This morning, at 0530, we found that we had dug too deep, that things had gone too far. A chamber was broken into. We descended into the darkness, the absence of light so oppressive that the darkness felt like ink on our skins. We descended into madness.
This is how it felt, anyway, as we loaded the cats into their carriers, stacked the carriers atop one another, and descended the elevator. Once outside, we helped load the cats into the waiting van and handed over their pet passports. They will be taken for a final checkup and will spend the night at a boarding facility. Tomorrow, they will head to CDG at some ungodly-early hour, where they will be held in the pet facility before they are palletized, driven out to the runway, and loaded into the belly of an aluminum bird that is powered by liquid dead things. At 1010 or thereabouts, the aluminum bird. calling itself Air France Flight 636 (because these beasts are regarded as normal, and the fact that they fly by burning long-dead-biological material is not regarded as insane) will race down the runway and lift itself into the sky.
In the briefest of instants, Fezzik will no longer be present in Paris. In just over two weeks, neither will we; what started off as a one-year hitch became more than three-and-a-half years of our lives. Now we’re being dragged, resigned, away from the life that we had built ourselves. It feels much like descending into madness.
It probably looks like it, as well; for the nth time this evening, I’ve talked to a shadow flicking through the corner of my eye, a shadow which should be a cat.
None of the cats, however, are there.
Fezzik In Paris 