Chapter 1
No New Beginnings

The sun set on an uneventful day. It wasn’t fully done setting yet either, slowly sinking in the sea like someone carefully lowering themselves into a bath that was slightly too warm. The orange glow lit up the piers and bayside buildings facing it, bouncing off the almost-but-not-quite melted snow on the beach. Wind whipped little festive flags strung between lanterns and a small dog yipped and yapped at a dancing newspaper. 

I drank it in as best I could, letting the image of the setting winter sun, the sounds and smells of the ocean, fill my thoughts, overtaking any semblance of self, until I was the scene. And then I took a little break to take a bite out of my hotdog, because the meat vehicle needed sustenance. Sitting down at the edge of a little wooden pier, my feet dangling just a little above the water, I chewed, doing my best again not to let my mind wander too far. Nothing good lay out there, in the deep nothingness of idle thought. Just bad memories and regrets of missed opportunities, two and a half decades of chances not taken. I broke off a piece of the sausage — I’d die before I called it a wiener, thank you — and offered it to my companion. 

“Brrp,” he said, and bit down on it and a part of my finger. I scratched him behind the ears while he seemed lost in an attempt to lick the inside of his own nose. 

“Atta boy,” I said in between bites, loosening the harness a little bit. I got looks, once in a while, but didn’t let that bother me much. People would just have to accept that they lived in the vicinity of a weirdo who walked his cat. Or that there was a cat who lived near them called Pancakes, which was printed on the side of the leashed harness he wore. 

I finished my ‘meal’, for lack of a better term, and almost tossed the wrapper into the water out of sheer lack of consideration, but just barely stopped myself, before stuffing it into my pocket. It was getting cold. We had only a few minutes of daylight left. “You ready to go, Pan?” I asked the cat, who looked at me as if to remind me of the fact that all the anthropomorphisation in the world wasn’t going to get him to actually understand what I told him. 

That said, he seemed to be very comfy where he was, so I decided to stay here a while longer. Sure, it was cold and wet and my jeans were starting to cling to my ass in that unfortunately familiar way they did when I sat down on something wet, but, well, what was I going to do? Argue with a cat? I’d look like a crazy person. 

I lowered myself onto my back to look up at the evening sky, painted in blues and pinks with some clouds in between them, and Pancakes took that as the perfect opportunity to step onto my chest and curl up. Well, it looked like I was going to stay here for a while longer. One hand on his dumb little head and the other under my own, I sighed. Pan started to purr a little bit. 

I didn’t have the worst life. Retail was… well, it was retail, there was no getting around that, and tourists had a tendency to live life like making me hate mine was their personal goal. But I had a small apartment, a small cat, and a small amount of spending money that usually went to splurging on something like an album or a book once a month. I didn’t need all that many new clothes. Jeans, sweaters and shirts were good for me, thanks. Sometimes I even remembered to exercise for a few weeks. 

But there wasn’t much more to it than that. It felt like running out the clock, sometimes. Like I was missing something. A purpose. Well, that was in part fixed by Pan, who was gently shoving his cold nose into the underside of my jaw. Taking care of a little creature had made the monotony a little easier, at least. I enjoyed food, when I could afford to make myself good food. Music was nice. But that was it. I felt like I was living someone else’s life, and not even the fun parts. The parts that were cut out of the montage for being too dull. 

But for Pan’s sake, at least, I puttered on, making ends meet, living life from sunset hotdog to sunset hotdog. Well, there was more to it than hot dogs. But the sunsets were nice. Even in winter, a bit of sunlight on my face was nice. 

Pancakes shifted and slid off my chest and onto his dumb little face with an indignant “Mrrp!” and I took that personally. We both got up, I regretted sitting down on a wet pier as my clothes clung to me like a cold shower curtain, and I took Pan’s leash.

“Let’s go home, buddy.” Hands in my pockets, hoping those would warm a little bit, I went down the boardwalk. Pancake’s little bell jingled as he walked in front of me. He knew the way home. A few girls walked past, delighted at Pan, who held his head up with the kind of pride only cats can have. He knew damn well he was being looked at, and might even have been aware of the fact that he was cute and adorable. I lowered my face into my collar. The last thing I wanted was for the girls to go from looking at the cat to looking at me. 

The disappointment was usually too much for people to hide. Not that I was ugly. But bland was an understatement. A beard that grew in too fast and then immediately thinned out. It was impossible to keep down, but also impossible to grow out without being see-through; it looked permanently unkempt. I’d long given up on looking presentable. And smiling just made it worse. Someone had tried complimenting me once by telling me I looked like “PG-13 Charles Manson”, whatever that was supposed to mean, and I hadn’t been able to smile into a mirror or a camera since. 

The girls just glanced at me and their gaze slid off me like water off of a duck. Good. That was probably for the best. Pan and I kept walking, until we got to our street. I lived in a little apartment just off the seaside boulevard, facing exactly the wrong way to catch either morning or evening light. Somehow, the apartment also managed to not have a view of the sea, or much of anything for that matter, save the concrete wall on the opposite side of the street. But it was cheap, and it was home. Cozy? No. But it was a roof and walls. It’s where I kept my energy drinks. 

The elevator was broken, because of course it was, but I didn’t mind. It was mandatory exercise, which I could use. Whenever the winter months rolled around I had a tendency to store fat very quickly and very easily. I’d sort of melted a little bit, in a way I didn’t really like, so having to do seven flights of stairs was a good way to work a little bit of that off. Besides, it gave Pancakes a way to get rid of some energy. 

He was quite young. I’d only picked him up the year before. He’d been a rescue. Someone had found a litter by the road and had put them in a cardboard box. What was I going to do, not pick up a kitten for a dollar? I’ve never been the best person, but I’m not a monster. It was a kitten. He was orange.

I hadn’t been in the best place, but having a little tyke like that to take care of had really helped me focus on something outside myself for a while, and I was happier for it. He’d been very affectionate from the get-go, but also a little food criminal who did little food crimes and stole my food if I looked away for even a second. Which was how he got the name. It had taken me almost an hour to get the syrup out of his hair and off of his dumb little idiot face. 

I opened the door and he immediately began to spin in little circles, waiting for me to take his harness off. As soon as I did, he sprinted into the apartment and I heard him crash into something, and immediately after that the sound of something breaking. I bit my tongue and followed him in to assess the damage. 

The room was quite sparse. A small sofa in front of a small television. Little coffee table covered in cups and magazines from that time I’d tried to get into biology and finance for a bit. I should’ve really thrown them out a while ago, but there was a part of me that reminded me that I probably needed something. A stack of magazines as thick as my leg about every subject I could think of made me feel like I was at least trying. 

My literature degree mocked me from the far wall, letting me know it was never going to drag me out of retail. It was the first thing I’d ever put up in here, and only found out afterwards I wasn’t allowed to put holes in the wall. Oops. That was my deposit gone. 

And speaking of things that were gone, there was a bowl that had been on the table. I had bought that bowl with the express guarantee that it was unbreakable. Obviously, whoever had guaranteed me that had never come into contact with an excitable cat. The cat in question had disappeared, probably hiding from its own hubris and noise. 

I started picking up the shards with a resigned sigh, and managed to immediately cut myself. How in the hell an unbreakable wooden bowl managed to have an edge sharper than most knives, I didn’t know. I sucked my thumb as I brought the rest of the pieces to the tiny kitchen and dropped them unceremoniously in the sink. That was a future-me problem. Today-me was going to relax a bit. Maybe watch television. Cuddle with Pancakes. Have a snack. Go to bed. 

I walked back into the living room. Something in the back of my head was trying to bring something to my attention, but I was too lost in thought, trying to plan out the rest of my week while tallying up what finances I had to see if I could afford to buy a new fruitless fruit bowl any time soon. I sat down on the couch, and my brain was screaming at me to look at the room. 

There was a hole in it. 

A whopping big hole, just in the middle of the air. In my living room. At this time of year, no less. “Um,” I said. Then some of the magazines fell upwards into it, and the part of my brain — still screaming — reminded me that this was not normal. I jumped backwards. Or I tried to, anyway. Instead, I started to fall over as the gravity in the room seemed to shift. Towards, quite obviously, the hole.

Most importantly, I saw Pancakes, panicking, holding onto the side of the couch as he started to fall at the hole of nothing. I regretted taking the harness off of him, now. If he’d had the leash, I could’ve at least held onto him while I made myself to the front door. I started to crawl across the floor, feeling the tug of gravity start to change, when I realised two things. 

The first was that I was absolutely going to make it. Gravity was changing, sure, but not fast enough for it to grab me. The door was close by. In an apartment this small, everything was close by. I would be out into the hall in seconds. 

The second was that Pan was absolutely not going to make it. And Pan was… well, he was my Pancakes. He was my boy. Not that looking in the mirror was easy at the best of times, but if I left now, I’d never be able to face myself again. I turned around. Pan was barely holding on with his front paws, the rest of his body pointing straight up at the hole. I got up into a crouching position, leaning away a little to keep from falling forward. The cat was losing the fight against the force that was drawing him in.

Well, if he was gonna go, at least he wasn’t gonna be alone. I leapt forward just as he lost his grip, and wrapped my arms around him. He squealed in protest as I grabbed him, and we fell into the nothing.

Elamimax

Aww Heck! New story! What's gonna happen? Mayhaps the title/cover are some indication :3c 

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