by Runa
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE PASTINI COMES BACK TO HAUNT ME
Pastini died on a Monday and we buried her like we loved her: shoebox-tight, a little too deep. She came back that night through the not-yet-nailed-up cat door, a static specter with the tuftiest ears you’ve ever seen. When she floated up onto the bed by my head, I didn’t scream. She was glow-in-the-dark and her non-breath smelled like new sneakers (we used my sister’s Nike box as a coffin). Pastini had died with a flea infestation and all her fleas had become ghosts, too. They were jumping off her head and onto my pillow and back onto her head again in aimless, depressed loops. I caught one and pinched it between my fingers and felt it squirm into a memory. I told Pastini I loved her, that I would never forget her, that I wanted her to return to me like this again. She looked at me and in her eyes I saw my own coming-of-age story, unfolding in fluorescent green: I would lose my virginity to someone who said they understood the pain of losing a childhood cat, we’d read poetry to each other on our cats’s graves, we’d fall madly in love, eventually they would leave me, I’d write a song about it, the song would get famous, and so would I. How sick, I thought, to be the protagonist in my own cat’s haunting. I felt myself hurtling towards sleep.
Ten years later I’m in a band called Pastini and the Dead Fleas. I’m Pastini. The Dead Fleas are the drummer, the pianist, and the bassist, and I’ve slept with the drummer and the pianist, but the bassist says she’s not into girls like that. My boyfriend has a dog that I will never love. Every full moon Pastini comes to visit but she’s gotten so small she’s basically all fleas, and she’s more transparent than she used to be. It doesn’t matter to me. I see her and I drop everything. I hold the swarming mess of her in my hands and hum.
C. Landau (she/her) is a recent graduate living and writing in the Bay Area.
RUNA was born and lives in Lisbon, Portugal. She graduated from the University of Lisbon, and recently received her Master of Arts in Painting from Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Lisbon (2022). Her master’s thesis focused on the theme of “Artist-Travellers”. RUNA has participated in more than thirty exhibitions, individual and collective, in Portugal, UK, Germany and Italy. Website: www.rutenorte.com / Instagram: rute_norte.