Chronicle IX

Butters dragged a sack of flour to the corner of a table. He scratched it open and then stood right where it was piling up on the floor, waiting for the right moment for it to gather enough below him and then allowed himself to be buried in it with only his head sticking out. This was the most comfortable way for him to sleep, even if Bianca didn’t appreciate the lost flour.

As he closed his eyes, Butters watched the starry ball of yarn roll right into the bakery, passing through the wall. His eyelids went flat at the timing. He stood in a swift, decisive motion and leaned to each side. Flour poured off of his back, some of it forming little puffs and clouds that rolled through the bakery.

Butters approached the yarn and as usual, it began to roll away. He didn’t think much of it, or of anything for that matter, but were he not so nimble, the speed of the yarn would make it very easy to lose track of. He had no trouble. It did seem to wait on occasion, when it knew Butters was falling behind at all. It did so just outside of the bakery, awaiting the little cat to come through the kitty door.

Butters gingerly followed the yarn into the alley and over fences down to the next street. He was entranced by the yarn. It unraveled as it rolled, the thread left behind was only ethereal and faded quickly. A few blocks down, the yarn took a vertical turn. It climbed the wall of an apartment building.

Failing to climb the bricks or some pipes, ultimately, Butters needed to be able to reach the retracted fire escape ladder if he were to scale the building. He lost sight of the yarn at a window many stories up, watching the distant thread sparkle and wane. If he let it go without him, he knew he’d lose his opportunity, so he hastened his efforts.

With closed eyes, in his mind, Butters heard the voice of the bad man. “Butters! Butters! Butters!”

In a snap, little kitty Butters transformed into big boi Butters. A puff of flour that didn’t shake off earlier expanded outward in his shape and then dissipated. He leapt up to the fire escape a few levels up, just below where he saw the yarn enter the building. Even at his enormous size, he was gentle enough and fleet-footed enough to maintain stealthy upon the old and precarious fire escape.

Through the apartment window, Butters watched the yarn enter a bedroom. Luckily, the residents left the large, double balcony doors unlocked. He pawed at the handles a few times until they opened. On all fours, he squeezed through the opening and strutted softly through the living room as if he wasn’t a behemoth of a cat.

Butters sped up as he heard muffled whimpering through the door. He knocked down the bedroom door and found the sound was coming from the bed on the opposite wall. The astral yarn wrapped around the person laying there and then vanished.

Butters’ quickly stomped towards the bed. A pillow covered the entire top half of the mattress. He realized that it was being forced down onto the person by some invisible entity. He extended his claws and dug them deep into the pillow. A hiss came up from the bed. Butters yanked hard and launched the pillow across the room. The man beneath gasped for air so violently that he didn’t even notice Butters for a while.

The big cat stood in the room, making certain the man fully recovered. When he seemed okay, Butters left the room, ignoring a slew of questions from the rescued man. He noticed the pillow was gone from the entire apartment. Whilst stepping out from the apartment, he recalled the man having two regular sized pillows that were also not white like the large one he removed.

From the fire escape Butters jumped, falling all the way to the floor and landing on all fours as a precious little kitty. He strolled down the alleys to return to the bakery, where Bianca was likely having a fit and cleaning up his flour, wondering why he doesn’t just sleep in the many cat beds she bought for him. Butters would never accept charity.