Tom noticed the cat during his first week in this old apartment building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a gaunt black cat that always crouched in the shadows at the end of the hallway, its pair of bright yellow eyes fixed intently on Tom\u2019s door. Tom was a programmer who lived alone and rarely went out. He tried feeding it cat food a few times, but the cat never came near him; it would only let out a low purr\u2014as if it had shards of glass stuck in its throat\u2014whenever he turned away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIgnore it\u2014that cat\u2019s creepy,\u201d the elderly woman living next door, who also lived alone, warned him. \u201cIt only stares at people who \u2018live alone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tom didn\u2019t take it seriously\u2014until that late, rainy night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He worked overtime until 2 a.m. When he got home, he found the cat crouched on his doormat, soaking wet, yet not a single drop of water had touched the mat. It tilted its head, its mouth twisted into an eerie grin, as if it were laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tom slammed the door shut and locked it from the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day, he found a tuft of black cat hair on the doormat, but upon closer inspection, it wasn\u2019t hair at all\u2014it was several strands of extremely fine human hair stained with dried blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He began to suffer from insomnia. Every night around midnight, he could hear the sound of fingernails scraping against the wooden door, accompanied by that spine-chilling purring. The sound didn\u2019t sound like a cat; it was more like a person desperately trying to suppress a cough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A week later, Tom decided to move out. He packed his bags, and before leaving, he glanced outside through the peephole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hallway was empty; there was no cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He breathed a sigh of relief and dragged his suitcase downstairs. As he passed the first-floor lobby, he saw the black cat crouched on the mailbox, staring quietly at him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tom hurried out of the apartment and got into a taxi. After the car had driven two blocks, he reached into his pocket out of habit to grab his phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of his phone, his fingers touched something wet and cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stiffly looked down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The black cat had somehow ended up curled on his lap; it was tilting its head back, staring at him with its bright yellow eyes. Its mouth was slightly open\u2014no tongue inside, just a row of human teeth as fine as needles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMeow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It made a sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tom jerked his head up to look in the rearview mirror, only to find the taxi driver staring intently at him\u2014the driver\u2019s eyes were also a deep, golden yellow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Cat Wandering Alone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[18,22],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense","tag-story","tag-suspense"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":395,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyrecyclebin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}