Short Story

Wrote this a few years ago. It's one of the few I actually finished.

The Shield of the White Cat

Jennifer A Carrigan

White cats are unlucky, they told Jolie. With a calm shake of her head, she fired back the same reply every time, “I’m not superstitious.”

Every time Jolie said this, Crossie, perched on her shoulder, curled his snow-white tail around her neck and stared at the naysayer with his intent golden eyes. Without fail, this had the effect of forcing them back a step, and mutter an apology. Then, Jolie would laugh, and reach up to stroke Crossie’s chest, eliciting a powerful machine-gun purr. She loved his purr.

Jolie’s husband wasn’t fond of Crossie. “He gets hair all over,” he grumbled, “and smells.”

“You would get hair all over, if you had any left to lose,” Jolie would retort as she sashayed out of the room, Crossie following her heels with a lazy swagger of his own.

Crossie found Jolie one day crossing an intersection. He stopped her on the yellow line, weaving around her feet. A moment later, a huge roar and rush of wind raced past her. Jolie scooped him up, decided he was her savior and said grandly, “I dub thee Crossie.” He clambered up onto her shoulders and curled up, as if he belonged there. After that day, the odd pair went everywhere together. Church, grocery-shopping, even to the beauty parlor.

All her days were golden. Even the rainy days. With a swell growing in her belly, and the machine-gun purr in her ear that never ended, she was content. Her worries disappeared. She no longer fretted over pleasing her husband, nor keeping her home clean and orderly. While chaos and discontent brewed around her, her bliss grew, blinding her.

Her eyes saw was a perfect, golden world.

Her husband pled with her weekly. When his cries fell on deaf ears, he begged and cajoled daily. Even shouted. “The cat isn’t good for you.” “That cat will hurt the baby.” “The cat will suffocate the baby, or make you ill.”

Jolie, like always, ignored him.

Crossie did not. Every time the husband begged her, Crossie stared at him. Hard. With cold malice. He was frightened. But he loved her. So he continued to beg and plead with her daily. On the eighth day of the eighth month, he stopped. Jolie didn’t notice. She basked in the gold.

Rrrrratatatata! Ratatatata! Oh, how Jolie loved that purr!

***

One dark morning, she woke alone. It was cold. Thunder and lightning raged overhead. Her naked belly sagged like a half-deflated balloon. She ached. Fog plagued her head.

White lightning jagged across the sky, illuminating the room in its full horror.

Filthy chaos! Shattered glass from the windows scattered across the mud-crusted floor. Black splotches of mold and grime stained once pristine white walls. Ragged paper scraps scattered over furniture fouled by feces. The table upon which she laid was covered in dried blood and gore.

“Where’s Crossie?” she wondered first, and then, “and the baby?”

Cradling her hollow belly, she ran into the dim living room and found the walls drenched in black sticky blood. Panting in terror, she whirled around twice. Lightning lit up the room, casting stark shadows. Her husband laid in his beloved easy chair with his chest ripped open, guts and entrails pulled out and hung erratically around the room like festive birthday streamers.

His tongue stuck out of his mouth, black and swollen.

Her hands began to tremble violently as she struggled to comprehend. Last she remembered, she was huge with the baby. And the house did not look like this. A series of lightning went off like flashbulbs popping in her face, and she saw that her hands were thickly encrusted with black, dried blood. A glimpse of her memory came into her mind, an image of herself straddling her husband on the chair as she ripped his organs out, laughing and screaming all the while.

“No…”

Jolie staggered into the nursery. She flicked the light switches, but none came on. A small, dark window was all she had. Again, lightning blazed across the sky, and Jolie saw the baby. A swath of dark hair on his head. She half sobbed in relief as she rushed toward the crib to take the baby in her arms. Her misshapen, deformed, rotting baby.

His lifeless eyes were open; they were a bright, intent golden color.

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Still here.

And a lot of people are still here. Darn. I was hoping the religious fanatics would be taken.

I've been fairly busy. I started a new novel - now about 20k words - and I'm enjoying it much more than the 1930s detective noir one I was working on a couple months ago. I was struggling with it and kept getting bogged down on trivial details. Like "is this gun appropriate for the period? How strict should I be with period details versus detective noir/pulp stories written back then?" And I was also struggling with the language from that era. Sure, I've read a lot of books around then, but they aren't necessarily good representations of how people spoke back then. I'm a stickler for details, and when I see a modern term used in a period piece, it's quite jarring. Angst! I was at the point where just getting 500 more words was agony. When I realized that, I knew it was time to set it aside.

In addition to that, I'm also writing a bunch of short-short stories (under 2k words) and am tinkering in my head with two new ideas for novella-length stories (around 7k-8k words). I'll probably either A. submit them to contests for fun, or B. self-publish an anthology of short stories. We'll see, haven't decided yet. They all will need editing before I can even think of what to do with them.

On top of that, I'm still doing the 365 photo project (scroll down a bit to see the thumbnails and click on them if you're so inclined). It's somewhat irregular in frequency, but I enjoy it. I'm trying to do creative photos. Some are flops, some are great. Experimentation is good, I enjoy the process and I now have a few photos for my portfolio. I'm tempted to try get some work as a commercial-ish photographer, but truth be told, I have no experience in that industry. So I'm half holding out hope that some ad agency bigwig will see my pictures on Flickr and say, "hey, we gotta hire her!" I've heard of it happening to others. Why not me?

Never know!

With the summer - er...more accurately, spring (there's barely a summer here in Seattle) - coming, it's starting to finally warm up. The azaleas are in full bloom, it's a riot of colors in my neighborhood. We're starting to have more sunny days, and with the season change, I'm starting to think about shooting outdoor. I don't want to shoot the usual bird, flower and tree pictures, so that leaves me with people pics. I'm not a big people person, but still, I've come up with some creative ideas for outdoor shoots. I placed an ad on Craig's List for people with costumes and/or props and a desire to be photographed.

A lot of people fancy themselves being models, and they often will grab at any experience that helps them practice and if they get good pictures out of their time, all the better.

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Another unfinished short

Katie stared at the flotsam swirling languidly on the lake’s surface as she listened to her boss, the owner of the camp where she worked at. She could’ve sworn she saw a dead fish’s silvery belly, but it disappeared before she could get a better look.

“Don’t let the kids in the water this summer,” he said, worried furrows slicing across his forehead. “It’s polluted from the chemical plant across the lake.”

Sickened by the slimy appearance of the murky brown-green water, she spoke incredulously, “You’re kidding us? Half of the reason these kids come here is to swim and we don’t have a pool.”

Mike, a fellow counselor and a good friend, asked, “Is the company going to do anything about it? What do we do if one of the kids jumps in?”

I vaguely remember this one. If I'm remembering right, this was inspired by a movie I saw many years ago where someone was transformed into a mutant by tainted lake water at their camp and proceeded to terrorize the campers for many years. I think The Simpsons spoofed it as well. And the Swamp Thing parallels that movie. Damned if I can remember the name, though.

If you read a lot, you will eventually notice that many stories have common themes and plots, and it might pop up in your own works. That's okay - it doesn't mean you're being unoriginal, as long as you give it your own interpretation and throw in new interesting plot devices.

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Bad blogger

Been a little busy writing, photographing and other stuff to pay the bills. I'm back on the wagon though. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for more entries.

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