rough table. She placed the bag on the table and sat down on one of the stools.
From the bag she began removing a set of doll’s clothing: a small blue dress, tiny stockings, and a pair of miniature patent-leather Mary Janes, together with a pair of white mittens and a small ruffled bonnet.
Then she opened the sack and Cecil lay on the rock slab, his body limp, his head at a strange angle from the broken neck that had killed him.
Elizabeth began dressing the dead cat in the doll’s clothes, carefully working the dress over his head, front legs, and torso, forcing the forepaws through the sleeves, and meticulously buttoning the dress up along his spine.
Then she worked the tiny socks over his hindpaws, and forced the stockinged paws into the miniature shoes. She slipped the mittens onto the forepaws and, finally, put the bonnet on Cecil’s head, tying the strings securely under his chin.
“Pretty baby,” she murmured as she finished. “Aren’t you my pretty baby?”
She set the grotesquely costumed animal on the rock opposite her and watched as it collapsed to the cavern floor. She tried to set it up twice more, but each time it fell. Finally she collected a number of small rocks and built a small pile of stones that would support the weight of the corpse. Eventually the dead Cecil sat propped across from her, its bonneted head lolling weirdly to one side. Elizabeth seemed not to notice the unnatural pose.
“And now well have a party,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”
Her right hand picked up an imaginary teapot, and she skillfully poured from it into an equally invisible cup that she held steadily in her left hand. She set the imaginary cup in front of the dead cat.
“One lump or two?” she asked politely, offering her guest a bowl of sugar. Without waiting for an answer, she mimed placing two lumps of sugar in the cup that was not on the table.
“Well,” she said, smiling brightly, “isn’t this nice?”
Elizabeth waited, staring across at the tightly closed eyes of the cat.
“Are you sleeping?” she asked. She reached across the table and prodded the corpse with one finger. Then she left her seat and moved around to kneel beside Cecil. She carefully forced each eye open, peeling the lids far back until they did not snap shut again when she released them. She went back to her seat.
“There,” she said. “Now we can have a nice conversation. Would you like a piece of cake?” Elizabeth picked up an imaginary cake plate and offered it to the vacantly staring cat. When there was no response, she pretended to scoop a slice of the cake onto a plate that was apparently already waiting in front of Cecil.
“Now,” she said, pausing to take a bite of the cake that wasn’t there and wash it down with a swallow of the imaginary tea. “What would you like to talk about?”
She waited for a response again and glared at the limp, unresponsive body that sat propped across from her. Empty eyes stared back at her.
“It’s very rude not to talk when you’re spoken to,” she said softly. “Nice children answer questions.”
There was still no response from the corpse, and Elizabeth’s face flushed with anger.
“Answer me when I speak to you,” she snapped. Still there was no response.
She peered balefully at the cat, and her eyes flashed in the strange yellow glow of the flashlight.
“Talk to me,” she demanded, a hard edge of hatred coming into her voice. “You talk to me, you disgusting child!”
Elizabeth’s anger mounted as the dead thing across from her failed to respond to her demands, and her voice rose and grew shrill.
“Don’t you sit there like that, you bastard!” she yelled. “That’s all you ever do. I spend my life with you, and what do I get from you? Nothing. Nothing! Well, now you’ll talk to me, or I’ll beat your ass bloody.”
She suddenly leapt at the cat, grabbing the corpse and yanking it across the table. She flipped it over, held it on her knee, and began spanking it. The slapping of her hand against the cat’s haunches echoed back at her, and she put all her strength into the beating she was administering. Then she set the cat back on the rock and smiled at it.
“There,” she said. “Now that you’ve had what you deserve, we can get back to our tea party.”
She went on chattering mindlessly for a few moments, miming the actions