Even After
You’re Gone
—
K.C. Mead-Brewer
RIPLEY’S CAT IS A SMALL CAT. Here, look: unscrew the lightbulb from your desk lamp and cradle the warm glass in your palm; this is the size of the cat’s head. Ripley’s human head is a bit larger, perhaps the size of a pink birthday balloon. Her cheek is much less pleasant to scratch than the cat’s cheek, and anyway, she doesn’t want you scratching her. Especially not while she’s on trial for murdering her husband.
Or, no, that was a few years ago; now she’s out to dinner with her parents, which is almost as bad. Her father’s head is tall like a whiskey bottle. Her mother’s head is round as an argument. They sit across the table from her, their heads chewing their dinner and talking at Ripley about what she should do with her life.
The last time she saw her husband’s head, it was at the bottom of their stairs with a hammer sticking out of it. (It’s entirely justifiable that she put it there. The jury said so.)
“Rip, are you even listening to us?” demands her mother’s head.
Other heads are talking on a TV that leers out of the wall. (This isn’t a fancy restaurant.) The sheening clatter of steel flatware. The slurping of soda and the squeaky shoes and the scrape of chairs. Everything is so much louder than it needs to be.
“You’re saying I should start dating again,” says Ripley. “I should get a new job. I should move out of your house.”
Her mother’s head sniffs a bit; chin pointed down as a nun might point to hell. “We just want you to be happy, Rip. We want you to thrive. Stop hiding under Tony’s head.”
“Sorry,” says Ripley. “What?”
“Stop hiding, sweetheart. Tony’s dead. And thank God for that. —Not now, James. You know it’s true. Ripley, listen to me: all the trial nonsense is years behind you. It’s time to move on. Whatever that looks like. It’s time to see the good in things again.”
But I’m not hiding, thinks Ripley. I’m stuck. I’m stuck under Tony’s head. Under his blood-splattered hammerhead.
She dreams about Tony’s head that night, except it isn’t the way it used to be. His eyes are plugged in where his ears should’ve been, forcing him to turn his head from side to side to keep Ripley in his sights as he slinks closer. And she cannot move. She cannot move. She cannot move. When at last he reaches her, head still rocking from side to side, he only crowds in yet closer, closer, closer, until he’s rubbing his hammerhead against her cheek.
Horror chokes her awake, and Ripley realizes—no, Tony isn’t pressing his awful head against hers. It’s her little cat, nudging and nuzzling at her. It’s something she never imagined he could spoil. •
![]()
![]()
K.C. Mead-Brewer is a writer living in beautiful Baltimore, MD. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Strange Horizons, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram
Or, no, that was a few years ago; now she’s out to dinner with her parents, which is almost as bad. Her father’s head is tall like a whiskey bottle. Her mother’s head is round as an argument. They sit across the table from her, their heads chewing their dinner and talking at Ripley about what she should do with her life.
The last time she saw her husband’s head, it was at the bottom of their stairs with a hammer sticking out of it. (It’s entirely justifiable that she put it there. The jury said so.)
“Rip, are you even listening to us?” demands her mother’s head.
Other heads are talking on a TV that leers out of the wall. (This isn’t a fancy restaurant.) The sheening clatter of steel flatware. The slurping of soda and the squeaky shoes and the scrape of chairs. Everything is so much louder than it needs to be.
“You’re saying I should start dating again,” says Ripley. “I should get a new job. I should move out of your house.”
Her mother’s head sniffs a bit; chin pointed down as a nun might point to hell. “We just want you to be happy, Rip. We want you to thrive. Stop hiding under Tony’s head.”
“Sorry,” says Ripley. “What?”
“Stop hiding, sweetheart. Tony’s dead. And thank God for that. —Not now, James. You know it’s true. Ripley, listen to me: all the trial nonsense is years behind you. It’s time to move on. Whatever that looks like. It’s time to see the good in things again.”
But I’m not hiding, thinks Ripley. I’m stuck. I’m stuck under Tony’s head. Under his blood-splattered hammerhead.
She dreams about Tony’s head that night, except it isn’t the way it used to be. His eyes are plugged in where his ears should’ve been, forcing him to turn his head from side to side to keep Ripley in his sights as he slinks closer. And she cannot move. She cannot move. She cannot move. When at last he reaches her, head still rocking from side to side, he only crowds in yet closer, closer, closer, until he’s rubbing his hammerhead against her cheek.
Horror chokes her awake, and Ripley realizes—no, Tony isn’t pressing his awful head against hers. It’s her little cat, nudging and nuzzling at her. It’s something she never imagined he could spoil. •
K.C. Mead-Brewer is a writer living in beautiful Baltimore, MD. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Strange Horizons, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram