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Joe was never a fan of silence on his homestead.
He may not consider himself superstitious, but his are. And like any good, reasonable human being, Joe knows to listen to them.
So when his animals all turn in for an early night (an unnatural feat considering the nice sprinkle of sunshine they’ve been gifted this lovely good Tuesday), Joe is suspicious, to say the least.
“Mittens!” Joe calls. He almost regrets calling out for the independent cat because surely she is up to important work if she hasn’t come up to him already. The silence sits underneath his fingernails too sharply for his liking, and he can’t shake the feeling that the animals know something he don’t.
Which is true. The animals know lots more than he does.
His guardian dog sits at Joe’s heels. He hasn’t commanded him to do so, but Romeo is on high alert.
“Keep an eye out,” Joe commands. His dog preens under his hand, happy to do his work. He’ll know to look out for Mittens, a cat whose age is beyond him. She belonged to the previous owner, and Joe took her in after her passing. She’s a good cat, one who never strays too far from Joe’s side.
He knows better to worry, but she’s been with him ever since he’s arrived at the homestead. He arrived here at age twenty, and he’s been by himself since he turned twenty-five. Now at thirty, he’s had his enjoyment of the silence. He needed it after the years of his youth spent in a house with slamming doors and a father’s fury.
It’s still a good life, albeit a little quiet. Joe is good at making noise when necessary.
Tonight he gives that task to his old turntable, which plays for him well in an assortment of tracks. It fills Joe’s head with lyrics he used to listen to at a less than favorable time in his life. He’s grown now. Some of the things that hurt him then don’t hurt him now. New things do. New things like missing cats and loneliness.
He won’t pray, but he does think it would be nice. If Mittens came home or if this lonely feeling would pass. He makes some eggs on a plate. Eggs from his hardworking chickens, and he lays them out on his porch. He eats some too and finds it sits low in his stomach, under the lonely.
When he sleeps, he dreams of slamming doors. It’s a dream he hasn’t had in a long time. In such a long time he’s forgotten the horror as if a father’s fury could ever make this lonely feeling pass. It would only make him shake.
When he wakes, he opens his front door. His dog isn’t here. Off patrolling, perhaps. Joe pays that little mind.
The eggs, however, are gone. The plate is shattered at his feet.
Oh, Mittens.
He slips his work boots on. He’s still in his nightgown, so he won’t do his chores yet. The nagging silence from last night has stuck with him, so he thinks he might check in with the animals first.
“Howdy, y’all,” he greets his chickens by leaning over the fence. “I am so sorry for my unsightly appearance.” Bertha, his sassiest chicken, clucks at him in pure annoyance. Yes, so sorry, he is, but emergencies happen. “It was an urgent matter to say ‘good morning,’ so I am sorry.” Bertha doesn’t accept his apology, but she’ll come around when he comes back with her breakfast.
He checks on the goats next. Their conversation is riveting as always, but they can be quite the chatters. Joe makes an awkward excuse before going on his merry way to the edgeline of his trees.
Romeo the guarddog runs to his heels. A dog who is usually playful in the morning, but today he is stiff and steady. As if he’s seen something gruesome.
“No Mittens?” Joe sighs. He didn’t want to intrude on her privacy, but he’ll have to check her microchip. Maybe she’s off visiting a secret lover, but Joe is still concerned. It’s been a while, after all.
His workboots are muddy from tracking across his yard. He leaves them outside on his porch by the shattered porcelain. When Romeo tries to come up the steps, he seems surprised, going to sniff the plate. It hadn’t been him to eat the eggs. Surely he knew they were for Mittens.
He shoves against his door only for it to come open easily. The rain usually makes it stiff. Joe Hills should’ve been on edge at this second red flag of the day, but he is more concerned with Mittens and her sudden elopement with that evil cat across the way. Evil isn’t something Joe believes in, but it’s the only word that comes to mind when favoring his only neighbor (who lives meters away) and their little orange cat.
He finds his phone to view the tracking app. He’s still in his nightgown and in no state to go storming out, but urgent matters. Doc and Ren may not mind him as much as the chickens did, as Doc is hardly dressed most of the times he visits.
When the app loads, however, it says Mittens is in the house. Perhaps she had come back for more eggs, and they were two passing ships. He calls for her and pokes his head into the other rooms of the house.
It’s not a big house. There’s Joe’s room. There’s a sewing room he doesn’t often use. That was the previous owner’s favorite room where she had gone to get away from Joe. He hasn’t felt the need to change it. There’s another room, one he calls the Guest Room, but nobody is ever a Guest in his house. He has visitors that are unkind with messy paws, but never are they guests.
The sewing room is dusty. No sign of life. Mittens comes in here, sometimes, when she must be missing who used to live here. Joe does too, except he often misses her, so he tries not to spend too much time in his longing. For him and his allergies.
He shuts the door and hesitates in his kitchen doorway.
Hesitates because of the splatter of blood.
“Oh,” Joe says. He doesn’t remember cutting himself on a knife anytime recently. He doesn’t remember spilling any red paint or anything of that matter.
There is blood on the floor, though. Wet and congealed, as if it was fresh.
He stares at the blood for more than he should. He thinks about it, about how the blood reminds him of a house he lived in long ago. He thinks about it so long he doesn’t register the growling.
When Joe raises his head, he finds an intruder.
The intruder is green and large but not green and large like his neighbor Doc. Where Doc is fluffy, this intruder is scaly. They aren’t quite as tall as Doc, but there is a great strength here, too. Joe should probably step back.
“Howdy,” Joe says, despite himself and despite the green intruder sitting in a hunch on his kitchen floor. They’re a little scary, naked, and--
Bleeding.
“My name is Joe Hills,” he introduces because while he came from a broken home, he didn’t escape without his manners. “Have you seen Mittens?”
The green makes an odd face at Joe’s introduction.
“This residence’s guard cat,” he says, which is a joke. She doesn’t guard anything aside from her personal space. “This residence a little ways outside Nashville, Tennessee.”
The intruder looks surprised as if they hadn’t been to Nashville before. Or, perhaps, they’ve never been here at all.
Maybe that would explain the stardust in that fiery red hair.
“I reckon you’re in my kitchen ‘cause you’re hungry?” It’s a good question that deserves a better answer. It is morning, however.
Joe makes eggs again.
The intruder is quiet, but they are attentive. Their hands are bloody. Joe wonders if they’re hungry.
They don’t answer, so Joe makes them a plate anyways. When he hands it to them, the plate is ripped out of his hands. Their hands beat at the plate with a brutal force as they scarf it down, and then they bang the plate against the floor.
It shatters.
“You were hungry,” Joe says. They seem to be hungry, still. Looking to Joe expectantly.
Joe doesn’t have visitors often. He’s still in his nightgown for heaven’s sake. Then again, this stranger is naked with a body different from Joe’s.
Joe turns to his stove to make another plate of eggs. To his surprise, he earns another growl. He’s making the eggs as quickly as he could, but his intruder is impatient or something because they’re breathing down against his neck.
“You may look like a zombie, but you don’t have to eat my neck,” Joe says without turning around. The cold breath pauses. They breathe, even though that body looks dead. Wilted like the flowers Joe has forgotten to water in his windowsill. “These eggs would be better.”
That seems to satisfy them, at least. Thankfully because Joe isn’t good at sewing, and stitching is like sewing.
After breakfast, Joe sets out another plate for Mittens.
“You didn’t eat her, did you?” Joe asks and the stranger’s bloody hands. They snarl. “Does that mean no?”
“No,” they say, and Joe beams.
“That is great news!” he says. “For our communication, not for my cat. I hope you didn’t eat her, but I’d understand if you did. You looked hungry.”
The stranger still looks hungry. As if they’re chasing something Joe can’t give them. Their eyes are cloudy yet precise. Confused, attentive. Joe doesn’t find fear in them.
“You can help me look for her,” he says because there’s a lot of work to do around the homestead and they did eat three servings of eggs. He could thank Sassy Bertha and her eggs, at the very least. It’s proper manners.
The stranger watches Joe when he enters his bedroom.
“I don’t know if I have boots that would fit you,” Joe says. Or anything, really. The ground will be coarse underneath their feet, but Joe doesn’t want to leave them alone in here. He’s not sure if he has a choice based on the way they keep following him. They stare, too.
Curious eyes, they are, and Joe thinks they’re very beautiful. They look like dead eyes. They look like they cannot see, but they travel Joe’s movements and his lips when they move.
Joe changes out of his nightgown and into a long, smocked dress. Easy for days where the sun is bright after a heavy rain. He dons himself a hat and then offers the intruder one, too.
They accept it with those bloody hands. Joe shouldn’t have handed them a white hat.
“You can have that if the stain won’t wash out,” Joe says.
They lift the hat up to their mouth.
“You can eat it if the stain won’t wash out,” Joe reiterates. He gestures to the top of his head. They open their mouth, displaying rows of razer sharp teeth. “Not my head. You are not-- ”
After an uneventful moment of getting dressed, Joe escapes his house with a wet sunhat. The stranger wears one stained red and with chunks missing.
“My neighbors will have shoes for you, but Doc likes profit. You should grab the eggs.”
When they visit the chickens, they don’t try to eat them, unlike they had with Joe, everytime he has his back turned to them for too long. Hopefully his neighbors will be prepared.
Joe carefully gathers the eggs, but he doesn’t grab them all. He points to the empty basket for the stranger to grab. They grab it.
When they grab an egg, it shatters in their palm.
“Gently,” Joe coaches, but now he’s laughing because the stranger looks miffed with him. “I didn’t tell you to squeeze it. It’s okay. It wasn’t an alive egg. Do you get that? What’s alive and what’s not?”
Joe doesn’t know if he does, most days. But the stranger nods their head.
“Are you?” They hesitate. “I’m alive.”
They seem to consider it. “Hungry,” they say, and Joe laughs again.
“After Doc’s, we can have breakfast,” Joe explains. “If we hurry and get you shoes, that would be best.”
While Joe drives, he worries they may bite him. They hold the bars of his doorless jeep as he coasts over the coarse driveway. He goes slow as he searches for any sign of Mittens. Only halfway through the drive, the blur of green in his peripheral moves. Before he can ask them to sit still, they lunge out of the vehicle.
Joe stops the jeep so abruptly he ricochets forward.
“Ow,” he gripes plainly, but he recovers swiftly. With a hand against the back of his neck, he slumps out of the jeep and chases after the green.
“Doc’s is the other way!” he calls after.
The stranger is gone.
Joe looks between the jeep and the vast array of trees.
Maybe they’ve gone for Mittens.
Joe wonders if that stain would have come out of that hat and climbs into his jeep. He doesn’t chase, but he does continue to Doc’s. He has a basket full of eggs that needs delivering.
He knocks on their doors and greets them with a smile, despite his jarring morning.
“Howdy!” he greets once a disheveled Ren opens the door. He’s tightly wrapped in a red robe. “Good morning, Ren.”
“Hey, Joe, how are-- You’re bleeding,” he remarks. “Joe -- Doc! Doc! ”
“I’m having a rough and exciting morning,” Joe tells him as he takes it upon himself to step into his doorway. He is bleeding, but that’s not why he’s here. “How are you, Ren?”
Ren must know he won’t get anywhere without replying to the question so he says with a tight lip, “Good. Uh, so the head wound?”
“Nevermind that, I’m here on business!” he reports proudly as an equally discheveled Doc comes into the room. He looks exhausted with gaping eyebags. “Howdy, Doc.”
“Oh, great, you’ve brought eggs,” Doc says gruffly. He looks to Ren.
“Bleeding,” Ren says. Doc scoffs, moves away to grab his medical kit.
“Ah-ah, I’ve only got so many eggs to trade. Stitching services is not it, unfortunately,” he tells them politely. Ren sighs and brings him into his dining room. There’s a full coffee pot that must’ve been fresh made. Ren pours three cups and then asks if Joe wants one. He says yes, and Ren makes a fourth.
Doc gets two mugs, Ren one, and Joe one. With some butter added to it, just how he likes it.
“I’d like to ask for some of Doc’s shoes,” Joe says. Doc yanks his chair up next to him. Joe pulls away when he tries to grab at the wound with his gloved hand.
“I don’t have my prosthetic on, so make this easy, man,” Doc gripes. Joe considers it because he does look tired and he only has one arm to try and grab Joe, but he does have pressing matters.
“I need some work boots. Possibly some old clothes, if you have any to spare,” Joe requests. “I do have a sewing machine if it’s not quite big enough, or in case of a tear.”
Ren considers him. There’s wailing in the background. One of their robots, probably. They’re quite needy, sassy things. Ren gets up gruffly and kicks away his chair.
That’s what happens when you live with a half cyborg-half monster. You find other cyborgs.
“Do you need help, Ren? For the price of a Sunday button-up--”
“I got it,” Ren interrupts. “Doc’s clothes won’t fit you, dude.”
“No, they won’t,” Doc agrees once Ren leaves the room. Doc’s hand dots a clean wetwipe against Joe’s bleeding temple, much to his chagrin. He’d be happier in different circumstances. “You going to sell it again?”
He’s talking about the last time when Joe took some wool to sell. That was different, and to be fair, Joe hadn’t known them yet. He didn’t know they were neighbors. He thought they just lived close, but then Ren explained, “We’re neighbors,” and now he understands the sheep pen is off-limits.
“Tell me more about the cut,” Doc demands.
“Is it important?” Joe asks simply. He doesn’t think so. “I suppose you think so, if you’re willing to give me a pair of trousers.” Trousers may be difficult to fit. He’s not sure what the stranger needs. “Or a skirt?”
“A skirt, sure,” Doc says. “Tell me about the cut.”
Joe sighs. “It’s been a troublesome morning. Mittens got out.”
Doc presses his lips together. “She’s an outdoor cat.”
“Yeah, and I think she got eaten,” Joe says. He really loves Mittens, hopes she isn’t sitting at the bottom of a dead stranger’s stomach with eggs and other things. “But that’s how life goes, I suppose. I’ll still be sad, but I can honor it, too. We get to be sad over sad things, Doc.”
“Yes, I know,” Doc says. “Mittens… will be okay.” Joe looks at him sharply.
“You have Mittens,” he accuses. Doc doesn’t like cats. Doc is also a bad liar, at times. Like now.
“Mittens is getting patched up,” Doc says after a stretch of silence. “...You were right. About the ‘eaten.’”
Joe knew it. But she must be in good hands. Ren has fixed lots of cyborgs before and has also made them. He does a good job.
“The eaten happens,” Joe agrees. “Just like my head. They were very hungry. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone dead that hungry.”
Doc stares.
“Joe?”
“Yes, Doc?”
“...Did someone bite your head?”
“Someone did!” Joe tells him excitedly. “I have a visitor, though if they stay the night, perhaps they’ll be my Guest.”
“A guest,” Doc says. When Ren rejoins them, Doc flashes him a pleading look. “Joe has a guest at his house that took a chunk out of his forehead.”
“They were aiming for my hat,” Joe says. “I was worried they ate my cat!” Good thing Mittens is here, possibly. Hopefully.
“Which they did, maybe a little, and then they left.”
“Left?” Ren asks. Doc plasters a bandage over the wound. “They left?”
“I told them I was coming here,” he says. Ren’s face falls, as if he didn’t want the company. He did look tired, after all.
Bad timing for him to let him know because there’s a knock. A knock-ish that’s more like a thud of a body against a closed door.
“That must be them!”
Ren doesn’t want to open the door. Joe offers to get it for him, but Ren pales drastically. Joe feels it would only be right, after the coffee he’s made him.
He lets Doc open the door, however, who rips it open to display the stranger and--
Mittens.
Mittens with similar dead eyes. She yarls in their grasp, and when they drop the cat, it comes running to Joe.
“Mittens is a zombie,” Joe says. “Oh, Mittens, you’re always full of surprises.”
“Mittens is recovering from surgery,” Ren says with clenched teeth.
“Surprises!” Joe cries.
They must’ve not finished eating Mittens. Mittens must’ve ran off to Doc’s property, most likely looking for that orange fellow Joe isn’t fond of, in need of protection! Now there’s two Mittens, both undead. Cyborg-Mittens and Zombie-Mittens. His family’s grown today. How lucky!
“Thank you!” Joe says to the stranger in the doorway. The hat is still fastened on top of their head. “Doc, do you have boots for them?”
They did need those boots, after all. Their feet are covered with bristles and twigs and bloody spots.
“Oh, great, they’re bleeding too,” Doc says. “Okay. I will find some clothes for your zombie Guest.”
“I think they’re from space,” Joe explains. “Because of the meteorite smell.”
“Right,” Ren agrees. He pours another cup of coffee in the kitchen. “Zombie, you want some?”
“Zombie?” the stranger speaks, and it’s the second time Joe’s heard their voice.
“Zombies don’t talk so they may be something else. Ren, you shouldn’t assume,” Joe nags, and Ren looks disgruntled when he apologizes.
They, whatever they are, accepts the coffee and briefly spits it out.
Doc hands them a napkin, which is promptly eaten.
“Cleo,” they say. “Zombie?”
And the voice sounds so happy, the happiest Joe has heard it. He supposes zombie isn’t a bad thing to be, and names are fickle things that are used to describe what they know. A zombie could mean anything to someone new, and maybe entirely different to them in their head. Happy. Happy, it sounds.
“Zombie Cleo!” Joe roars, and for the first time, Joe sees the visitor smile. “Thank you for finding Mittens.” Then, he looks to Ren and Doc. Respectively. “They got you the eggs.”
Ren and Doc exchange nervous glances.
“...Thank you, Zombie Cleo,” Ren says regretfully.
“...I’ll get those clothes.”
It takes a couple tries (biting be damned), but Doc finds an assortment of clothes for Cleo to have. They’re brightly colored clothes, some of which are tattered in spots. Cleo doesn’t seem to mind and in fact enjoys them, most likely plotting ways to put in more. They wear a long skirt with those brightly colored boots. Joe will have to get better clothes for later, but these will protect Cleo’s wilting skin under that watchful sun.
“Thank you for allowing us to be guests,” Joe says before they leave.
“Thank you,” Cleo says, and Zombie-Mittens follows them both out to the jeep.
--
Cleo is hungry when they get home. They didn’t like coffee or tea, but they did like the hot chocolate.
“I’ve got books for you to learn,” Joe says. Cleo looks at them. “Creativity is important. It’s the first thing you should see.”
After lunch, Cleo reads the books. Joe has more chores to do, so he does them early and enjoys the time he has leftover.
Cleo makes noise when they read, and it’s an exciting thing Joe discovers. Sounds. They’re not how Joe would pronounce them, but they’re sounds and they’re so loud and alive. Joe loves them, so he listens to Cleo read a book he has memorized by heart. Cleo reads the Hobbit in a language that’s their own, and Joe discovers a new favorite book.
Cleo still has stardust in their hair when they turn in for sleep. Zombies and Zombie Cleos may not sleep, but Joe does. He takes Cleo to the guest room and piles some books.
“I’ve never had guests before,” Joe tells Cleo. Cleo hasn’t either, maybe, because they tilt their head. “But you can be one, if you’d like this room.”
Cleo holds a book close to their chest.
“Good night, Zombie Cleo,” Joe says.
“Good night, Joe Hills,” Cleo, the Guest, says, and Joe closes the door to climb into his own bed with his night gown donned. When he sleeps, his house is full of noises. Zombie Mittens licking herself, Romeo howling in the dark, and Cleo making noises as they read their book late into the night.
Joe tries to sleep, and hopes Cleo will be rested in the morning. They’ll have a lot of work to do, after all.