Tom Killed Cats

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75cl of La Petite Bête retails for £19.99 at Kensington Grocers. Duty is £2.23. Tax £4.46. You can fill six standard flutes with the bottle. In the privacy of my flat, each of the six would cost £4.45. If I were to order a glass of similar bubbly in any reputable City bar it would run between £8 and £10. Accepting an average out-and-about price of £9, I will need to drink just over 30 glasses of free champagne to offset the cost of Tom Killed Cats.

A weekend taxi to Hackney costs £12.20. I will need to drink 32 glasses of champagne to offset the cost of Tom Killed Cats.

“But what’s your time worth? Puzzle, innit?” Alan has been driving the city streets of London for 24 years. Eight to 12 hours a day, five or six days a week, 120 miles a day. A life of time and distance. He has The Knowledge. My time? On any other Saturday night, I would be at the Gun & Thrush. My time would be worthless. But at this point in the journey – traversing the Strand – two pints would have been emptied. Assuming I had the Blowpoint Ale at £4 per pint, this ride is cut-rate. I will need to drink 31 glasses of champagne to offset the cost of Tom Killed Cats.

“Welcome to Eschatology,” murmurs the beaked plague doctor. A robed arm opens a swinging door, the other sweeps inward in invitation. “You’re now accessory to trespass,” it whispers. For fuck’s sake. What kind of exhibition is held in a shuttered morgue?

Glass one is enjoyed amongst first responders. Sissy’s society of friends. A familiar face there. Rodrigo whose canvas is Welsh Mountain sheep. And there. Gilda whose canvas is Gilda. Otherwise, an unknown jumble of trucker caps, onesies, and farmer’s smocks. Of unspontaneous spontaneity. Deliberately encoded to decode. If I were truly in the fold, I would know more than two. Where do you place an empty? Here? A bit sweet. The champagne.

Glass two is lifted from a tray carried by a Satanic death tech. The energy-suck is strong here. I navigate a maze of turned backs, sharpened elbows, and robotic sorrys to corner refuge. The closest lover of the arts is two meters from my big toe. If the average human walking speed is 1.42 metres per second, it will give me less than two seconds to craft biting repartee. I should do it now. Eschatology? More like scatology. Art or artifice, am I right?

“Art or artifice, am I right?” At the bar, a jest in exchange for glass three. Be wary of pace. A chorus of black clad staff giggle dismissively. Churlish automatons. If I were to turn up a sleeve to reveal maggots wriggling from a wound it would elicit the same stony humour.

Glass four. Costume change. Coat off, readers on.

Glasses five and six are secured on behalf of thirsty, fictitious friends. And there he is. Partially fictitious. Far from a friend. “Hey mate, you alright? Tom Killed Cats?” Sissy asks in passing. Every patron a mate. Each a fleeting subject of the artiste excentrique. Hawaiian shirt. Rolled brown pakol. Now reliant on a skull-topped cane. While ushered away, Sissy dangles a lingering “Talk later?” At 20 yards, he remains. His vermilion hibiscus and longboards and writhing hula girls and Aloha. I am no longer. I am later.

Glass seven grants lucidity. Sissy’s work – all of it – a jumble of accidental symbolism. A used condom framed in snakeskin. A stress ball smeared in blood. Found art. Found. Tonight, all of it is to be found in the morgue drawers. At 27 inches wide the silvered shelves more than accommodate the aggregated oddities upon which he’s built his middling reputation. A reputation birthed in waste bins and salvage yards.

Opening number 137 reveals a clipboard. On it, a form with a single consideration – the word underrepresented next to a tick box. Above it, a broken-tipped pencil held in place by a metal clamp. Below it, 8-point legalese. Tick the box if you identify . . . BIPOC, LGBTQIAS+ . . . neurodiversity, asylum seeker . . . are currently serving or have served time in prison. I slide the drawer closed. Silence the consideration. Where is the making? The sacrifice? The ten-thousand hours of mastery? The consideration?

Sissy glides past on a wave of adoration. “Art is dead?” he asks without asking, “I know, I know, a bit . . .” touching fingertip to tip of nose, gifting a conspiratorial wink. His feet, shod in slippers curled at the toes, hover just above the concrete. The tip of the cane drags behind him. His sails full of fawning chatter. Something about marginalized. Something about consumerism. Something about subversive and democratizing. The shibboleths twinkle like sunlight in his wake. “That chat?” he asks, adrift toward the distance. A shimmer on the horizon. Land ho.

Yes, that chat. Glass eight and Sissy will hear what I have to say after glass nine. Two hundred and seventy-five quid. Tom Killed Cats. Two hundred and seventy-five fucking quid.

Glass nine and it is clear there is value to attendance. Reputation points are being gathered. Attendees are collecting bonuses and level ups. But unfactored was my ability to factor through a pea soup of inebriation. What is the exchange rate between reputation points and pound sterling? What and where is the bureau de change? Let’s leave reputation as X. The formula forthcoming.

I’ve lost myself in neighboring prattle. The talk is of the NFT crash, phenomenology, indigeneity, video games, and the cane. War injury she says. Took a truncheon to the leg in the riots he says. Armenian loan shark they say. If only to tighten their balaclava like tourniquet – to stem the hemorrhaging. The surplus of nouns to describe banter speaks to its worthlessness. This badinage. This ego thickened palaver.

Glass ten? Eleven? It’s hot. So very hot. In winter, London invites you to choose. The dreary of never frozen everdamp or a close quartered roasting of souls. This. This cauldron of adulation. This bubbling clutter of tongues. Beads on moustaches, blackened snot, blue mascara melting under muscoid specs – down cheeks pained from sneering. I need a third alternative. A temperate solitude.

I could quietly step away. I can. To somewhere else. No one would bat a lash. Raise a pierced brow. Quietly. Not so quietly. The tap-tap of wooden heels on concrete creates a hellish din. In this place, reverberant like echoes of some past snapping of bone.

Down a long hallway I find it – sanctuary. Past abandoned administrative offices and autopsy suite, a people-free hollow cast in blue-grey half-light, in morbid bureaucratic chill. A sign reads Please place decedents in coolers feet first. Coolers. Body refrigerators. I open number 23 and, finding no corpse, step in and shimmy myself prone.

Even through a quilted coat, the stainless-steel is cold against my back. Above me the linear ordering of the dead – numbered cabinetry extends beyond my periphery. I can see the logic here. I can see Tom Killed Cats more clearly now than ever.

In the photo, a paunchy and wattled Edison, white-haired and lab coated, oversees the execution of a tabby. Connected to electrodes, the cat stares calmly into the camera, unaware it is to be a small price paid for global enlightenment. Sissy paperclipped an

EDF Energy disconnection notice to the photo, set it in a box frame, swindled me with it. We regret to inform you that £317.43 remains in arrears.

I counted Ollie Berwick as a friend. Good old Ollie and his favor. Go to Sissy’s studio. Put on a show. Make sure they see the money. The next Blake Divine, I should say. The next Cass Lear. I can only manage a few hundred, I told him. Fine, fine. Sissy will owe you. You’ll be in the fold. At the studio, promised critics and gallerists were grubbier than imagined. Side-eyed and uneasy. On some level, I . . . but transaction complete and Ollie went dark. Sissy went dark. Sissy will owe me. Sissy still owes me.

Click and shuffle. Click and shuffle. Two feet and a cane. My eyes open to find Sissy’s face in full. A pock-marked moon waxing daft in cool blue. He leans down and kisses my forehead, leaving a slime of sweat on my brow. “Dead man. You’re a lucky devil,” he says, massaging the back of his neck in an act of what? Self-soothing, deceit, confession? I can smell the sweet of his drunk, the bacterial rot below gum line. Sissy opens 21 – lowers himself inside. And here we lie side by side. For a while, silence.

Sissy speaks. “Tom Killed Cats . . . awful, right?”

Yes. Lazy. Worthless. Confession.

“Time does funny things with awful.”

Yes. The half-life of awful is a variable calculation. Slowed by magnitude. Accelerated by angry face emojis. Funny things.

“Nostalgia softens the hardness. Anyway . . .” He trails off.

Yes. Time dog-ears certain things it leaves behind. Go back. Pay attention. This had meaning. Value. In the lull, an opportunity. “I . . . “

“Anyway, I feel terrible. How it went down. Let me buy it back. Make you whole.”

Yes. Make me whole. “I . . . “

“What did you pay for it?”

Yes. The crux. Two hundred and seventy-five quid. “I . . .”

“275, right? Let’s call it 300. For your trouble. To make you whole.”

Yes. To make me whole.

Sissy extends a hand. I grasp it instinctively. In his palm, three sticky polymer banknotes. “Superb. Dues paid, amends made, best friends forever,” Sissy says. He frees himself from 21, grabs the handle to my drawer, and smilingly slurs, “Appreciate you, ta, mate,” before sliding me into blackness with a thrrshhh. An IOU gently ripped. In the pitch I can hear his slippers kiss the concrete floor. An odd cadence. No slow shuffle. No click of the cane.

Fair exchange. Worse outcomes, I suppose. Granted, I took advantage. The booze. Eleven glasses and £25 profit for my troubles. There’s the taxi home. Net £13. But running expenses? My time? When the debt went unpaid, I wrapped Tom Killed Cats in brown paper, tied it with jute, marked the rubbish RUBBISH, and returned it to the steps of Sissy’s studio. Supply costs. Bus fare. Time. He could have kept it. Offered nothing. Fair exchange.

In the cabineted void, I hum a tune that is my father’s. A workbench melody mustered to serenade his model Spitfires. The memory of it fills the cubby like a woolen fog. Hugs me tight. Its chorus slips my lips. “What is it worth? If it were all to fail, this hypothesis Earth, what is it worth?” I could sleep here.

“Ninety-seven quadrillion American dollars.” A reply through throat like exhaust pipe. Sissy. The artist, the actor, the prankster.

“Sissy?”

“Seven thousand forty-three euro.” A young girl’s voice. Spanish? Portuguese? It seems to come from . . .

“Sissy?” I repeat.

“Seven thousand forty-three euro,” says the girl. From the drawers above.

“Who’s that?” My palms probe for escape. “Where are you?”

“Thirty-seven,” says the gravelly gent. “Forty-three,” the girl. My arms lower. The snug bleeds from the drawer like bath water. Inches downward. Bares me to creeping chill. Stay put. Stay still. In here, the statistical probability of necromancy remains infinitesimal. In here, it is subterfuge. The taking of piss via floor drain. Via air conditioning duct.

“The champagne? A glass?” I ask the floor drain.

“Four pound sixty,” says a man in South London muddle.

Prosecco. Champagne an inexcusable assumption.

“Tom Killed Cats?” I ask the air conditioning duct.

“One thousand five hundred pounds sterling,” says an elderly woman in Queen’s English.

I am owed. I am still owed. 167 glasses of champagne. 326 glasses of prosecco. Countless reputation points. Sissy. The saboteur, the reprobate, the unrepentant. I eject the drawer from its housing. Thrrshhh. A steam valve released.

“Tom Killed Cats?”

I sit upright and scan the room.

“Tom Killed Cats?”

Nothing.

Something.

Movement – a shadow ebbs liquescent down the hall, a hint of giggle skipping in its drift. Indistinct voices stir in the far room. Now waves of undulating wordlessness, dramatically sweeping up and crashing down. Sissy holding court. Pontificating. Auctioneering. The shadow mathematics of popularity. I failed to factor the price of Sissy rising.

Applause, laughter, a moment of quiet. A collective humming stumbles its way to harmony. In my mind Sissy raises his hands in slow crescendo. A chorus launches incalculable but clear. “What is it worth, if it were all to fail…” Everything. All of it.

“…this hypothesis Earth…” Wild variable. And in it I am not Tom. I am the cat. “…what is it worth?” The singing grows louder as a pandemonium of clattering heels, trainer squeaks, and tapping cane creeps toward me.

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