(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 3

I barely even heard Misha approach. He was a light walker, not because of anything he tried to do, but simply because of how he moved. He had often joked that he had KGB training, but he seemed less able to not be quiet than he seemed able to do it on purpose. It became extra impressive when, as now, he walked across dry leaves. There had been no sign of rain for days, every bit of the streets dry as dust.
"What are you doing, Ida? Class ended half an hour ag... What is that?"
Now that I knew what to listen for, I could hear him stroll very casually towards me. I had my back to him. I had my back to him and was leaning on my heels, holding my knees close with one hand. The other was stretched out, touching the fluff of fur in the grass.
"It's a cat," I mostly whispered. "A kitten, I think. Maybe a year old. I call it Jamie."
Misha hesitated in between steps as he slowly approached me. I could almost hear the confusion going through him, even though he was still, technically, behind me.
"It looks... Oh god, Ida, is it a dead cat?"
I sniffled, my nose sucking up a stray tear.
"It wasn't when I got here."
The little furry shape was now completely still in the grass. It looked like it was sleeping. Black back, white front, the white fur running up to just barely cover its nose. There was no blood.
"You found a dying cat?" Misha added, his voice still revealing that there was something that did not add up for him. I just nodded.
"I heard a bonk as I walked round the corner. It was walking in the street and looked confused, kinda stumbling over its own legs. I think a car just hit its head while rolling out into the street."
The small stretch of road was at an odd angle to the main street. It was a soft hill and had bad visibility, but there were always those who tried to move through it too fast. The cat just crossed at the wrong time.
"It just lay down here, and I sat with it. Then it began to get weak."
I could feel tears bubble up. I tried speaking in a low voice to keep the worst at bay, but it was a lost cause.
"I was petting it when it stopped breathing."
At that moment, I felt Misha's hand on my shoulder. He probably had no idea how to react to the whole thing, but he had the basics. Somehow, it made me relax, and the tears just started rolling.
"It had someone with it when it died, Ida. Not everybody does."
I nodded, silently. My fingers still ran through the little cat's fur, as if I thought I could pet it back to life. Then I leaned in and dug my fingers underneath the soft, lifeless body and lifted it up, craddling it gently as I looked and then crossed the small street myself.
"What are you doing, Ida? I don't think it belongs to..."
He realized that I wasn't really listening. There was a small wall on the other side of the street, broad enough for the cat to lay there. Kneeling down, I put it gently on the wall. It looked like it was just taking a nap in the sun.
"Can you just hand me my bag?" I asked in a low voice, knowing that Misha was listening behind me. True enough, he suddenly stood next to me, my old and worn school bag in hand. Without taking the bag itself, I took a small notepad and a pen from the front pocket, along with a rubber band. I had a habit of leaving little notes. It bothered some people, who prefered if I texted them or simply waited and told them in person.
It took me only a few seconds to scribble the letters on my little piece of paper. With a flick of the wrist, I attached the piece of paper to the cat's limp paw with the rubber band, then petted the poor thing one last time. We left in silence, Misha dragging his bike as he walked down the small street, through the tunnel under the railroad tracks and past the library and sports buildings. I wanted to talk, but could feel that saying anything would push me over the edge and send tears streaming. Misha, luckily, understood it perfectly, or at least caught the overall hint.
The note simply said, "Does anyone miss me?"
We got to where the streets met the bike lanes before I even spoke. I had to clear my voice, just to be sure I had the strength again.
"You think someone will find it? I mean, someone who cares?"
Misha sighed. He had a range of sighs, and they were getting more complex by the day. It didn't seem like he was frustrated with me, though. More like it was a hard question for him to consider.
"I don't... I dont know, Ida. People aren't always like that. Maybe it ran away, or maybe it was born without a home, who knows."
"I know," I answered, only lying a bit, "but do you think aomeone will find it and care?"
He fell silent for a moment. "Yes," he lied, "someone will find it. Someone who cares."
The streets were awfully quiet. More houses had sales signs put up, windows empty or curtains simply drawn. Nakskov had too many elderly people, and when one died, it was never easy to find someone to fill the spot. For a moment I wondered how many of them died without anyone knowing, or without anyone caring.
"I think we may get a new student tomorrow," I said to cut the heavy fog that hung over us. Misha reacted with an "oh?" and I nodded with renewed energy.
"Yeah, someone moved in down at the old Kristensen place. Remember them?"
Misha nodded, making big eyes in an uncomfortable way. The Kristensens had been a bit infamous for their two big dogs, a pair of very angry shephards, and Misha had not been a fan.
"Good," he remarked. "We need some fresh meat around here. You still got nothing for the weekend, right?"
I shook my head. My best plans involved looping old comedy on a few streaming websites, maybe trying to draw on one of my many, many half-done projects. I was very much open for suggestions.
"Patrick is inviting us over for some bad horror movies, could be fun. You in?"
I nodded, giving two silent thumbs up. We turned the corner to Lavender Road, and my eyes quickly found the driveway.
"So, you okay, right?" asked Misha as we drew closer to my house. I nodded, a bit too energetically, perhaps. It still dug at me, the memory of the little cat walking so confused in the street, not understanding that it was dying. It stung. But it was my sting to deal with, not his.
I heard him get his bike up to speed, the old thing making complaints as he struggled with it, as I got to the door and went inside. Unlocked. Peter was home. I made as little fuss as I could, listening until I could hear him clicking away in his study. He was reviewing another technical manual, correcting someone's spelling or making critical notes about how something was explained. It seemed ironic to me that he worked on correcting the explanations of others, but he had never quite made me understand how he did it, and not for a lack of trying. Peter was a good guy. Boring as a block of dirt, but nice. He made my mom happy.
"Hey!" I yelled, walking by his home office. He was nearly impossible to get a rise out of, and all I got in return was a calm and friendly "oh, hi", which somehow was never not funny. Respecting his work schedule, I left it at that, continuing up the stairs. There were no signs of Bitten, my little sister, and her stuff was not in the hall, so odds were that she was with a friend. It was just me and Peter. Which meant that it was just me.
The old laptop took its sweet time getting started. Even before it had started up completely, I had asked four people via text if they knew where people announced lost cats, and gotten two replies back. Minutes became hours as I went from website to website, looking for anyone in the area missing a black and white cat. I quickly began regretting not having a picture. Snapping one of a dead cat seemed morbid, but it became clear that it was the smart thing to do.
I finally looked up. I had heard no sounds of my mom getting home from work, and no sounds of Bitten coming home, either, but the first signs of darkness were starting to find their way across the sky. Looking at the screen, flipping through various cats lost and found, I weighed the idea of going back. Finally, I closed the laptop and grapped my phone from its charger.

Peter had said nothing when I left again. Whatever technical jargon he was lost in, he was in there deep. It ran through my head, over and over, the morbid idea of going to photograph the poor, dead cat. I was almost lost in my own little world, thinking about it, as I briskly walked down the street. Streetlights were beginning to turn on, the sun slowly slipping into the horizon, coloring the sky with splashes of deep blue and purple. For a moment I considered taking my bike, but walking always felt better to me. I needed to feel better right now.
I was getting close to the library when a strange static filed the air. It felt like a strange wind, at first, but soon became less natural. My skin went tingly, little pinpricks seeming to poke me by the thousands. My teeth hummed faintly. It felt like electricity in the air. Then, a faint pop. Then another. I felt my heart starting to race as I looked around. Finally, I looked up, noticing that the early evening shadows were looking a bit off. Streetlights were flickering, popping here and there. Not just around me, but as far as I could see. The lights all around the sports fields were acting up. And then, a string of loud pops! All around town, in any direction I coul see, streetlights flickered out. Not all of them, but it happened in every direction. Perhaps one in four.
An uneasy feeling ran down my spine. As my eyes ran over the town around me, I noticed houses darkened, the chaotic movement of flashlights inside. There were no sirens in the distance, but I reminded myself that emergency services were not that quick to react out here. I mostly had movies to draw experience from, and my mind flipped through far too many emergency scenarios for my own good. "Everything is okay, just some electricity problems," I mumbled to myself, several times.
The paths going by the library and up to the road were still fairly lit up. Even with a large portion of streetlights gone, there were plenty left. The shadows changed, though, becoming fewer and sharper, like fingers stretching out from the trees that cast them. I still felt my heart react to it all, but kept my wits about me. The place I put the cat was just on the other side of the train track tunnel, I would be there soon.
Except I stopped.
The mouth of the tunnel was nearby, I could see the dark hole into the concrete. But my eyes were preoccupied with something else. Little dots. Little colored dots, dancing in the air. Not around me, but close by, like little insects, glowing in the partial darkness left by the damaged streetlights. And in the silence of the evening, I thought I heard a voice, moaning.
Whatever pulled me in, I followed the sound. The dots kept dancing, rising and falling in intensity. As I closed in on them, they didn't seem to get any bigger, but there were more of them. I felt the same electricity in the air that I had sensed earlier, but it felt more blunt now, like a throbbing rhythm.
She looked like a twisted doll at first. An adult woman, perhaps in her twenties. Her clothes distracted me from trying to look closer at her. Elegant rags, was the best way I could describe them. They looked largely homemade, like clothes sewn together from bits of other clothes. Patchworks. Long strips were woven together tightly, like leather, and the coat that clumsily covered her body was made in layers, clearly by intent. It seemed to only look clumsy because it was badly damaged. It seemed to be on fire, smoldering with a soft, orange glow on her.
"No no no no"
She was more whispering loudly than actually speaking the words. Her legs kept twitching, scraping against the dirt, as if she was trying to push herself away. It took me a moment to realize that she was inside the bushes, because most of those bushes had been burned away, charred and crumbled on the ground around her. The little dots were setting dry branches on fire. Just briefly, but enough to make the plants fall apart near her. The dots were centered on her. They seemed to form a rough sphere around her.
"No no no...."
Her breath seemed to run out. Either that, or it hurt her throat to speak.
"Are you okay, lady?" I asked, feeling a bit dumb about the question almost immediately.
She flinched. Less than a second later, a loud pop rang out somewhere near the sports buildings. I caught a glimpse of colored dots spewing out into the evening air, but it was impossible to see where exactly they came from.
"Noooo no no," she whispered, tears forming around her eyes. I tried to make sense of it, but without warning, she gasped and looked into the distance, over my shoulder. I turned just in time to see another shower of colored dots, somewhere down the path that ran behind the streets. The loud pop came a fraction of a second later, like listening for thunder after seeing lightning.
"No," she simply said, now breaking the whisper and talking out loud. Then her body convulsed, arms and legs twitching violently a few times. For several seconds, what felt like an eternity, she looked me right in the eyes. There was a pain, a hopelessness, inside her eyes. She tried to say one last thing, but if she managed to make a sound, it was drowned out by the crisp hum of the dots that tripled in intensity. Just for a moment, though. Then they exploded in a burst of shallow heat and brilliant colors.
Landing on my back, I got the air knocked out of my lungs. My ears rang, a low, droning buzz. All I saw was evening sky, the lightscape around me distorted by the lack of various streetlights. The dots continued for a few seconds before fading away entirely. And when I finally forced myself up to sit, she was gone. The air smelled wrong, like a wet grill, having been left out in the rain. Charred, bitter, a weird mix of metallic and ash.
Where the woman had laid, there was only softly smoldering brush. The grass nearby was brown, looking like the dead grass after a long drought. Branches were charred and snapped, and leaves on the ground were little more than bits of brown mixed with their own ashes. There were no flames, but it all seemed burned. What really caught my eyes, though, were the bits of clothing. It was all scattered rather strangely. The strips were strewn about, unraveled and spread out in a way that looked like it still had a shape. Like someone had casually tossed them where they were roughly meant to be on a person. The coat was in bits and pieces, as if most string that had held its patchwork together had burned through, but the patches had been left behind. A weak wind was picking up, and was picking up the smallest patches, tossing them around a bit. But one thing stood out, one piece of clothing. They were partially melted, but they were quite obviously still shoes! Pink and white, old and worn. The laces had black streaks running through them, embers from whatever had just happened, and smoke kept rising in thin coloumns from them. But the shoes themselves were disturbingly familiar. I snapped a few pictures with my phone, not really sure what else to do. My heart was in my throat, and I needed to get away.
The cat was gone. I had run through the tunnel, not really knowing what to do with myself. Maybe my brain went on some kind of stand-by, going back to the last thing I remembered doing, which was to go look for the poor cat. But it was gone, hopefully taken in by someone who would care for it on its last journey. So there I now stood, looking at a low wall near where the small street connected to the main road.
There was a peculiar silence from the town. At this time, people would usually be going home, and some would be going out to eat. But right now, everything was silent. I didn't like it. Even as I hurried through the harshly lit tunnel, I thought I heard commotion down by the nearby harbor. But the sounds faded, and now there was only an eerie silence.

The silence persisted as I rushed home. Streets seemed too dark, people probably still struggling to change fuses in the sudden darkness. Plenty of houses around town were old and a bit difficult to maintain, there was no reason to think everything would return right away. And as if to back me up, a house here and there turned the lights back on as I passed them on my way.
I was still shaking as I stepped into the driveway. My mom's bike was there, barely put away, as if she had been in a rush to get in. I opened the front door to find her right inside, standing with Peter by our own fusebox. Lights were on, so I had clearly missed that part of the drama. But as they turned to me, something else made their eyes widen.
"Sweetheart, what happened??"
I sent my mom a baffled look, wondering if she expected me to know something about the odd blackout. Then I noticed her eyes go up and down my body. Looking down at myself, I realized that I was covered in dirt and ashes.
"I... the... she..."
I kept interrupting my own stammering, my head starting to spin. The image of the strange woman began dancing in my brain, making me dizzy.
"She blew up," I finally managed to mutter. Both my mom and Peter froze, staring blankly at me.
"She was there, rhen colored lights and she was gone."
I felt like I was mostly talking to myself, my brain reconstructing the events as I spoke. Somehow, reality had been stored away in my mind on my way home, like my own brain was trying to hide things too insane for me to handle. Now, it was all coming back.
"You... Did you see someone get hurt?" asked Peter before I could gather my thoughts and elaborate. I nodded.
"Panik, what happened?!"
That was my mom. Panik. That was her old nickname for me. It meant daughter in Greenlandic, and she once told me that her mother always used that word to comfort her when she was a child. I had actually heard her call her that as an adult, too. That she used it now somehow snapped my attention to her.
"I... I wanted to see if the cat was still there. But there was a woman by the library, and she was hurt, I think she was hurt, and then there were a lot of colored lights and she was in pain and then she disappeared."
Both Peter and my mom were quiet. Mom was kneeling in front of me, like she was seconds away from hugging me. Peter was behind her, beginning to pace. He did that. Stress made him restless.
"She blew up? Was she playing with fireworks?"
The question baffled me, leaving me speechless. I never considered what the dancing lights actually were.
"No," I stuttered, knowing at the very least that they were not fireworks.
"What then?"
"Colored... colored dots," I replied, feeling a sudden panic rise within me.
My mom hugged me, holding me close and stroking my hair. I stood frozen, not knowing how to react, not knowing how to think about the disappearing woman. Not knowing how to think of any of it.