Home.

Opening her grey-blue eyes, Katrina took in her surroundings.
Laminate floor. Magnolia walls. A modest sized room with a mix of antique and modern flat-pack furniture. One corner of the room boasted a good-sized flat screen TV, what looked like a powerful home cinema system and several games consoles, all at least, what…200 years out of date?. A tall bookcase filled with a fuckton of DVD’s and Blu-rays, a couple of dark brown sofas, a large dinner table…a shelf unit full of trinkets, and what looked like a photo of a smiling bride and groom on their wedding night.
There was a smaller table too, with an equally small pair of wooden chairs either side. Pink in colour, with toys and crayons strewn across it. In fact, there was a lot of toys in the room. It was clear that whoever lived here had small children. She thought about Max for a second, back on Blue Dwarf with Phi, who Katrina was starting to worry might soon have to tell the boy that his father wasn’t ever going to wake up…
A car pulled up outside, on a driveway. She heard the driver getting out and moving around to the nearside rear door.
“Smeg..” she muttered, and turned to run toward what looked like the kitchen and back door, but tripped over what might have been the universes biggest ever tabby cat, who hissed briefly at the fallen engineer before purring louder than Katrina though was even possible as it ran toward the front door to happily greet it’s owner. Katrina scrambled to her feet, but before she could leave the room her ears picked up the voice of a toddler “Hewwo Kat!”
What the smeg? The kid knows my name?
The Cat meowed (even louder than it purred) Katrina breathed a sigh of relief as she realised the child was greeting the cat, not her.
“Hello Willow” said a male voice. The man in the car, he was following the child in. The cat meowed impatiently. “Alright! I’ll feed you give me a bloody chance, fleabag…”
“Silly cat!” said the young girl.
“Yeah…you tell ‘er….and just who the fuck are you, why are you in my house, and why are you making me swear in front of my two-year old daughter?”
“Not mummy!” said the child.
“Me-OWWWWWWWWWWWWWW” scolded the cat.
“No Chloe, it most certainly isn’t mummy…”
Katrina turned to face the man. Her hands raised.
“It’s alright love, I ‘aven’t got a gun, this is England for christs sake” he saw her face “…oh…..how…?...Katrina?”
“You know me?”
“You could say that. I…created you. For him.”
“For Jay?”
“Yeah. Created him too…”
“MEOW!”
“’ang on, if I don’t feed her, one of us is gonna lose a limb…”
He went into the kitchen and Katrina heard him pouring some dry cat food into a bowl before muttering.. “For christs sake, cat, you do this every time…you bitch and whinge and shout to be fed and turn your nose up and walk away as soon as it’s in your bowl…”
The cat snootily stormed out of the kitchen and disappeared around the door leading to the entrance hall, and the man walked in after her.
“So…you created us? I don’t…understand…are you…fate?”
“Nah, I’m a bloke with a laptop love…I write what happens to you…”
“You…what?” Katrina suddenly got very angry.
“So YOU’RE the reason he’s dying? You’re the reason behind ALL OF IT?!”
“…calm down…Jay’s the hero…you really think he’s gonna go down that easily?”
“So..what..he’s gonna be ok?””
“…I didn’t say that. But…whatever happens…don’t get too comfortable…nothing lasts forever…”
“What does that mean..can’t you just let us…...”
And that was it.
She was somewhere else. A crackle of lightning, and she found herself in a desert. Her memories of…whatever it was she just saw fading already.
Some of the others were here.
“Um…” she said “….yeah..so…what?”