Susan Ashworth

**Susan Ashworth** (née unknown; born May 24, 1970) is the protagonist of *The Cat Lady* and makes a cameo in *Downfall: Redux* and *Lorelai*. Susan is a lonely, forty-year-old woman struggling with depression. Tired of the emptiness she feels, Susan overdoses on sleeping pills and dies. However, she does not stay dead for long. She is offered a chance to get back what she lost, and is made immortal by the Queen of Maggots, an ancient entity that tasks Susan with killing five evil people known as Parasites.

## Biography

When Susan was younger, she was married to a man named Eric, and they had a daughter named Zoë. However, her relationship with Eric gradually deteriorated over time, leading to intense fighting between the two. In addition to this, Susan had a Lover who would call her to tell Susan how she was beautiful and that she should go on a date with him. He eventually became more and more obsessed with Susan, finding her address and sending her flowers.

At one point, Susan got into a serious argument with Eric, who was frustrated by local terrorist attacks. Susan left her stalker's flowers in Zoë bedroom. However, Zoë, merely an infant had a rare and fatal allergy to pollen, which was triggered by wind from an open window blowing pollen from the flowers towards her crib. Subsequently, Zoë died from her allergic reaction, which devastated Susan and Eric, the latter of whom began heavily drinking and wandered into the woods to die. Eric's body wasn't found immediately, and the summer was particularly hot, resulting in his body decomposing faster. This scarred Susan permanently, who had to go and identify remains for the police. From there, Susan began to withdraw from all over her friends and family, with her only companions being stray cats that she fed milk to.

### *Downfall: Redux*

Near the end of *Downfall: Redux*, Susan is awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of Joe smashing down a door with a fire axe that he took from the hallway between their two flats. Irritated by the fact that her brief piano sessions received noise complaints but Joe's racket was ignored, Susan investigated his flat. Searching the flat with no sign of Joe, Susan finds a rope near the entrance and descends into a hole in the floor that leads into an empty, unused flat below on the first floor. Around this time Susan hears Ivy scream once. Susan figures Joe to be a Parasite and proceeds to construct a weapon out of various objects found between the two flats and yet another hole in the first floor that leads to the basement.

Susan is able to construct two different weapons, a cat skull scythe and a glass shard ax, in order to defend herself from Joe. After locating Joe in his hidden laboratory in the basement, originally thought to be Dr. Frank Zellman's lab, Susan strikes Joe from behind with her chosen weapon, knocking him out.

#### Ending A (Canon Ending)

Canonically, after knocking Joe unconscious, Mitzi arrives looking for Susan. Appalled, Mitzi suggests that Joe might have been starving his wife considering how thin she was. The resuscitation machine reactivates suddenly, electrocuting Ivy's body and returning her heart pulse, much to the surprise of both women, but the hope was quickly dampened when her body lit on fire from the electrical currents. Mitzi leaves to get a fire extinguisher, leaving Susan alone with Joe who regained consciousness and confronted her with his fire axe, presumably killing her. Joe takes off with Ivy's corpse, leaving the machine on and causing the building to set on fire with no further mention of Susan.

#### Ending B (Golden Ending)

After knocking Joe unconscious, Mitzi arrives looking for Susan. After a short coversation, Mitzi leaves to call the police but Ivy's pulse returns, much to Susan's surprise who calls for Mitzi to get ambulance but Mitzi had already left. Susan begins to exit the lab when Ivy suddenly plants Joe's fire axe into Susan's back, killing her and taking off with Joe after starting up the resuscitation machine, causing the building to catch fire.

It is evident that Susan had not yet lost immortality after her ordeal in The Cat Lady when she turns out to be one of few survivors in the building fire and required absolutely no medical treatment.

#### Ending C (Bad Ending)

Noting that Joe is still breathing, Susan straps Joe to the electric chair and begins electrocuting him to death. She proceeds to return to her flat and use Mitzi's former laptop to advocate death to suicidal persons seeking help and comfort, suggesting Mitzi succumbed to her cancer. In her flat is a shelf with a collection of trophies from her previous Parasite victims, such as a hand-crafted mace that she used to kill Doctor X. Her latest trophy is Joe and Ivy's wedding rings. This ending depicts Susan as a brutal, violent, ruthless woman, succumbing to the very thing that she hates; a Parasite.

### *Lorelai*

In Lorelai, Susan makes a cameo appearance in Chapter 5 during Lorelai's intervention in Al's life. She is shown to have started a job as a convenience store clerk and, depending on Lorelai's choice to help or harm Al, Susan may either hit it off with Al or sell him a bottle of alcohol unaware of his alcoholism.

Should the two interact in positively, Susan reveals to Al that she likes cats in contrast to his interest in birds, suggesting they should not get along and referring to him as "the Birdman." Al reasons the two could instead form a powerful alliance, getting a laugh out of Susan.

Interestingly, Susan has a cat in the shop that wears a black and green striped jumper named Mitzi.

## Appearances

* *The Cat Lady*
	+ Prologue - "Thanks for Nothing"
	+ Chapter 1 - "House in the Woods"
	+ Chapter 2 - "Second First Breath"
	+ Chapter 3 - "River"
	+ Chapter 4 - "Bullet for Susan"
	+ Chapter 5 - "Some Flowers Never Bend Towards the Sun"
	+ Chapter 6 - "The Legend of Cat Widow"
	+ Chapter 7 - "Don't Feed the Troll"
* *Downfall: Redux*
* *Lorelai*
	+ Chapter 5 - "Princess of Maggots" (Cameo)

## Behind the Scenes

* Susan Ashworth is voiced by Lynsey Frost, having been voiced by Lynsey Frost in all of her appearances ever since her debut in *The Cat Lady*.
* Her surname, Ashworth, could be in reference to her self-esteem due to her depression.
* Susan is the English spelling of Susanna, meaning lily. This could be in reference to Susan's love of flowers, and/or the fact that lilies are the cause of her daughter's death.
* Susan used to be a nurse when she was younger, and was on marital leave when both her recently born daughter Zoë and husband Eric died, as shown in Chapter 5 - "Some Flowers Never Bend Towards the Sun". When she quit her job, and what she did for work afterwards is unknown. However, a few years after the events of *The Cat Lady*, she presumably started working again, and by the time of *Lorelai* she is working as a clerk at a convenience store.
	+ One of the lies she can tell Doctor X is that she's currently working as a waitress at a diner, obviously faux as it was made clear several times before then that she's been unemployed for quite some time.