Links
by Oonah V Joslin
Pauline was quite adamant. “I'm telling you it was a lynx,” she said. “I saw what I saw.”
“I'm not disputing that you saw a big cat, dear.”
“Don't use that tone with me. A lynx is a big cat.”
“Yes but a big cat isn't a lynx and that's where your logic falls down.”
“Oh, so you saw it then, did you?”
“No. But ask yourself, Pauline…how likely is it there was a lynx on the links? I mean neuro-linguistic programming aside, where's the zoo? Where's the menagerie? What was it doing there – heading for the 19 th so it could have a cocktail before dinner? You see biggish cat at a distance, we're at the golf club, you think, ‘lynx.' You're brain links things, don't you see? That's what brains are for. It's a survival mechanism.”
Pauline was ready with the possibility that scavenging scraps might well be a survival mechanism since cats have brains too. Besides, there were escaped minks in that wood from the fur farm days. She couldn't get a word in.
“Look I told them up at the club house that my wife thought she'd seen a rather large, cat-like creature near the 13 th by the tree line but if you call the police you'll end up looking like a fool and I'll be a laughing stock at the bar so that's the end of it.”
They'd said it was a heart attack. He'd been playing a round with Walter, chipping away in the bunker at the 13 th and had a heart attack – just like that. Walter had said that he thought he'd seen something spring out of the bunker and into the trees but he was too far away to be really sure – all the way up the fairway. Anyway the police were sure there was no foul play involved. Sixty something, not very fit, recently retired, all that walking, the swing itself, competition – all these things added up. There were statistics that showed a positive correlation linking these factors.
Pauline had been going to mention the big cat but she decided against. He'd have hated that and after all, she didn't want to look a fool.
END
Oonah won the MicroHorror Trophy 2007. Links to her work and an interview with Every Day Fiction can be found at www.writewords.org.uk/oonah/