The Imaginary by A. F. Harrold

ever sees me.’
    â€˜Someone must do. Someone must have. I know your sort. I know what you are.’
    â€˜Who are you?’ Rudger asked. ‘ What are you?’
    â€˜Me? I’m Zinzan.’
    â€˜Zinzan,’ Rudger repeated, trying out the unfamiliar name.
    â€˜Yes,’ the cat said. ‘And do you have a name? I could just call you “boy”, but there are so many boys in the world it would become confusing.’
    â€˜I’m called Rudger,’ Rudger said.
    â€˜Hmm.’
    Rudger wished he could see the cat’s expression. It was too dark to make anything out. Its voice sounded haughty, a touch bored, as if it wanted to be somewhere else, as if it had something better to be doing. He didn’t know if the cat was bored, if it did have somewhere better to be, or whether that was just how cats sounded. He’d never heard a cat talk before. As far as he knew no one had.
    He wondered if someone was playing a trick on him, but then who could play a trick on him? You’d have to see him first, and the only person who’d ever seen him had been Amanda. (And, he remembered with a lurch, Mr Bunting.)
    As he thought of Amanda he felt himself begin to fade again.
    â€˜Oh no you don’t,’ Zinzan said. ‘I believe in you, Rudger. And I’m not going to have you Fade on me.’ Rudger noticed the way the cat said the word, with a capital ‘F’ as if it were a medical condition. ‘It’s tricky, isn’t it, these first few days? Being forgotten? But it happens to you all, sooner or later. Come with me. Come on.’
    â€˜I’ve not been forgotten,’ Rudger answered, half-angry. ‘Not forgotten .’ He softened his voice. It wasn’t the cat’s fault and besides his heart was weighing the words down. ‘There was an accident. Amanda got knocked down, she was…’ He paused before he reached the word he meant to say, and then said a different one. ‘…hurt.’
    The cat said nothing.
    â€˜I think…’ Rudger went on haltingly, finding the words hard to say, but wanting to say them, needing to say them all the same. ‘I think she’s…dead. They took her away. And I was left on my own.’
    â€˜No,’ said Zinzan casually. ‘I’ve seen what happens when someone dies, seen what happens to someone like you. They die; you vanish, like shutting a door. Gone in a second. No, you…you’re just Fading , boy, and Fading means you’re being forgotten, that’s all.’
    Rudger’s heart began to beat again. ‘She’s alive?’
    â€˜Evidently so, or I wouldn’t be speaking to you.’
    â€˜Then I’ve got to find her. I’ve got to go to her.’
    â€˜And how will you do that, little Will-o’-the-wisp? Five minutes on your own and you’ll blow away on the breeze. I’ve no time to look for your girl, but I won’t leave you to Fade. I’m not heartless. I’ll take you somewhere safe, somewhere useful.’
    And with those words the cat turned and trotted off through the long grass, away from the tree and didn’t once look behind to see if Rudger was following.
    What choice did Rudger have?
    No choice.
    He scrambled to his feet and followed.

    Rudger followed the cat through the park, out of the gate and down the street.
    â€˜Hey, slow down,’ he called.
    The cat didn’t slow.
    It padded along the street, weaving unnoticed through the legs of passers-by, before sidling into an alleyway opposite a garishly lit kebab shop. Purple lights reflected in puddles at the alley’s mouth.
    Rudger hurried after the cat, afraid that it would be gone when he got there, that he’d be stranded in an alley with no clue as to what to do next.
    But there it was, sat on top of a dustbin, rubbing its ears with its wrists.
    A flickering streetlight cast a pale glow over the bin and over the cat. This was the first