Gremlins

I was lonely so I decided to buy a pet. I used to have dogs when I was little. When they were alive I think I found them too loud and they used to bite my ankles when I left a room. They were corgis. I still have a photo of them in the room where the computer is. The picture is in a frame that’s been made to look like flowers are growing out of it. The corgis could be really irritating, but because I felt so lonely I think I talked myself into believing that I really missed them. They were twins and died within quick succession of each other. The last one to die mourned her sister and used to sniff around the places where they both used to piss, looking for clues.

I used to have cats too – they were twins also, born in my garage by their mother – a stray called Cleo who hated people and life. We named the kittens Whisky and Soda. They both lived a long time for cats – both close to twenty years. Whisky broke one of his legs when he was seventeen and the vet said that the only option was to amputate it. He got used to it once the fur had grown back over his new stump. If he got excited he used to fall over into the borders at the sides of our garden. As Soda grew old, he suffered from feline dementia. He used to try and walk through windows. He’d hit his head about five times, sit down and then try again.

My new pet was a mogwai. I’d never heard of a mogwai before and I was concerned that I might need a special license to keep one. The man who sold me my new pet seemed pretty dodgy. I think he was just anxious to make a sale so he told me that mogwais were easy to look after. He said that they didn’t like sunlight which was fine with me because my depression had grown so great in the recent months that I kept the curtains drawn pretty much all day anyways. He also told me not to get the mogwai wet and that under no circumstances was I to feed my new pet after midnight.

I took my new pet – my new mogwai – home and played with him for hours. He had a really cute voice and was able to mimic certain words, a bit like a parrot but much sweeter. He had trouble grasping full sentences though. I felt a lot less lonely, and I think that my new pet felt happy in his new environment.

I never quite understood how to feed the mogwai. I was told not to feed him after midnight. Technically it was always after midnight. After four days, my mogwai starved to death. In his final hours his bowels gave in and his fur was matted with his own faeces.

I felt lonely again.