The Worst

He walked east through a dismal rainy town, unsure of why he was actually there. His feet left clumsy imprints in the fresh mud. He didn't know who he was and he didn't really care. All he did know is that he felt like wandering. The drops pattered down along his sleek dark hair, obscuring most of his pale face. He didn't feel much, but he knew he felt hollow. He figured that must be why he found this place. Such dilapidated homes. All abandoned. All rotting.

One though gave him pause to the north. A strange purple light emanated from behind the front sliding doors. Turning his hands outwards, he peeled the doors apart, unintentionally breaking the left one off its track. He didn't care though. It wasn't his home.

An abnormally large silvery-purple slot machine stood in the middle of the room. Why was it immaculate? Who cleans it? Does someone return to this town just to keep this thing running? He didn't have any currency it would take, but the violet-tinted coins were scattered all around. He had more than enough to play.

He picked up a cluster in his left hand and put a coin into the right slot. One pull of the lever brought up three insignias of a liver. And out came rolling a liver with tiny arms and legs. And...eyes. With irises to match the maroon color of the meat. It slowly rose and wandered away.

He kept playing. He kept playing until he hit the jackpot and a torrent of organs rolled out. All with the same tiny limbs and eyes to match their flesh. Once they scrambled from the pile, they all ran in different directions. These pieces were healthy. Not an ounce of rot among them. He could tell. He had a nose for these things. The town was rotten. But the parts that ran weren't. For some reason, witnessing so many organs walk didn't unnerve him. But the fact that it didn't unnerve him perturbed him. He was strange like that. The way he perceived things...he often felt it was wrong.

Glancing back to the machine, he wondered if he should continue. He still had more than enough coins left to play. But would the slots yield any more results? He had nothing better to do. He put the next coin in. And then the next. And then the next. And then the next. He didn't want to stop because he kept noticing a different insignia quickly passing by. All the organ shapes were various hues of red, but this one was bright yellow. He couldn't really make out what it was. I looked like a wide blurry T. As long as he had coins, he would play. The coins were free after all. No one would be coming back for them. They were discarded after all. Sitting moist on the old sodden boards. It never did seem to stop raining here, did it.

When he was getting low on coins though, he started to feel like he wasn't going to see what that rare prize was. He kept sliding them in, faster and faster. He was getting a little frustrated even though none of these coins were his. As he pushed the last token inside, he yanked the lever with a bit of uncharacteristic ferocity. And those shapes aligned. They were tiny jackets. Jackets? What could that represent? Either way, the final prize was about to emerge. Maybe the machine needed everything. Maybe it needed everything to yield the proper result.

And out rolled a tiny white cat in a yellow raincoat. She unfurled onto her stubby hind legs with the practiced grace of a feline who was kept asleep for too long. She had the faintest ochre highlights creeping in around the edges of her face. For some reason though, to him, they looked more like scars. Their points all seemed to converge around her features to bring attention to her large eyes, which blinked open with a disturbing shade of scintillating auburn. An unnatural color. But he couldn't really place why.

"Hi there. I'm Beacon the cat," the tiny creature flared her arms up and out wide.

And a brilliant, but tolerable glow reached out around her in a small radius. Her voice was squeaky, but not in an unpleasant way. Which surprised him because he normally couldn't tolerate those tones.