Writer and photographer
I have a story forthcoming in an anthology of weird stories – #Normal Deviation
I wrote my story, Conjuring Tricks, in response to a strange picture. We were asked to discard our first and second ideas and go with the third. I really liked this approach. My third idea was for a story about two characters waiting to audition for places in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
The anthology is all set to go, but first there’s a crowdfunding campaign underway. Your chance to support weird stories!
I’m going to post one of my stories every other Friday. Sometimes an old story, sometimes a new one. This one first appeared in Issue 4 of formercactus. I’ve taken the opportunity to correct a small grammatical error. And am illustrating the story with a photo of dear Eggy, not lost but gone to the Great Mystery.
Un chat couvert de fleurs
Un beau jour mon chat est disparu/vanished. My cat. Que j’aime/love.
D’habitude, le matin, il m’éveille avec un grattement sur le bois de mon lit. Wakes me, roughly, comme ça. I stir, chase him away, je retourne au lit. Ou bien pas/or not.
Souvent, le matin, avant la première lumière, je me trouve au bureau and j’écris. But now mon chat is/has vanished. Je suis writing, yes, typing, urgent(ly) mais mon chat est disparu. Est-ce- qu’il est parmi les mots? Amongst the words? No. Non. He est/is quelque part/je ne sais pas where? dans la maison/house. Est-il? Je mismix up/mélange les mots. Parce que mon chat me manque. I miss my cat.
Je regarde le jardin, it is dark, still nuit. Je ne vois pas mon chat, or do I? Là, there, parmi les fleurs/ the flowers of the night/ les fleurs du mal. He is couvert de fleurs. Non, c’est un, quoi, qu’est-ce que, what is le mot? C’est une blague/ a joke/ a jest and not funny. Ah, les mots m’échappent maintenant, leave me, now that mon chat est disparu. I am so triste/ sad that he has gone. Parti. To l’au-delà. J’ai rien. No cat. No more words.
It’s been a long winter. Helped by the support of other writers – those in my local writing group and others at a distance – I’ve carried on writing stories through the dark days. I’ve submitted some of them here and there. I’ve had some acceptances, more rejections. I am grateful for those acceptances, believe me. But I’m always striving for more.
Sometimes I feel like a cat going round in circles, never quite able to catch its tail – or in my case, tale. So it’s good to come across a new writing exercise. Here’s one I came across on twitter courtesy of the writer Kathy Fish. I tried it this morning with remarkable results – and now have ideas for ways to start at least half a dozen new stories! I think the exercise gives you access to a free-thinking part of the brain. Perhaps this is what the Surrealists did with their automatic writing. Follow the link to Kathy Fish’s post and try it yourself.
Cath Barton 