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“Open your eyes,”
she said.
Roy did as he was told. He was facing the wall on which hung a
rectangular mirror. In the reflection he saw a very large, very fat-looking
Cheshire cat. “Now what?” he whispered.
“Ask him anything you want. He won’t
mind a bit, and he knows just about
everything there is to know about everything,”
said Ecila.
Roy tried to think of something to say, but the cat made him
uneasy. It was
sitting completely still, except for the odd flick of its bushy tail.
The
cat also seemed to be smiling at him.
“Well,” Ecila said, tapping
her foot impatiently, “isn’t there anything
you’d like to know?”
Roy
thought about this. Ecila was insane for thinking that the cat might
know anything
at all. “Probably just wants something to eat,” he mumbled.
Besides, he thought,
what could a cat know about anyway? Fleas, how to
scratch an itch, or the joy of
sleeping all day on a carpet sunspot?
“Go on,” Ecila
prodded.
“Oh, all right,” Roy said watching the cat’s reflection in the
mirror glass
closely. “I suppose an adequate question would be to ask: how can I know
that I exist?”
The cat made no reply. Instead, it contented itself by
staring silently up
at him.
“See?” said Roy. “A complete waste of
time. It’s like I always say, you
can’t expec-”
“Why that’s too
easy,” the cat suddenly said.
This can’t really be happening, he thought.
That cat can’t honestly be
talking to me. Someone must have slipped something into
my tea.
“I might as well tell you that the answer won’t make you very
happy,” the
cat continued, yawning midway through its lazy reply and ignoring the
look
of shock and horror that had overtaken Roy’s face.
“W-w-well...go
on,” Roy said beginning to turn around.
“STOP!” said the cat. “You must
not turn around. Now, you’re quite sure you
want the answer to THIS question?” it
asked, rolling its eyes and sticking
out its tongue.
“To be perfectly
honest, I’m not sure about anything anymore, but I suppose
that since we’ve gone this
far, we might as well be done with it,” said Roy,
regaining some of his
composure.
“Very well, but I’d prefer to show you instead, if you don’t
mind.”
“Of course he doesn’t mind. Please proceed,” said
Ecila.
Roy nodded in agreement, and he watched while the cat leaped onto
the
countertop and whispered something into Ecila’s ear.
When the cat
had finished speaking, Ecila went limp and dropped to the
floor.
“What’s happened to her? What have you done?” Roy shouted at
the cat.
“She...is dead,” said the cat. “She doesn’t
exist.”
“But how?” Roy stumbled. “I don’t understand.”
“She
understood. Yes, she must have when I told her.”
“Told her what?” Roy
shouted.
“Why...the secret of course,” said the cat, whose body had become
mysteriously transparent.
“Well, what the hell is
that?”
“If I told you that, well never mind; I told you that the answer
wouldn’t
make YOU very happy.”
Roy watched as the cat disappeared. He
tried to see Ecila’s body through
the hall mirror. He couldn’t quite make it out, and
when he turned around, it
was gone just like the cat. All that remained was the
feeling of waking
from a very long dream...
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