So incredibly sorry for the long wait for this one. Truth be told, it's a little hard writing the penultimate chapter for this thing. It's been with me for so incredibly long and has made such an impact on my life. There'll be an epilogue posted just as soon as I'm done with it. This is an incredibly flawed, uselessly confusing, crazily uneven little hack job. But I did it. Thanks so much for sticking with me. You guys have been amazing. 

This one's for @alessandra for discovering The Queen of Cats and giving me this amazing opportunity. I really can't thank you enough.

eye am back.

I have transcended. I look around me and my gaze is a muddled mess of psychedelic colours and shapes. I hear humming and I see flashing lights all around me. Flashing and flashing. I am unafraid and unabashed. I mew and yawn with new life. New limbs and new sinews. I feel bodiless and one with the air.

kavya rothmans slowly clings and climbs her way through the curvy London streets night has fallen and the colours don't invade our space and fix our eyes as much as they will when eye she us when we begin taking our first puff and we are here and old Knocker-Bloke is there and he gives us the spliff and we take it and colours explode...

The past and future are bleeding into me. I am an open wound. And I am feeling with whatever tendrils of consciousness I have about me. Colours dim and brighten. The lights are too much for me to bear and I cannot understand what is being done to me. The language is beyond me. I can understand nothing.

we are awake again but perhaps for the last time and I am out in the open breathing trying to take the air in for the last time my Amma gives me rice porridge and I eat it slowly savouring it it is the last time I am about to give myself up to the mad god and we want to enjoy every last second of it and we walk and that tribal old dance starts and begins booming and there is nothing left

I try to stand up but I cannot. I have feet. I am sure of it. I try to focus on the words. I understand.

"Enter feast body open for you transpose and transform push higher and farther and faster and fatter and meatier and juicier in soul and frailer and tighter in body oh higher concept oh mystic soul push from one to another."

we watch as the minister stands above us he holds a Bible in his hands it is old and worn and graceful with age and neither of us me and my lover neither if us believe a word in it it is an act of sacrilege our standing here and saying these words and doing these deeds he slips a ring on my finger that treats animals dogs, sheep and cats and I slip one on him my astronaut my spaceman and we are one flesh me and my automaton

I look around me and I feel a semblance of myself. There is too much though. Too many lives lived in too short time. Too many memories.

There is too much for me to handle right now.

I need to move.

I look. I see a paw. It belongs to me. I know it. I feel it somewhere inside me. That appendage belongs to me. And I can control it.

"Force thyself to live thy life as long as the loop lasts oh gracious Queen of Cats. Lead us. Lead us forever. So that we might find our solace in your divine work. Tell us the will of your breather of life."

hell it is a mad god that brought me here a demon from hell there is fire and brimstone and hate there is pure vitriol nothing sane nothing holy about this creature so wholly without thought and emotion he is something eye cannot comprehend eye cannot comprehend

I force it to move. It twitches. I am in control.

I killed a cat.

I am a cat.

I force it to move more. It dances to my will. As limbs should do. And I have a will again. I can feel things of my own. I have been emancipated. I am free.

"Bind thyself to us, Queen of Cats. Never leave us. Never forsake us. Keep with us and close to us and never leave us."

fuck I'm not free am eye

"Finish the job for the ones that come after you."

I look up.

The man is old and frayed. He is as dry as a nut and he is hunched over with age. He sits with a sceptre in one hand and a lamp in the other. He drips hot wax on to me.

I yelp.

"Speak, oh monstrous Queen. Speak to us."

here we are again in the dark room a pig's head gold and iron the little man in my head has a chance to speak to interact again with the world around him he is alive in me my predecessor Beelzebub lord of the flies he is within me and I hate him I must exorcise him

"Free yourself from the shackles of your dark past and speak to us, oh Queen. Speak."

I look around me. I see people hunched together. Their eyes are wide with supplication and stress.

I hear commotion from somewhere far away. It resonates like a cave. This is a cave.

"Speak, oh Queen. Speak. SPEAK!"

"Oh shut up." I manage.

Things explode in the dark. I look around me. I am livid. I am filled with rage.

They stand at the entrance. Strong, well-built men, in blue suits.

Guns. Pointed everywhere.

Noise.

Explosions.

And me.

The Portuguese have arrived.

I know what happens next.

Thanks for sticking with me so far. One more to go, ladies and gents. Love ya!