A Boy, a Cat, and LifeBoat by Brandon Scott Gorrell

"Can I tell you where you will predict me," the boy said. "You will be right probably."

"Do you know where we are?" said the cat.

"What does it matter?" the boy said.

A wave happened, and the boy fell into the cat's chest. The boy rested there, in the cat's chest, inhaling the smell: a tiger, something alive, something affecting him, a little.

The boy was nothing and all things and the lifeboat existed in an array of situations which the boy had both processed and would eventually be willing to process. The cat sat beside him, analyzing.

"That wave there," the cat said. "Its crest seems different. Is there brown on that crest? What does that crest mean? What about the wave? Does that matter? What is the relationship between the crest and the wave?"

"Yes, there is brown on that crest," the boy said.

The lifeboat shifted to a new wave.

"All crests seem the same," the boy said. "I'm not sure."

"What's going to happen," the cat said.

The boy looked at the cat and at the waves and at the crests. The lifeboat swayed and rocked, and the boy could think of nothing beyond his immediate situation. The cat couldn't, either. The boy and the cat and the lifeboat drifted.

Over mountains underneath water. Above a constantly shifting gradient. On a never ending moving walkway.

"Everything's certain," the boy said.

"Everything's certain," the cat echoed.

The lifeboat waited for something to happen.

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Brandon Scott Gorrell lives and works in Seattle as a freelance writer. His work can be found or is forthcoming at Pindeldyboz, elimae, 3:AM, Lamination Colony, Dogmatika, NANO Fiction, and other places. His first poetry book, during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present, is forthcoming from Muumuu House. He blogs here.