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This story was inspired by chio-chan2artbbox's inktober day 4 submission. Visit her Tumblr here and tell her how magnificent it is.
Nobody truly knew what the big cats in the forest were. They didn’t look like housecats, they didn’t act like them either. These beasts were ruthless. They killed, they maimed, they never left anyone unscathed. To walk into the forests around Gimmelstump was to sign a contract with death or danger.
The people who survived, tall men with weapons and a tendency for violence, proudly wore the deep, bruised scars they gained, often on their face and neck. Rumor had it that after their meeting with the cats of Drusselstein, their nature changed. They became distant and strange. Women and children were often smart enough to stay away from these men. They were unsafe.
Only other men, as brute and dumb as each other, would seek them out.
Everyone knew about the brutal fights, but nobody was dumb enough to meddle in them. If two men wanted to kill each other on the street for sport, you let them be. You grabbed the children, whether they were yours or anyone else's, and hid indoors.
The fighting would stop eventually.
You didn’t want to see the cobblestones when it did.
Eventually, the blood couldn’t be washed away any longer. As long as Heinz could remember, Main Street had a distinct red tint.
After the liberation, scientists caught wind of the stories. They had to know about the murder cats of Gimmelstump. They came from far and wide to search for them, and find them, they did.
They found their regret, too.
If they survived, they refused to search further. One brave researcher only muttered that they looked an awful lot like the ocelots of southern America to her. ‘They were stunning,’ she wrote in her diary, and then that night, she promptly died.
Nobody in their right mind would be found outside at night. Not unless they were forced by someone who didn’t care if they lived or died.
The entire town knew that Herr Doofenshmirtz forced his son outside every single night, to stand on the doorstep and not move. Never move. Every night, summer, winter, and the few mild days in between.
They also knew to keep their mouths shut. Herr Doofenshmirtz had met the beasts in the forests and came out alive.
In his youth, he’d disappeared for a day and returned with a great pig, slain, over his shoulder. To this day, he wore its tusks proudly on his person.
It was a miracle that he got married, only a fool would dare to dance with a man who carried the mark of the beast.
It was a tragedy when he had a child, a poor boy with fear in his eyes. A poor child with a monster for a father, and a coldhearted woman as a mother. She took one look at the baby and cried out in agony. “I’ve birthed a calamity! I must right my wrong.”
She refused to take the child, but he was forced upon her. As he grew up, he saw his mother obsess over having another child, one that was right.
To the town’s quiet despair, a second child did indeed come, but not from the beasts, not according to her.
The first little boy, Heinz, was 9 when he disappeared in the middle of the night. Not driven out by one of the many monsters in the dark, but frightened to death by the creature in his own house. Everyone heard Father rage and scream that he could kill him with ease.
His little feet carried him beyond the edge of the trees. Nothing in there could be worse than death by his own father’s hands.
It was early spring, it was night. The dew on the few new leaves on the trees was close to frost, and little Heinz Doofenshmirtz wore only his lederhosen to keep him warm. His coat, battered and old, but watertight, was still in the house he grew up in.
He considered starting a fire, but before he could, he heard a loud snarling in the clearing behind him. Heinz turned and paled. A dark hog, the size of a horse, stood on the protruding roots of the forest. Its wild eyes looked him up and down. A big drop of drool slowly sank to the floor, and Heinz knew he was potentially close to death.
But Heinz was smart, always had been. The teachers didn’t know what to do with him; he could figure out anything. He wasn’t strong and he wasn’t fast, but he was genius.
Within a moment, a branch became a torch, and the torch became a flaming spear. Before the hog could know he’d met the wrong creature in his own forest, it was speared and bleeding.
It cried loudly into the night, warning its kin that it had made a grave mistake. And then it went quiet forever.
Fearful that the hog was only playing pretend, Heinz removed the smouldering stake from the hog’s heart and stabbed it as hard as he could into its skull. He never forgot the noise it made, but he had to be sure that he was safe.
That night, he sat beside a carcass, shivering in the cold. When the moon’s light had disappeared, but the sun was not yet risen, he feared that he would freeze. Hopefully, someone would find him with ice in his eyelashes. The look in his eyes as cold as the still blood in his veins. He wept, and his tears were red hot on his frozen cheeks.
A twig snapped in his clearing. Something else was here. But Heinz was too cold and tired to fight another hog. He kept his eyes stubbornly closed and waited.
But no attack came. Only a soft pur and a warm coat against his freezing side. His eyes opened, and right in front of him was the most beautiful cat he’d ever seen. Her eyes were stark green even in the darkness. Her tongue, rough like sandpaper, swept across his cheek to clear his tears away. And with a warm rumble in her chest, she guided him between a tree’s roots and covered him with her warm body.
Confused and scared, but too exhausted, Heinz slept for the first time in too long. When he woke, the sun was warm and he was alive.
As he checked his surroundings, he found the creature from the night before; one of the ocelots the researchers mentioned. She had ripped over the hog's side and was eating from within him.
She noticed he was awake and turned to look at him for a moment before she ate more. When she was done, she returned to Heinz, blood still dripping from her muzzle, and nudged him towards the dead beast.
Eat, her eyes seemed to order him. But Heinz did not plan to eat a rotting hog. She sat and watched his hesitance. All day, she didn’t leave him be. Heinz wondered when she would eat him too, but she didn’t. She led him to the stream where he could drink cool water. She watched as the boy ate berries from a bush.
She cared for him. And that night, when the cold returned, she covered him again so that he could sleep without feeling the biting cold.
Heinz learned many things: he learned to make fire and prepare the meat of the animals they killed. He learned to recognise danger. He learned to find shelter from the rain, the wind, and the eternal cold. Most importantly, he learned to trust her. She would take care of him, like nobody else had done before.
His heart grew strong in that forest. Not all monsters would kill him, and he would not kill all of them in return. There was beauty in the world, and kindness in its creatures.
Late one night, weeks after he had found his place in the forest, an unnatural light shone between the trees. Mother Ocelot was on high alert, her front paws extended on the roots they were hidden between. Her regal head peeked out of the underbrush.
Her smart and patient eyes caught the light and reflected it right back at the men. They carried guns and torches, and they saw her.
They froze in fear as they saw one of the large cats of Gimmelstump. And then they watched in amazement as a small boy rose to his feet beside her. “You should leave!” He told them, confidence in his young voice. “Get out of these woods! You won’t survive here!”
He could see their pale faces in the moonlight, terrified.
They left quite quickly. Back to town where they came from.
“We saw the boy!” They said, bewildered, when they ran back into town. “The boy of Doofenshmirtz, he still lives in the forest!”
“He was with a great beast, with shining eyes!” Another hunter added.
A woman tried to calm them; she clutched his arms to still him. “The beast had glowing eyes?” She asked.
“Sure,” One of the men replied. “The beast had glowing eyes, but so did he!”
The woman looked at him aghast.
“The doofenshmirtz boy, his eyes glowed in my lamplight. He was a beast, just like her.” The hunter turned towards the town, towards a tall, lonesome house near the edge of town. “Just like him.”