According to the muddled deciphering I somehow managed to do, it appeared to be 1:47 AM. Either that or 7:41 AM. Or even PM.

Of course, it was also entirely possible that it was Sevum One Oh Forty and a half PMA Greenwich Mean Time. But, I didn’t feel like thinking that hard so I decided to stick with 1:47 AM.

Throwing back the covers I rolled out of the bed and wandered around to the door. In my stupor I completely forgot to lean the appropriate direction – our bedroom is in the upstairs half-story, you see – and therefore clocked my head on the angled wall. I set about cursing for a moment as I absently rubbed the spot on my forehead that had attempted to dent the drywall, only to find a stud in the way. Little did I know, however, that this was the least of my worries.

Stumbling the rest of the way through the dark, I finally arrived at the door and swung it open. No more had I done this than the banshee wail of an angry, firehaired, petite bundle of concentrated eebil rattled up the stairwell once again. This time it sounded closer. Much closer.

The thumping of frantic paws with extended claws – (say that three times fast) – was closer still, and hot on their trail were the Mary Janes. A split second behind the scream and melange of thundering footsteps, a 28 pound domestic gray tabby bounced off the wall in front of me, did a triple flip in the air before sticking his dismount on the stairway landing. He then spun in place twice, rolled over, ran backwards into the office door, somersaulted, and then finally, with puffed tail, ears laid back, and eyes wide in abject fright, he ran directly between my legs and into the bedroom.

However, I didn’t get the opportunity to see exactly where he went in the bedroom, because before I even had the chance to think about turning to look a blur of red whipped around the corner and slammed into me full force.  Immediately following the impact I found myself flat on my back with one Mary Jane in my stomach and the other planted on my face. The evil redhead stood there on top of me, so intent on her mission, that she was completely oblivious to the fact that I was now serving as her squishy carpet.

“DAMMIT! Come back here with that you little fleabag!” She screamed.

“Kahhmmm nabbner wib uht?” I asked.

I barely managed to croak out the question in a muffled voice. After all, she had knocked the wind out of my lungs when she ran right up me and danced on my head. Besides, I was trying to talk through the sole of her shoe, which is probably why she didn’t hear me. Either that, or she fully intended to ignore me. With E K you just never know.

“There you are,” my wife finally hissed, but judging from the direction of her gaze it was obvious that the comment was not aimed at me.

Still atop me, E K began to emit a throaty yowl while simultaneously doing the feline “butt wiggle”. You know, that little dance cats do whenever they have spotted their prey and are getting ready to pounce. (I keep telling you folks her name is Kat for a reason…) But, before the redhead could make her move there was a loud, hiss-yowl combination from the corner of the room, followed by thudding paws. A heartbeat later a gray blur flew through the air past her, only barely evading her grasp. At least, that is what it appeared to be from my vantage point, trying to see around a Mary Jane that was still in the middle of leaving an indelible impression on face.

E K jumped, and I said, “Ooofff!”

I said this primarily because she had used me as a springboard, however I have to admit that part of it was also because I knew someday this incident would become a blog entry and as it happens I just love onomatopoeia. At any rate, the next thing I heard was the wild scream of the redhead receding back down the stairs as she chased the gray feline for some yet unknown – but obviously quite  earthshattering – reason.

After dragging myself up from the floor, against my better judgment I decided to stumble down the stairs to investigate.

While a wildly screaming redhead wasn’t all that unusual around our house, nor was a scampering cat, the fact that this was occurring at oh-dark-thirty in the A.M. definitely had my curiosity piqued.

By the time I made my way to the main floor and rounded the curved landing, all was deathly quiet. This could be a good thing, or it could be a bad thing. If I suddenly heard the sound of a meat cleaver hitting the chopping block in the kitchen, it was definitely going to go down in my books as not so good. Especially if E K expected me to clean up the mess.

Cautiously, I made my way through the living room and into the dining room. Just as I was nearing the kitchen doorway, Her Supreme Evilness stepped through, barring my path. I immediately jumped back for fear that I was about to become her runway and launching pad once again. However, she was moving at a much less frantic pace, although her brow was deeply furrowed in the patented, “E K is NOT amused” fashion.

In her right hand she held the gray tabby by the scruff of the neck. The oversized mouse catcher – who has never caught a mouse in his life, by the way – was looking at me with imploring eyes that said, “Please Save Me!” This stood out as extremely unusual since the gray tabby is scared to death of me, but absolutely adores the redhead. Without saying a word, in a display of uncanny strength, E K thrust the massive blob of fur at me. I took it from her and it immediately tried to crawl inside my T-shirt to hide from a fate worse than death.

Still mute, her supreme eebilness made a deliberate beeline for the dining room table, perched herself in a chair, then plunked a half chewed, cat slobber covered puzzle piece into an empty hole on the jigsaw that was laid out before her.

The issue of earth shattering importance was now readily apparent.

I didn’t interrupt the Queen. Instead, I sent the feline downstairs into the basement where he could hide and I returned to bed – after scrubbing the shoeprint off my face, of course. When I re-awoke at my usual hour of rising, that being 5:30 AM, E K was just then coming to bed. I wandered downstairs and started the coffee, casting a quick glance at the dining table on the way through the room. One look confirmed my suspicions – the jigsaw puzzle was completed, cat slobber and all.

You see, E K is a certified – maybe even certifiable – Puzzle Dominatrix who is afflicted with JOCD (Jigsaw Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). She will continue to torture a jigsaw, no matter how many pieces it contains and for however how long it takes – sans food or sleep – until she has beaten it into complete and total submission. And Gods help anyone – or any creature – that gets in her way. Especially if they take one of her puzzle pieces.

One of her nicknames is even “The Puzzle Mistress”…

So, if you ever want to drive the redhead up a wall, just give her a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of missing pieces. But, if you’re smart you’ll send it to her anonymously, because when she gets down to those missing pieces… Well, let’s just say that in our basement we have some 10,000 piece 3D puzzles that look remarkably like some people who used to be our friends, but whom we haven’t seen for several years.

And, every time I ask E K where she purchased these puzzles, she just smiles an eebil smile…

A VERY Eebil smile.

More to come…

Murv

I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv