Hiss
A lost cat seeks shelter in an abandoned animal hospital, but it shall find no safety here.
Narration by Cassie Corbin
This story earned Alex fifth place in Round 1 of the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2025. This round’s prompts for his group were…
Genre: horror
Location: animal hospital
Object: an outdated map
TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of Animal Harm || References to Animal Abuse
Your pitiful yowls reverberate off the walls. You just want to go home.
But it’s raining and the door was open and you could smell others like you, so surely this place will do until the rain stops.
The moment you cross the threshold, instinct sends an electric shock down your spine, poofing your tail. This place is wrong, somehow. Not just abandoned but condemned.
You think to leave, but a thunderclap sends you scurrying further inside instead. At least in here it’s quiet and mostly dry. There’s a puddle of clear water by the entrance, and you take a drink, dodging bits of glass floating inside.
Now you wander the decrepit halls, crying out for your person, as if somehow they’ll hear your voice and come running. You’re an indoor-outdoor cat, so roaming’s in your nature, but the storm came before you could get home. You’ll just have to find a cozy spot to curl up and wait it out.
Graffitied words are scattered along your path—murderer, butcher, maniac. There’s a placard on the wall, and you hop up onto an old gurney to get a better look. Blocky shapes beneath the words Hamilton Animal Hospital. Vaguely, you recognize this as a map, though what exactly that means is beyond you. Somebody—fans of doomed, morbid locales, perhaps—has circled certain boxes, leaving notes beside each:
Doc cut them up here.
Kept them alive in here.
Buried the dead here.
Horrific fascination seeps through the letters, and, uneasy, you hop down.
You find beds in one room, but they’re inside metal cages that cover the walls. What’s not coated with dust and feces and grime is rusted over and broken, spokes jaggedly misaligned. You hate this room in a way that feels like it’s not entirely yours. Just looking at it stands your fur on end, but it’s the only place you’ve found that’s soft, so you slink into a cage, turn thrice, and settle onto a dusty pillow so sleep can find you.
But something else finds you first.
The yowling from the cage beside yours is unnatural, like the sound itself has curdled. You stand quickly, back arched. Another cat steps from the shadows, but not one like you. It’s bigger, and there’s an empty space where one of its eyes should be. When it hisses at you, you can see that one of its fangs is chipped. Its fur is pallid, its ribs showing.
Its scent is disorienting. When you can catch it, it’s sour and acrid and makes you want to gag. Yet it fades in and out, as if this cat is somehow both here and not.
More animals materialize one-by-one in the other cages, dogs and cats alike, all in the same sorry state. Fur matted and patchy, shining with dark liquid. Parts of them missing or broken—or worse, taken—leaving bloodied stumps. They’re all growling, hissing, wheezing as they stare at you. Your ears lower at the dissonant rumble, and you back away, fangs bared.
These creatures aren’t like you. They’re something… wrong. Abused, mutilated, and angry. Their scents are an overwhelming barrage of flickering putridity against your nose. They can smell your person on you, the kind of love they were denied. And they resent you—hate you for it. What happened to them isn’t your fault, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too angry.
And so, so hungry.
They launch at you with the ferocity of decades-long starvation, but you’re already bolting for the door. You weave through the there-but-not-there crowd as they snap at you with moldy teeth. A Maine Coon catches you in the haunch with its claw, and you wail, but you don’t stop. A red line appears amid your orange fur.
They follow, a voracious wave of anarchic, malignant fury. Your wound slows you, but primal fear keeps you moving. Instinct screams LEAVE on repeat. Skidding around the corner to the exit corridor, you ready yourself for that final push toward salvation, and—
The door you came in through is closed. This place has claimed you.
You think of your person. Will they ever know what happened to you? No, you’re destined to be one more hungry, forsaken creature amid the broken machinery, puddles, and grime of this malevolent hospital.
The puddle! The one you drank from earlier—it’s still there. That rainwater was fresh, clean, and you realize it’s coming in from a broken window above it. The window is lined with jagged glass, but it’s your only option. You turn, splash through the puddle, and leap up along the wall. The window is at the very edge of your agility, and glass bites your front paws, but you reach it.
This place will not let you go so easily, though. The suffering beasts clamber over each other in a writhing mass beneath the window, biting and swiping and eager to haul you back to suffer like the rest of them. A cacophony of barks and hisses and growls accompanies them, thick against your pointed ears.
Just as your front half clears the window, the one-eyed cat-creature bounds across the top of the crowd and clamps onto your back leg. You slide backward and howl as glass rakes across your belly, but your front paws cling to the sill. The sorry creature dangles from your leg; it’s only a matter of time before it drags you back into that hellhole.
Again, you think of your person. But this time, you think of how it feels to be nestled in the lap of someone who loves you unconditionally. And this… this miserable, envious creature wants nothing more than to take you from that.
So you take its other eye with your back paw.
It wails, and you don’t stay to watch it fall. You’re already up and leaping out into the storm. It’s a rough landing into the weeds, and you look back up at the window. The beasts don’t come after you. They’re forever trapped in their pain. Despite your fear, you feel sorry for them.
You lick the oozing wounds on your belly, then make toward home, rain be damned.
Perhaps you’ll just be an indoor cat from now on.
Damn, son.