Name: Judeus “Mack” Mackenzie
Age: 38 (Born 1902)
Gender: Male
Species: Long-haired Siamese cat
Appearance: Judeus is a very tall feline, standing at about 6"6'. His fur is cream-coloured, which darkens to brown on his paws, arms, legs, face and tail. He is somewhat muscly, but not overly toned. He wears rather out of fashion high collared shirts, trousers with suspenders and hiking boots when going for walks, as he had no concept of current fashion since 1915.
History:
The Rails
A boy in overalls balanced on the rail. Spreading his arms wide, the young feline shuffled along the warm, rust-red iron, brow furrowed in deep concentration. There was nobody to play with him, so he played games alone. For now, he was a train. He was heavy and fast and powerful. As he slowly wobbled his way along the old track, he came to the bridge over Jackson’s Creek. The bridge was worn, its rivets rusted. Beyond it was a red smokestack from the old brickworks, long since forgotten. The mound of pebbles on either side of the track had started to give way to tough, sturdy weeds poking out for a glimpse of sunlight.
Spotting a caterpillar on the rail, the boy grinned wickedly. Here was a new game. Oh no, he thought to himself, the train is going too fast to stop for the poor caterpillar!
The cat’s bare footpaw crushed the caterpillar with a satisfying splat. Pleased with his little show of destruction, the child began to inch over the bridge, imagining the smeared moisture along the rail as a slick of red blood. It wasn’t a caterpillar, in the game. It was some squirrel bully from school he hated. Imagine if that squirrel had been there! That would wipe the big stupid smirk off his face.
The rail began to tremble. The boy shivered, and stopped playing. That could not be right. This railroad had been abandoned since before he was born. Remembering an old trick his father taught him, he leant down and put his ear to the warm metal. Cla-clack cla-clack. Cla-clack cla-clack. It was loud and fast. The cat felt a strong breeze blast him from the other end of the bridge. He tried to run, but he felt slow, sluggish, as if he had already sprinted a marathon. His view of the other side of the creek wobbled and shook, and his breath came to him in short, wheezy gasps. He had only one option. Jump.
Water shot up the child’s nose and he clawed for the surface of the creek, bedraggled and shocked by the cold. The water was turbid and brown, and made him spit, the back of his throat felt like it had been drowned in acid. He gasped for air noisily and slow, and laboriously fought against the current to the muddy banks. The breeze rippled across the water, chilling him and rustling the leaves of the trees. Young reeds brushed against his fur as he stumbled onto solid ground. He looked up at the bridge with frantic, wide green eyes. The rails were quiet, the shrubs were still. There was no train.
The School
Zach’s dad helped him build a treehouse. Zach’s dad took him fishing. Zach’s dad let him shoot pests with his rifle. Zach’s dad was the best dad ever. Judeus hated Zach’s dad. Judeus hated Zach the squirrel.
“Hey, Mack! Coming to my house for lemonade?” Kyle asked after school. Judeus smirked at the marten and shrugged, making sure he was in earshot of Zach. The hallway was just about deserted, the three of them had been on detention. “Oh, I dunno. I thought I might head to my secret base.”
Kyle gave a confused giggle. “Uh, what base? If you mean a tent in your mum’s basement, it doesn’t count.”
Judeus waited patiently for Zach to stop guffawing before he continued the conversation. He twirled his whiskers like he’d read in books and adopted a nonchalant attitude. “Nah, it’s better than that. I found a place at the brickworks. It’s good for hiding stuff my old tom shouldn’t see, yeah?”
The adolescents snickered amongst themselves a little more. Judeus swaggered out of the building and made a big show of heading down the road away from town. Zach would take the bait, he’d already been suspended for drinking. That was another thing that made Zach’s dad the best. He passed his son a bit too much alcohol.
The sun was gone by the time Judeus saw a figure crossing the old bridge. The breeze tonight was cold and harsh, but the bricks the cat leant against were still warm. As his prey drew nearer to the old smokestack, the feline gave his knife a long stare. Two luminescent green eyes stared back. The moon dipped behind the clouds and the night was pitch black. The green eyes blinked, and suddenly Judeus’ paws were wet.
The shine on the knife was gone. He couldn’t see his eyes. He could smell the blood, it was warm and thick on his paws, and it oozed on his shirt and trousers. There was no adrenaline, no victory cry. The moon shined again and the murderer could see the blood, the knife, and the body. Judeus screamed. The cold, dead eyes that now stared at him were a beautiful blue, shined and glossed over. He had killed Kyle.
The Prison
Judeus had been thirteen years old when he had stabbed hid friend Kyle to death by the old brickworks. That had been in 1915. From them, he had been moved into correctional centres and then prisons.
At first, the cat’s heavy boots had nails hammered to the underside in the shape of the broad arrow – the sign of the government’s property. His uniform was white, with the broad arrow markings adorning it. After seven years they changed it, to remove the arrows. Nobody seemed to care, but Judeus sometimes wondered what they had done with his old clothes. After all, he had to be fitted for new ones once he outgrew them. Judeus didn’t stop growing till he towered over the guards and inmates alike. It didn’t matter his schooling had continued in prison, it didn’t matter how bright he was. He was still the big dumb muscle to the more tribal-minded inmates.
Twenty-five years. It would have been twenty, but Judeus had killed a child, an even worse offence. His cell usually contained between three and four, sometimes five inmates, depending on how the prison was coping with numbers. Judeus eventually knew the prison almost inside out.
At five in the morning the bells sounded to wake them. They would be marked off, then sent to the cafeteria for breakfast. Another roster check and then it was off to mid-morning labour. The prison had a work house where the inmates would toil until lunchtime, where yet another roster would be taken. Back to work, then perhaps an hour or so of milling about in the yard, forming groups usually divided by species. Then, to the showers. Contrary to the common myths about prison showers, Judeus was never violated. Juvenile correctional centres were not so prone to such acts, and by the time he was 21, he was too intimidating and powerful a physical figure to be dominated in such a fashion.
Judeus saw many of his inmate associates (he did not call them friends) come and go. Sometimes those that left came back very quickly. Younger generations brought with them their new-fangled jazz words like ‘cool’ and their film references to movies that apparently had proper sound and sometimes even colour. From what little they brought of the outside world, the feline could tell the Zyka he had known as a boy was disappearing.
The one constant in his life, however, were the things nobody else could see. The dark figures that haunted the toilets. The creature that lurked under the wrought-iron stairs, which Judeus had to run up as fast as possible to escape, earning derisive (but muffled) chortles from inmates and guards. Nobody, of course, dared question these childish behaviours to the big cat’s face.
The Outside
His father’s house. No, not his father’s. His house. Mum and Dad were dead, now. Zach’s dad was dead too. Judeus was too scared to pay Zach a visit. After all, what would either of them say? Or do?
Judeus spent the afternoon cleaning and packing up the old house. His room had long since been cleared of his childhood possessions. The cat binned the rubbish, the old magazines and paperwork of the past decades that nobody would read or remember. His bed had been sold, so he slept on the couch. He did not want to sleep in his parent’s bed.
The brickworks were gone now. It had all been torn down and built over. The old bridge had rusted away, so they had made a new one, a wide one for traffic. There were more cars in the town now, and they all had buttons to start them, instead of paw cranks. Judeus did not visit the site of the murder. After little more than a week, he decided that he could not bear to show his face any more in this town.
Nobody really recognised him, of course. What was one cat amongst a growing town of thousands? Yet there was a permanent sense of unease, that perhaps some old shopkeeper or nosey former schoolmate would make enquiries. So, one night, Judeus packed some clothes, money and locked up the house. He was leaving.
