Hawk dropped his bag on the floor, sat down on the bed, and pulled his hat off. There was a clock radio on the crate beside the bed. Idly, he turned the radio on, and immediately tuned the station to static, cutting off the words of the broadcast. For a moment, he just sat, as the soft noise filled the room.

"Okay," he said out loud, after a while, staring at the far wall. "So, maybe you made all that shit up after all."

As soon as he said it, something snapped. Suddenly, he couldn't keep his shoulders from shaking and his eyes from welling up.

"Wull fuck," he whispered, and pressed his hands to the sides of his head. "Fuck."



At some point he'd turned the lamp off, taken his jacket off, and let himself doze off, with the radio still issuing soft noise. He only slept for a little over an hour before he found himself awake again, though, for no particular reason. As he started to stretch, he realized there was something else in the bed with him.

It was a cat, curled up on the edge of the bed with its back to him. It didn't seem to have any hair--just pinkish skin with some darker patches of pigment--but it wore a little black sweater with a cartoonish cat skull-and-crossbones on the back.