3. Nix's Murder House and Cattery
Nix had taken over a number of houses, buildings, shelters, forts, towers, hotels, a tree house and even one ill-fated school bus in her years alone, but finding the stone blockhouse was a gift. It must have been a folly for the rich or a fortification for someone very paranoid indeed. In the end it had not done any good for its builder, but it had become home, base camp, cattery, and sanctuary for Nix and her felines.
The first floor was built smaller than the second, with just a single door in the front face and a pair of tiny windows. That was one more ground floor door than the cagey young woman found comforting. Using the same local river rock, flagstone and a few bags of concrete from a shed, she used her commune learned skills and bricked up the small door and windows, making the edifice appear seamless. She removed the wooden stairs to the second floor balcony that cantilevered out over the ground floor. Nix replaced the original entry methods with a rope ladder that was pulled up most of the time, a cat beam that would drop away under the weight of even a small person, and the manual dumbwaiter and cat platform that could only be operated from above.
That ground floor edifice was one of the more normal parts of the house and even after two years of residence, Nix and the cats still kept finding secret niches, doors, sliding panels and other weirdness. The second floor entry hall accessed from the balcony contained two great fireplaces and a number of richly appointed but somewhat moldy chairs. However, it contained no obvious doors that would access the rest of the house. It had taken Nix a full week to find the catch which released an inner wall of a fireplace, letting it swing back like a small door so that a tall person must stoop to pass. The catch was located inside the opposite fireplace for maximum inconvenience.
Some part of Nix always wondered if she was living in a Camp David for magicians or a serial killer murder house. Each time she opened a new room, she hoped for a hat and wand rather than a pile of human limbs. Luckily, she had found neither dead people nor magic tricks as the first would now try to eat her and the second would just distract her so she could be eaten.
Passing through the fireplace, most of the second floor seemed almost normal in that it contained the right kind of rooms for a house, but they seemed to have been randomly collected from time. The kitchen was all stainless and shining modern industrial. The pantries were stocked with shelf stable foods of all kinds, wrapped in multiple layers of plastic to keep them fresh and insect free.
The dining room contained a ridiculously long table with a hilarious compliment of chairs, surrounded by rich painted frescoes of hunting scenes and velvet curtains that puddled on the floor as if they hid enormous windows rather than yet more stone. This room was deeply appreciated by the household felines who could each choose their own chair or pile of velvet curtain for a good nap and leave open seats remaining. Nix amused herself by serving a Thanksgiving dinner for all home occupants at the table their first year in the house. The conversation was limited but it was a hilarious show to watch the cats sit on their chairs as esteemed guests and gnaw at their turkey bits from lovely china plates. It was entirely worth washing all of the dishes later.
If not for the multiple sets of identical furniture, the library seemed almost normal. Bookshelves with rolling ladders lined the walls and the room looked like it had been designed after a 20th century gentleman's club. Thankfully, there were no mounted heads and the books still remained dry.
At least the ground floor room lacked much in the way of surprises, being just a large open space with shelving around the walls and in some short rows. Canned goods, plastics bins of supplies, some guns, a lot of ammo, a room full of batteries that were charged by the solar panels on the roof, controls for the well, fuse box. Yes, this seemed perfectly on the level for the average paranoid schizophrenic or up and coming spree killer. Funny enough, their paranoia and planning had absolutely paid off, just not for them.
Top it off with a twelve foot high walled garden that contained a maze of sorts. The various endings of which brought you to the outbuildings. A grand old stone barn in which Nix took to raising rabbits, chickens, and two milk cows that had wandered onto the property one day. Finding the external door to the barn had been a special hell and in the end it had been Sampson who found it. At another end of the maze there was a shed full of tools, saws, crowbars and other dismemberment favorites. Nix just closed the door to that one and hoped to never open it again.
One long shed looked like you could perform sterile medical procedures, grow a lot of pot or cook up a great quantity of various high grade street drugs. In memory of her parents, Nix grew two pots of marijuana named Ed and Alice respectively, plus a fair number of potted catnip plants. She reserved the rest of that space for home surgeries she hoped to never perform.
Back inside, the block house third floor was just a collection of oddly themed bathrooms and bedrooms and the attic was an open space under the eaves, one of the few places with windows where you could see for a distance. In the two years since finding Nix's Murder House and Cattery, she made herself comfortable by pulling a few of the king sized beds into the largest bedroom. This almost always assured that she could sleep and wake up surrounded by cats, rather than beneath a pile of them. With few exceptions, the entire gang like to eat and sleep together as this had kept them alive through some crazy times.
As Nix slept each night, the older Toms would roam the house to make sure nothing was amiss inside. Out on the walls, there was always a black furred sentry or two that made sure the walking corpses kept on walking right by. Any that came too near were enticed to a merry chase after a nice, warm and juicy cat who always disappeared into the forest once the dead had been redirected.
Nix's Murder House and Cattery was good for the whole pride.
4. Rebirth
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