The Thunderer"

"

I was alone in my apartment for a few days. A friend came to visit, bringing a kitten she'd bought at the metro station. By evening, the kitten had gotten on my nerves so much that we threw it into the next room and locked ourselves in mine. We sat there, listening to music, chatting about life...

And suddenly we heard a terrible crash in the next room. We were too lazy to go check on what that smoky mitten had dropped. But the crash soon repeated itself, more than once. And the kitten clearly had nothing to do with it—there simply weren't any heavy objects lying around where they could be knocked over. Surely it wasn't furniture he was moving? It couldn't have happened to the neighbors either—it was clear from the sound that the noise was coming from my apartment. Meanwhile, the crash continued, and the kitten suddenly began meowing heartbreakingly and scratching at the door. But we really didn't want to open it. My friend suddenly felt a sudden, inexplicable fear, which she immediately told me about. Frankly, I was in the same state. No one could have gotten into the apartment—we'd locked the door, and if anything happened, they'd have heard someone picking it. And yet, there was noise. We're far from panicky, we're not afraid of our own shadows, but my stomach sank, and she wasn't any less reassured.

The din and the cat concert, intermittently, continued for an indecently long time, sometimes right outside our door. We wanted to go to the bathroom, drink, and sleep, but we wouldn't have opened the door for anything. My friend suddenly announced in a trembling voice that whoever or whatever was there had come for her. However, this didn't particularly reassure me, since this nasty thing was rampaging in my house, where nothing like this had ever happened before. Sorting through her friend's enemies didn't yield much results—she had so many that it was hard to pinpoint who to blame. For some reason, she was certain the "thunderer" hadn't just come out of nowhere, but had been sent by someone.

Around three in the morning, the madhouse finally stopped, the kitten quieted down, and we fell asleep, completely out of our minds. That was the end of the story.

And the kitten, as it turned out, didn't live long after that...