Northern_Lights_2019

33 Mr. Mimsy’s Interment by Nathan Berg One might say Bettie Carson had a problem, and one would be right to say so. Bettie Carson had a dead cat on her living room carpet, and damned if she knew what to do with it. Despite her back’s cries of alarm, Bettie was bent over, digging through the two decades of cleaning supplies gathered under her kitchen sink. Seeing twenty years hiding under the sink made Bettie’s spine wail even louder. She saw a canister of Ajax with a Mr. Yuck sticker, which she was pretty sure had been discontinued in the eighties. So maybe three decades, then. Bettie tried to ignore the fact that she had been living alone in the same small apartment for forty-two years, and stood up very carefully, using the counter as leverage. Yesterday her apartment was cozy; today it was cramped. She had no idea when it would go back to being cozy, if ever. She muttered a few curses under her breath as she straightened, hearing a disturbing number of pops from her spine. She considered Mr. Mimsy out in the living room and fought to recall how to get blood out of carpet. Vinegar? Wine? No, that was stupid. Wine would only stain it more. Baking soda? Hmm. It rang of a certain amount of truth, so she figured it was worth a try. She only had half a box, though, which she suspected wouldn’t be enough. She wondered if she would need the baking soda for the walls but decided probably not. She doubted blood could stain faux wood paneling—some 409 would work fine. She stood at the kitchen doorway and surveyed the damage to her living room: bits of fur on the sofa and walls, pieces of meat sliding balefully down glass picture frames, a few singe marks on the pastel sofa. At least it was spared the worst of it; Bettie had learned the hard way that a plastic sofa cover was the way to go. Poor Mimsy had still managed to melt the plastic in a few small places, but otherwise the cover had done its job admirably. Before she made the arduous journey out of her building to the Quick-Mart down the block, Bettie had to decide what to do with Mr. Mimsy’s body. It was deep into January in Buffalo, and despite the unusual lack of snow, the ground was frozen solid. Besides, Bettie was long past the strength of youth; even if the soil was soft from early spring rain, there was no way she had the capacity to dig a plot. Mr. Mimsy was a large cat, after all. Bettie thought about the dumpster on the side of her building. She suspected there was some sort of law against throwing away a dead animal, and certainly the smell would give it away, what with Mr. Mimsy in his current ghastly state. Maybe if she wrapped him tightly, then double-bagged him, the stench wouldn’t seep out enough to be noticed over the rest of the garbage. It only needed to stay hidden for a day, so she decided she’d have to suck it up and throw poor Mimsy in the dumpster. First things first, Bettie thought, and shuffled her impressive girth into the bedroom to change out of her blood-soaked clothes. The moment she passed the threshold of her room, she began to feel better. The stucco walls were robin’s-egg blue, her favorite color, and her collection of rag-dolls smiled down at her from the shelf over her dresser. Yes, things weren’t so bad, she decided. After changing into fresh clothes, Bettie studied her bloody sweatermournfully. Her nephew Joseph had given her the sweater for Christmas in 97—or was it 96? She could never remember—and it was her favorite: white cotton with a picture of a smiling gray kitten on it. She had instantly been reminded of a then-young Mr. Mimsy, and of course had fallen in love with it. Well, it was definitely ruined now. She carried it out to the living room and laid it out on the carpet. She used the coffee table to help her as she hunkered down and plucked the tattered pieces of fur and intestines and placed them on the sweater. The shag carpet squelched rudely every time she shifted her weight. When all the bits were laid out on the sweater, she folded the top and bottom together, then wrapped the sleeves around and tied them in a knot. She had to let go of the coffee table to do