Catty Franks lived alone and enjoyed it. There was nothing wrong with living alone because she was never wrong, and she lived alone. She liked to blast her music as loud as the dial would turn, which was often too loud but she did not care because she could not hear the music anyway. She was blind. People who were blind can hear music but not Catty Franks. She was also deaf.

Catty Franks’s house was in the shape of a large house. She liked it that way. It reminded her of the house she lived in when growing up, a large rambling affair that housed her: walls, ceilings, floors, running water, EVERYTHING.

Catty Franks’s cat Frank meowed in an insistent fashion. Frank was born Franklin but it did not suit him. It was shortened to Frank. His meows permeated the thin walls of the large home and vibrated into infinity. In this way, he got his way. It was the way of cats to get their way, and this way was no different. He was not hungry; he merely enjoyed his place in the world: a small animated dot moving in three-dimensional space. Most such beings enjoyed this because they are programmed to. It is the way of the Program.

Catty Franks sighed. Her long green hair flowed like silken rivers down her shoulders. They ruffled in the slight breeze. It was cold, the breeze. Breezes typically had no temperature to them in these parts: the Triangle Territories. These areas were known for having breezes of indeterminate comfort. Most people agreed they were fine. Catty Franks had written letters of complaint to the Triangle Territories Chamber of Commerce to regulate the THE BREEZES but so far nothing had been done about them. The letters were just simple lines on the edges of her arm chair and nobody could decipher them because nobody knew she had done anything at all. Catty Franks didn't mind. She just enjoyed the process.

“What process?” she asked.

Nobody answered, so she moved on with her boring life.

Nearby, a loud SOUND sounded. It sounded like this: dddddddddd. A sound that would drive most men (and some women) insane! Rafters fell from the rafters of the houses. All the houses had back-up rafters installed so this was not a huge deal. The sound continued for a solid one second. In that time, it all came together in ways nobody could predict. The prophecy had been foretold and a prophecy has been fulfilled. But what was interesting about this is they were two different prophecies. Nobody liked prophecy for this reason. They were reserved for the young and the lovely.

A mermaid washed ashore. Tears stained her porcelain face in invisible streaks of grief. Nobody noticed. Mermaids existed but only for those who knew where to look for them. She lay half exposed in the harsh sea air, floating aimlessly with the steady rhythm of a tide that would soon recede again. Her tears blended into the waves and if she could drown herself she would have done it. She was caught in the chains of the riptide, unable to claw her way onto the lethal sands where she could dry out and expire. All the stories warned of the sands, the glinting treasures that seduced all the seafolk, tempted them into emerging from the safe caverns of the ocean and onto the open land.

She had lost her sister to the beach. It always claimed some souls during hunting season. She wondered where her sister was now, if she had found peace in the grasses or if she had retreated to warmer waters.