Babylon Cat

The Reasons Were Many… But the Horror Was One

You might be surprised by this statement, but don’t rush to judgment. Wait until you hear the rest… Prejudgment is the habit of the ignorant, so don’t be one of them. Please.

I know you didn’t believe me—or perhaps you didn’t believe my story—but I am compelled to tell it. Not for you, nor for your dark eyes… but for myself. To rid myself of the terror that haunts me every night, and the nightmares that return to threaten me once again.

It all began when they arrived.

Who?

The “Gypsies”—yes, that’s what they claimed.

They said they came from Babylon… to my city… Karbala.

I lived far from the city, in a place called The Modern Village. It was like any other village in our region, with fields and farms, with livestock and poultry—a simple life, far from everything.

I forgot to introduce myself… My name is Ali Fadel.

But I know you don’t care about my name as much as you care about my story.

I’m trying to be polite here, as I write these words. And out of common courtesy, I should tell you my name first, even though I forgot at the start…

They came from Babylon, as they claimed.

They were strange in every way—their clothes, the tattoos covering their bodies, even their animals were strange to me.

Believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say… They had black animals.

You might be surprised, but tell me honestly—when was the last time you saw a black chicken?

You don’t remember, do you?

That’s not strange. But before I continue my story, I need to tell you about an ancient custom in our village.

Whenever a tribe or group passes through our village, we welcome them warmly. It is an old tradition here.

But despite our hospitality, there was something odd about them—something that caught my attention.

As I write these words in this dark room, I feel the fear creeping in. I try not to look at the door. Perhaps the shadow that might appear beneath it is nothing but my imagination…

I am such a coward, I don’t even trust my own shadow.

What did they bring with them?

They brought a cat—yes, a massive cat from Babylon.

It had thick fur and glowing yellow eyes. But the strangest part was the way they treated it.

They worshipped it! Yes, as if it were a god.

May God forgive me… but this is the truth.

Believe me, there are no lies here.

They treated it with the utmost reverence—even the ground it walked on, they kissed it.

I met one of the Gypsy women. She had dark skin and was named Kunasha. A strange name, yet it stuck in my mind. She was my age—nineteen.

One day, while we were planting tomatoes in the fields, Kunasha stood on a high hill. Her red hair fluttered behind her neck as the cold wind blew, while the sun climbed in the sky, as if it were about to devour the entire earth.

Kunasha suddenly asked me,

“Why do you worship that cat?”

I laughed and replied,

“We don’t worship it, we take care of it.”

But she asked again, with wide, stunned eyes,

“You take care of it? Why?”

Then Kunasha bent down, grabbed a handful of dirt, and whispered in a low voice, as if reciting an incantation,

“To avoid his wrath… the one who dwells in the moon.”

I stared at her in shock and asked,

“I don’t understand. Who are you talking about?”

Then she threw the dirt into the air and said, her eyes widening with terror,

“The dweller in the moon… If he gets angry with us, we will become like this dust… Scattered by the wind!”

That was my only conversation about the cat. And truthfully, I don’t want to remember the dark details of those moments…

But… Wait! What is that?!

I felt something strange moving beneath the door.

No… Never mind. Let’s continue.

My village had always been strange, especially after these creatures appeared… the cat that caused such a stir among us.

Yes, that cat was the strangest thing I had ever seen in my life!

When it locked eyes on its prey, whether it was a rat or a bird, everything around it seemed to freeze in place—no movement, no escape, as if we were staring at a being from another world.

But the strangest part was how fast this cat moved. Sometimes, you’d see it in one spot, and the moment you blinked—it was gone. As if time itself had stopped. I could never explain what was happening.

Kunasha told me one day that the Gypsies kept statues of the cat in various shapes and sizes—all black.

Every Gypsy placed a statue beneath their pillow.

And if they didn’t, a curse would befall them.

By the third day, they would vanish completely.

And all that would remain… was a white skeleton.

The cat was everywhere—even the animals they brought with them seemed terrified of it.

Whenever the cat appeared, the creatures froze—paralyzed, as if held captive by an unknown force.

And whenever someone tried to get close to it…

They too froze in place, as if they had returned from another world—a world none of us could comprehend.

One evening, just before sunset, Kunasha went to the stable to feed the horses.

There… she found the cat again.

The horses were acting strangely.

One had its hoof bent to the ground, while the others lowered their heads,

as if they were bowing…

As if they were paying respect…

To that unknown being…

That terrifying entity…

That thing…

That cat from Babylon.

Is this an ordinary cat? Or is it something else? Something strange? No one knows, but in the Gypsy village, everyone feared approaching that cat… And even stranger than that, it had control over everything.

Even their heads were bowed before the cat… as if they were submitting to it, or perhaps even worshiping it! You might wonder, as usual, how the dogs dealt with this cat, especially since dogs are usually mortal enemies of cats. But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you… even their dogs!

This cat… this strange cat! No dog or even any other animal dared to approach it. Perhaps now you have gotten a glimpse of the beginning of events, but no… the true beginning of the horror had not yet begun.

Wait for me a moment. I’ll close this door, and don’t worry… I’ll be back in just a moment. (Sound of the door closing and locking)

He came back again. He found no one outside the door, and he didn’t know how it had opened by itself. But that is not our topic. Let me continue.

The horror began when the Babylonian cat sneaked into Abu Hassan’s house. No one in the village really knew what Abu Hassan’s house was… It was a small house built of hardened clay, very old like the rest of the village houses, inhabited by Abu Hassan, his elderly wife Umm Hassan, and their son Hassan.

But Hassan… Hassan was martyred in the ISIS war in Mosul in 2015, seven years ago. May God have mercy on him.

What was known about this couple was their extreme hatred for cats without any clear reason. They would throw stones at them, and sometimes, it went as far as shooting them with rifles. Yes, Abu Hassan owned a rifle from the days of the Iraq-Kuwait war.

When the Babylonian cat sneaked into Abu Hassan’s house that night… while everyone was asleep, we heard gunshots. Five shots. And in the morning, I woke up to screams and wailing. My family and I ran outside to see what was happening. There we saw them… the Gypsies, some bowing, others crying intensely. They were gathered in a circle around something in the middle. And when we got closer… we saw the body of the Babylonian cat.

But the strange thing was how they cried as if this cat had been a member of their family… and not just an ordinary black cat. At that moment, the scene was utterly shocking. Not just because it was just a cat, but because they were treating it as if it were one of their kin!

That night, I heard knocking on my door… and the moon was shining, its color an eerie blue. It was the first time I had ever seen a moon of such color. I opened the door… to find Knesha, the old woman, who came to warn me. Her red eyes were filled with tears.

“Knesha, what happened?” I asked.

“I came to warn you… You must run, quickly!” she replied, gasping for breath.

“Run? Where? And why?”

“Run fast! They will summon him.”

“Summon? Who? What are you talking about?”

Then she said a sentence that was beyond reason: “They will summon him from the moon.”

Knesha ran away, and I quietly shut the door while my mind swirled with undeniable proof of these Gypsies’ madness.

The next morning, I stepped out of my house. As usual, I felt the urge to take a walk, but I was shocked to find all the villagers gathered around something. I tried to blend in among them, hoping to uncover the mystery of this strange scene.

And there I saw what I could never have imagined.

Everyone, without exception, was prostrating on the ground, uttering strange sounds in a language I could not understand. At the forefront of the gathering stood a large-bodied Gypsy woman, her arms covered in green tattoos. She knelt on the ground, speaking to the sky in cryptic, incomprehensible words while raising a yellow bowl toward the heavens, as if invoking something majestic.

“Forsaken… O master of fates and vanquisher of entities… (Unintelligible language)… Kahlu… Lord of terror and horrors… The One and Only… (Unintelligible language)… The White Hand… Amarith… Mistress of the stars and the void… Pluto… The Eternal Ruler of Time.”

Amid their deafening laughter, filling the air, an unexpected moment came. The old woman suddenly pulled out a knife from beneath her strange garments and slit her throat before everyone’s eyes. Screams and panic erupted as her lifeless body collapsed onto the dirt.

But what truly shocked me was that her followers, despite all this, did not lift their heads from the ground. They continued to chant her cryptic words. And while everyone scrambled to save the old woman, a raging storm swept through, dark clouds veiling the sky as if to block out the sun’s light from the village.

The winds gathered as though forcing everyone back into their homes. At that moment, I no longer knew what was happening outside. But when I glanced through the only window in my house, I saw something descending from the sky—black threads scattering through the air.

And at that very moment, we heard a deafening explosion, so loud it felt like our ears would burst.

I couldn’t even blink in that next moment.

Suddenly, my parents’ heads exploded before me like balloons.

And everything faded away in an instant.

Shocked by terror, I ran outside, only for a thick mist to engulf everything… inexplicably.

In the heart of a dense fog, visibility was reduced to mere steps ahead… The screams of women blended with the cries of children and the desperate shouts of men pleading for help… And everything—mud-brick houses, animals, and the villagers themselves—began to rise into the sky. Slowly, as if the entire world was being lifted into the air. Then, black threads descended from the clouds above, and when I looked down, I felt the sand beneath my feet start to shift. Everything around me was spiraling into chaos, the echoes of terrified screams filling the horizon.

My heart pounded with fear, and as I clutched my head, screaming for my mother and father, I felt something strange… A hand rested on my shoulder. I turned swiftly, only to find Kanasha. She placed a necklace around my neck and whispered in a calm voice, “Close your eyes! And never open them!”

I had no choice but to obey, shutting my eyes tightly, but the terror only grew. The sounds of weeping women, wailing children, and panicked animals mixed with the breaking and collapsing of everything around me. My heart felt like it was about to burst from my chest.

Then, in a moment of eerie stillness, I opened my eyes—only to find myself in a place far from my village. I had no idea where I was, but there was something unnatural about the sky… The moon loomed overhead, glowing with an unnerving radiance, its size impossibly large, like a priceless gem shining through the drifting clouds.

But something even more disturbing lay before me. The villagers—my people—had fused together, forming a massive, grotesque sphere of writhing limbs. Their screams reverberated through the air, their eyes wide and ghostly white, their mouths frozen in eternal, unbearable wails.

And so, I leave you with this warning: If you ever see a black cat, do not harm it. Do not throw stones at it. Let it pass in peace.

Because this… this is my end.

Or perhaps, it is my beginning.

And maybe—just maybe—this tale is one to be believed… or forgotten.