Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
It had been a long time since I had looked forward to coming home after work. I was very good at finding excuses for my tardiness – deadlines, drinks, shopping. Anything to delay the inevitable awkwardness that waited for me; the silences, the resentment, the faking sleep – anything to delay the awful cliché I found myself living. I was suffocating in a cloud of what had recently been diagnosed with a proper and serious name, but actually just felt like trying to drive through the rain with no wipers, always. But today, Wednesday, I rushed home.
We met her three days earlier at the RSPCA adoption centre. Quiet and sleepy, she lay in the corner of the large, cold cage. I picked her up and as she rested her little head on my shoulder, I felt that feeling some people call home. We arranged to pick her up after the mandatory neutering. So that night, Wednesday, I rushed home to the newest member of our family.
Groggy and pained from the surgery, and sneezing blood from the cold she picked up, Freya (our Norse goddess) slept on my head. She literally slept on my head, all night long. Wrapped around like a furry turban, she purred loudly in my ear. I woke often that night from what sounded like a tiny helicopter, and every night after that for almost a year. Each time Freya readjusted herself (always on my head) or changed the tone of her helicopter purring, I would awake, smiling. She purred so fucking loudly, but always, I’d smile, in the dark night, in my warm bed.
She brought smiling back into our home. Once again we laughed together. Slowly, as we cuddled Freya, we cuddled each other more too. Every morning we’d have Family Cuddle Time ™, the three of us held tightly in a bubble of tenderness – Freya meowing protests in my arms while he squeezed us both with just the right amount of tight.
Slowly, there was no more pretending to be asleep. Instead, moans interrupted with bursts of giggles as we felt her hot breath on our naked thighs.
I rushed home again, always. To my happy home, so filled with love and laughter. The three of us – a perfectly happy family.
I rushed home that night, too, late after a class, and found my beautiful Norse goddess unmoving on the floor. We sobbed all night and the next morning as the vet told us it was most likely a brain aneurism. We held each other tightly, crying together, in love and heartbroken, all at fucking once.