Hi, my name is Sam. My orthodox mother calls me Samuel, but please don’t call me that… It’s Sam.

What happened really wasn’t my fault, honest. How could I have known my cat was actually an elder god? A pagan prince of the dark ages. The devourer of souls, among other titles he regularly refers to himself as.

For two years I just thought he was a chonky cat, my fat tabby friend who followed me everywhere. Boy, how wrong I was. He says I have the gift, whatever that means, a sensitive to things not of this world. My algebra teacher said I was a little slow and needed extra help, so I’m not sure if he knows what he’s talking about, but he only speaks to me so maybe he’s right.

It freaked me out at first to be honest, but I never had many friends, or any for that matter. So I was glad to finally have someone to talk to that wasn’t my mom. My cat seemed to know everything too. It was fun to ask him silly questions, but I wish he hadn’t told me when the world was going to end… The year 2064 in case you were wondering.

Everything went great for a while, but then he started demanding that I bring him souls to harvest, he wanted to ingest their living essence and leave them as meat puppets devoid of eternal purpose. His words not mine…

It started out fine, some rats from Barney’s Pet Store down the block. He bored of them quickly though. Not enough sustenance he said. So I began taking him to the old folk’s home where my mother worked. The caretakers thought it was a great idea, that the cat would bring joy to the elderly. He would never let me see the harvest, I only knew that after he was done with them they didn’t talk much, just sorta stared… sometimes out the window, sometimes just at the floor or the ceiling.

I wasn’t too worried at first, but now he’s been sneaking out of the house at night harvesting on his own. I can’t be sure how many souls he’s collected now, but I’ve noticed a lot of people in town wandering around like zombies. My mom said unemployment was way up in our county too because no one was showing up to work. Even Mr. Jenkins next door quit watering his petunias. He’s a gardener by the way, not like him to let his plants die.

I just wanted to say, I’m sorry if my cat ate your soul. It really wasn’t my fault, honest.