China Kat

By Matt Peters

China Kat is a collection of short stories published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies over the years. The eight stories collected here range from socially conscious realism to existential-metaphysical-crisis to travel narrative to a couple of horror-comedies.
 

The horror-comedy, "Harold's Zombie" details the disruption the zombie of a recently deceased employee causes when it shows up for work. And in "A Dirty Dozen", when a building contractor can't find workers to clear debris and gut houses after a hurricane, he tries to reanimate the bones of the disaster's victims to do the work.
 

In "China Kat", George the Junky is desperate to warn other drug abusers about the torments that await them in the afterlife if they don't kick their habits. This is the existential-metaphysical-crisis story, and it is told in First-Cat Point-of-View, so hang on.
 

"Débrouillard" follows Kendall, a sailor from the USA stuck in Venezuela, who needs to figure out what to do now that the yacht's captain has given up sailing and is flying back to the States. The story is a travel narrative with a plot.
 

"Hunters and Gatherers", "Burn Cream 'Cause it Burns", "Protocols", and "It Works When You Work It" are from Peters' upcoming LA RUE HOUSE, a collection of stories centered on the staff and residents of a homeless shelter for street kids.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Peters
• Release date: Mar 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781940761466

Matt Peters

Matt Peters holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Full Sail University and runs Beating Windward Press.  His fiction has been published in the journals 580 Split, Burrow Press Review, the Burlesque Press Variety Show; and in the anthologies Voices Rising: Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project, Bits of the Dead, Keeping Track, Forget How You Found Us, Gutters and Alleyways, and Crossing Lines.

Book preview

Dedication

For all the students in my Publishing and Distribution class over the years.

If I can do this, you can too.

Harold’s Zombie

Harold’s zombie is throwing the office into a tizzy. And by Harold’s zombie I don’t mean the zombie-of-Harold, but literally Harold-the-zombie.

Harold died on Sunday of an aneurism - total blown fuse, lights out. He was, understandably, out on Monday, but, not understandably, he showed up at 8:10 Tuesday morning and filled out a missed-punch slip. He didn’t say anything besides a little grunt as if to say, Morning on his way from the time clock to his desk. And then he just sat there. All day. Except for the hour at lunch when he sat in the break room hogging the classifieds without reading them.

He came in on Wednesday too. 8:15 this time, but didn’t bother filling out a tardy slip. He went home early on Thursday for the funeral and we buried him that afternoon, but he was back at 8:05 Friday morning wearing jeans and golf shirt for Casual-Friday.

He doesn’t say anything or make any noise. Just sits there. He gets coffee, but doesn’t drink it. If you ask him a direct question, like, How you doing? Think it’ll rain? or Where’s the Goodrich order? he lets out a full sentence worth of grunts, but you can’t make any of it out. However, when you put a stack of orders in front of him, he’ll process them. And quick too. But if not, he just sits there watching his screensaver with that vacant stare. It’s just like any other day working with Harold, except for him being dead.

And the office is in an absolute tizzy over it. HR doesn’t know whether or not his benefits continue. Accounting can’t decide if they should be tracking his hours or not. Should he still get a paycheck? The people around him grumble that he smells but worry he’ll get offended and eat their brains if they hang an air freshener on his cubicle wall. Isn’t that harassment?

The custodians are the most upset. There’s one hell of a mess: skin flakes and hair all over the desk, fingernails stuck in the keyboard, a bunch of unidentifiable stains on the floor. I heard last night, they found maggots on his chair.

Surprisingly, management is being cool about the whole thing; they’re inclined to keep him on as long as he gets his work done. Although they asked the company lawyers whether or not over-time pay requirements still apply. 

Me? Hell, I’m just glad the vodou powder worked. I was going to miss Harold. That, and I didn’t want to process all these orders by myself while HR dragged their asses for three months finding a replacement.

It was worth every penny.

China Kat

A Portrait of George

Something about the familiar smell must have aroused my recollections, popped the cap, un-stopped the top, broke the binds and released myself, my old self, the previous me that I was when I was not this cat, this kitten, this kitty cat, when I wasn’t trapped in this furry hell.

That sharp sweet salivating smell of smoke — like tuna-chicken-pork treats — the sweet sickening smell of marijuana, tripped the lock, cracked the confinement of catmind and freed my human thought processes, allowed my previous retrogressions to regress, allowed my previous life to return, to return and illuminate.  That familiar smell, this pink patch of moisture picked up that perfume tenfold. Cat nose knows. The sharp familiarity stabbed through this convoluted mass of catmind, smoothed out the cat waves, cleared away the catspeak — fractured language of images — brought back sanity and reason to tortured twisted mental madness. I became sentient again, sentient yes, more than before, more than animate animal, before, yes before, I moved and was motivated by instincts, pure instincts — dumbly falling through my throwness — I had no knowledge, was not knowing of my predicament, my sick sick sentence.

But now, now I am able. Now, I know. Now, I understand. Now this kitty-cat banter is clear. Now, my furry hell is illuminated. Now, I see karma’s cruel justice; see the sick trick of reincarnation. This perpetual trap of repetition and addiction like Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence crossed with Buddha’s five hundred lives. Oh, late night amphetamine philosophies mix within my blender brain to help explain my fix, my junky-cat junky-fix, my furry-junky-hell. All my addictions replaced here with cat kind equivalents, a mystical karmic sentence for human gluttonies. One of seven, yes seven, seven deadly sins, seven years to one, now it’s seven in one.

So now, let me tell all. Yes, now that I know, I must tell to warn. Yes to warn. I must warn of this furry hell, this junky fix, this furry junky hell. I suffer in a furry reincarnated hell of kitty kicks, crazy cat addictions, permanent addictions never to be kicked.  I must warn all those still shooting, still snorting, still smoking, all those who will die nodding, nearly napping, for those who don’t kick, who don’t go straight. Example! I must be the example, example of what awaits, a warning of what’s in store for those who buy the ticket. An example day, one day, my day, one May day of my day with my vices, yes, one seven days, seven in one, one day with my vices, is all it will take. And they are all here, all my addictions, all my vices are here in this furry hell, all here masked in cat equivalents, morphed to fit my cat metabolism, cat chemistry.

Mornings mean milk, yes milk, common thing for cats, but It is bad, they say. Lactose-intolerant, they say. Do not fill their bowls, do not fill their bellies with milk, it is poison to them, they say. Rubbish, false witness, they see wrong, out of order. They see kittens, kittens who overindulge, get vomits and shits. But