Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Midnight Louise sits down, curls her flurry tail around her neat forefeet and pretends to meditate like Bast. “I would mislabel the most desirable exhibit.”

So. Looking for “ancient alien” on stainless steel drawers as if they were file cabinets is not likely to be successful.

Suddenly, Louise lifts her head. “Idiots!”

People certainly are.

“We have overlooked the obvious,” Louise announces without giving me a hint of what she is referring to.

“Obviously. And that is—?”

“Where do you hide a leaf?” she asks.

“In a forest. Father Brown, the priest-detective I have cited before, figured that out before your one-thousandth great-grandmama was born.”

“Where do you hide an alien being fallen to earth?”

“Under … oddities?” I hazard.

“Under … suspected suicides?”

“It is true that there was not a mark on him, except ours, and no Cat Pack attacks are fatal. Is there a suicides room?”

“There should be, in Las Vegas,” she says.

“Yes, people win, and most people lose, and lose and lose. I believe,” I decree, “I would file him under ‘Anonymous.’”

That is how we locate the one unlabeled room. We sit upon an empty autopsy table—excellent construction, sturdy stainless steel with the look of those modern recto-linear sinks all the best home redos feature these days, almost an old Roman grandeur to them. I feel quite importantly supported by a pedestal, always a flattering position for my breed, from Bast on down.

Together, we leap, and push open a door that takes the force of a human palm in ordinary circumstances.

We are in! And, more important, the door has sprung wide and is not creeping closed again, as in all the best summer slasher movies.

We loft up in tandem to view the sole corpse occupying this unlabeled room. Talk about anonymous.

“He looks perfectly human, almost alive,” Louise comments reverently.

“They did a good job. The broken limbs are straightened to fit the table, the Y-incision in the torso is neatly sewed up, and the cranial sawing looks almost like a hippie headband.”

“A sign of respect and excellent workmanship.”

“He might become a museum exhibit ultimately.”

“Not so good,” Louise says, wrinkling her nose.

“They can freeze-dry him. No odor.”

“It is not that. Observe the faint white lines to the sides of his bronzed torso and legs.”

“Almost like the scars of a wire whip.”

“Or … these.” Louise lifts the spread four shivs of her right mitt.

“Our slashes tend to be a bit ragged.”