Sadie

He looked up at his apartment window after he’d gotten out of his truck, he didn’t know why, and saw Sadie sitting in the sill, staring down at him, it seemed. Hey, you little psychopath, he thought, as the snow fluttered down and clung to his face. Have you been a good girl?

He was relieved to find, a few minutes later, that she had: for nothing appeared amiss either in the kitchen or the living room. The bedroom, too, seemed in perfectly good order—although Sadie was no longer at the window, which did beg the question: Where on earth was she, exactly? He began calling out her name as he moved toward the bathroom, and was surprised by how little his voice sounded, how nervous.

“Sadie? Saaadie?”

He felt a wave of apprehension as he entered the bathroom, he wasn’t sure why, but was pleased to find it normal in every respect—there wasn’t even any discernible cat box odor. He laughed a little at his own paranoia. What had he expected? ‘REDRUM’ scrawled across the mirror in cat shit?