BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

It all started with a horrible, bone-chilling shriek.

Now, you need to understand, this wasn’t an “OMG I’m frightened,” sort of shriek. This was an “OMG You Are Going To Die A Horrible Death And My Hand!” sort of shriek. However, at no point during said shrill scream (not to be confused with Brill Cream) was my name even uttered. And, since it was The Evil One doing the screeching, I wasn’t exactly sure what could possibly be going on – I mean, after all, whenever she lets out a high pitched wail such I was hearing, it usually involved me being in for a beating.

But, before we get to real reason behind the fact that I had a 5′ 4″ tall,  severely pissed-off, redheaded banshee standing in my living room, I should probably fill you in on a basic fact of life around here at Evil Kat Central…

Rule #2 ½ – You just don’t mess with EKay’s shoes if you know what’s good for you…

I mean yeah, obviously you clean them up if she steps in something.  That goes without saying. Although, if you happen to forget, she will in fact say it. Repeatedly, and – very loudly to be sure – until you have seen to the task and the results meet with her strict approval.

Honestly, you’d be amazed at what you can do with a bottle of resolve and a tin of saddle soap when you have to. I know I was. Seriously.

As a matter of fact, I’ve actually become extremely proficient at removing my own blood from her pumps. Of course, that’s more a case of  her stepping ON someone, as opposed to IN something. But, the former is pretty much a daily occurrence and done on purpose, whereas the latter is normally an accidental sort of thing. Unless, of course, she’s in one of those “moods” and steps in something just to have the pleasure of making you clean it off her shoes.  But, you get the idea.  You have to make sure you keep them spotless, polish them when necessary, bring them to her when she demands it, put them on her feet, take them off of her feet, put them away when she’s finished with them, and all the other stuff that go along with the proper care and maintenance of Her Supreme Evilness’ shoe collection.

And, we mustn’t forget – you must prostrate yourself before her and kiss her shoes when she orders you to do so. Obedience to the redhead  can save you from getting stepped on. Well… not really, but she doesn’t stomp quite as hard as she would otherwise.

Seriously.

But, even with all of that, you have to remember that you don’t mess with her shoes, be they blue suede, black leather, brown leather, red patent leather, white, blue, fuchsia, purple, ad infinitum… Pumps, sandals, boots, espadrilles, wedges, heels, flats, Mary Janes, cross trainers, ad nauseum…

Get the picture?

Don’t mess with the woman’s shoes. And, when I say you don’t mess with them, you definitely don’t roll around on the floor chewing on them. Any of them. But, most especially not her high heels.

I learned this in spades that blustery autumn evening…

At this point I am sure you are probably wondering why in the world I would be rolling around on the floor chewing on EKay’s shoes. Well, actually, were I ordered to do so it would probably be in my best interest to comply. However, we have already established that messing with her shoes is a bad thing, so obviously I wasn’t rolling around on the floor gnawing on her pumps. That would only serve to get me in trouble. So, just keep reading. In theory this will all make sense, but bear in mind that I am writing it early on a Sunday morning, so I make no guarantees…

Now, as I’ve noted in the past, E K no longer wears high heels to work on a daily basis. They’ve been relegated to special occasions, date nights, and when she is in a mood to inflict damage on someone. However, there was a time, in our younger days, when my petite dynamo of a wife not only lugged her 40 pound tool case AND an armload of parts up three flights of stairs in order to repair a printer– she did it in skirts and heels. Of course, I later found out that she would arrive at a service call, strike a pose, and all of the men present would be falling all over themselves to “carry her books” so to speak. She probably still does this on occasion even without the spikes and gams on display, but these days, even though she still has more than the necessary looks to pull that off, she actually doesn’t have much patience for drooling, untrained males. Therefore, she would much rather just carry the stuff herself.

But I digress…

The point is, she used to wear heels to work, and being the fashion plate she is, she had them in various styles, colors, heel heights, etc. Because, obviously she couldn’t wear the same pair of shoes twice in the same week. That would be… well… bordering on criminal.

So, anyway, back to that scream…

I was in the kitchen as usual, preparing dinner for Her Highness, when I heard the front door open, and the click-clack of high-heels against the hardwood. This was, of course, a sure sign that the redhead was home and I’d damn well better get her evening drink delivered to her post haste, and then see to it that the dinner I had been preparing appeared on the table shortly afterward. However, before I could even begin to mix the evening aperitif for The Evil One, I heard the bloodcurdling shriek…

More to come…

Murv

To be continued in: Lethal, But Fashionable…

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