fuzz
by Chachee Valentine
I was born with an obsession with death. My young mother, exhausted by my curiosities, would snarl under Maxwell House coffee breath, Death is for the living. I struggled with the idea that once we were dead, we were forever dead. Lying in bed at night, I imagined space - zillions of stars and planets existing whether we witnessed them or not. On Sunday drives, anytime a funeral procession passed by, I’d count the cars following the hearse, lights on.
A die-hard fan of horror and the occult, dad orated and over-performed tales of the afterlife, out-of-body experiences, and automatic writing. Late at night, he told stories about how he and his buddies would practice leaving their bodies through astral projection. He also loved to tell the same story more than once, that took place when he and our mother were teenagers. One night, dad and some friends drove my mother and her younger sister to a crematorium. After my mother’s sister got out of the car to pee, the driver of the car peeled out, leaving her to scream until they turned the car around. Dad never shared who the driver was, but dad being dad, I can guess. He wasn’t a bad guy, he just lacked compassion and believed he was funny.
During these storytelling evenings, mother was in nursing school. The first horror film I remember watching was the original black-and-white version of Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero. I was six, and remember feeling sorry for the flesh-eating zombies wearing everyday clothes, pearls, and Oxford shoes, as they stumbled in search of a life only their bodies remembered. More than once, we watched a film called Trilogy of Terror. All three shorts starred Karen Black, an actor who slinked across the screen with the trickery of a Siamese cat. One of the shorts is about a voodoo doll who comes to life with vengeance. The scariest part was watching the voodoo doll wield a kitchen knife, chasing Black’s character from room to room, slicing at her feet.
The night Fuzz died began with a heavy knock on the front door. Our neighbors from across the street were from Hungary, their abrupt accents fermented with Eastern Europe. Whatever they said at the door caught our mother’s attention because as she stood, she told us to stay put.
Ragu spaghetti sauce stained our lips and cheeks. Like any child, we became restless, left the table, and watched the four of them return from the dark, each adult holding a corner of a black plastic bag. As the procession walked past our back deck, I counted their bodies - one, two, three, four - because I count everything. There was something dream-like, mystical, in witnessing our stiff lump-of-a-cat being carried across the backyard. Dad dug a hole. They buried that silly, ginger, fuzz head in an old sandbox, the neighborhood kitty litter.
The next morning, mother cried over someone with a rifle who shot Fuzz in his guts just for being a cat. A pot-shot, she winced. I began to imagine space, my go to, the entire galaxy, and wondered if Fuzz could see through stars. Mother said if I could imagine nothingness, I could imagine what it feels like being dead. I didn’t want to think of Fuzz being stuck in nothingness, so I fed my favorite stuffed animal heaps of goldfish, catnip, sardines, whatever the good boy wanted.
After Fuzz was buried, dad still played his pranks. My little brothers would crawl into my bed. In the darkened hallway, Dad would press a red flashlight under his chin, jut his bottom row of teeth, walk down the hallway as one of Romero’s moaning zombies. We screamed and cried. Dad would rush in and holler, Monkeys, it’s me! It’s me, guys! That was the night we stopped playing along because our house no longer sounded like our house, but dad wouldn’t change. I think he missed that poor cat and their morning ritual of sounds of dad tapping a tin of cat food with a fork, the bell on Fuzz’s collar that would jingle as he’d chirrup and trot into the kitchen from a cozy corner.
Even now, when I can’t sleep, I imagine all the cars I’ve ever counted, all the dead wearing their Sunday best, left behind. Sometimes, I go back in time and tell dad how sweet it would be, how lovely it could feel, if he’d tuck us in with a kiss and leave on the hall light. No red flashlight under his chin, no sharp teeth. Just the sound of late-night television to lull us to sleep. In my bed, his three little monkeys would know that in the next room is a hero who, by the sound of his laughter, eggs on Johnny Carson to say something crude, while keeping us safe, goodnight.
Photo of Chachee Valentine
BIO: Chachee Valentine (they/them) writes creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and screenplays. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, Talon Review, Litbreak Magazine, Sheepshead Review and elsewhere. They are a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and a future MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Montana ’26.