Feline

This short story is the first unoffical assignment for my creative writing class at university. We were told to write a story with an element of the surreal.

The end.

Her irises had the texture of reptile scales, almost like a small circle of crinkled foil or a thin flake of gold. They burned a radioactive, liquid green that looked like it might spill over, trickle from her eye and drip down her cheek. Even her pupils were hypnotic with their way of dilating like inky black saucers that stretched and threatened to split her eyes when she was excited and their way of shrinking to devilish slits when she was angry. She stood at five foot seven, a few inches shorter than myself with the slender body of a woman but the long swishing tail and soft, fluffy head of a cat.

Her furry, pointed ears immediately darted around towards the sound of my voice when I offered to buy her a drink on the first night we met. I fell for her the second she turned around. Her name was Kiera.

“Strawberry wine please,” she smiled.

She was very confident and used to men falling over themselves to pay her attention.

We sat at a curtained booth next to a window with only a small lamp lighting our tiny room. The glow from street lights and cars flashing past in waves smudged and melted on the window as the rain pattered on the glass with increasingly rapidity while we talked.

“I’m only fifteen you know. You just broke the law by buying me a drink,” she smirked as she swirled the glass in her hand.

“Well I suppose that means we only have one year to wait until we can get married, with your parents’ consent, of course,” I said, sipping my whiskey.

“So you want to marry me then?” Her pupils began to swell and a mischievous, childlike grin crept on her lips.

“Well that won’t exactly be easy,” her smile faded before she said, “You don’t know who my parents are, do you?”

“No, who are they?”

“The Conways’.”

The Conways were a notorious drug family in our hometown. Every business in the main street worked until their fingers bled to provide the Conways’ weekly protection money. The family supplied every upper, downer, narcotic, tranquiliser, sedative, hallucinogenic, opiate and stimulant you could think of. The authorities were bribed regularly so, naturally, the police turned a blind eye to every drug deal, threat, assault, con, theft and murder the Conways committed. Small children would stop dead, drop their toys and run back into their houses when they saw the Conways walking down the street. It was even rumoured that they kept the body parts, and even the eyeballs, of their victims pickled in vinegar and displayed in jars on their living room mantel.

To make matters worse, my family, the Fergusons’, were their biggest rivals. I was also a child brought up around dodgy dealings and drugs being mixed in the kitchen.

I told Kiera my full name, David Ferguson, and immediately she knew who my parents were.

We talked for around two hours, exchanging childhood stories and pouring our hearts out to each other about our biggest hopes and ambitions.

At around ten o’clock the pub began to get rowdy as the karaoke started.

“Oh, I have to do my song!” Kiera said and guzzled down the rest of her strawberry wine before running to the stage.

She sat up on a tall stool on the tiny stage at the back on the pub. The main lights were dimmed and five bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling around her shone warmly as she began to sing.

Frankie died just the other night,
Some say it was suicide,
But we know
How the story goes.

With his six string knife
And his street wise pride,
The boy was a man before his time
And she knew,
All their dreams would come true. 

Her trickling high notes were light and airy but her low tones raspy, rough, husky and full of grit as she whipped her long, bushy tail along to the music and occasionally flashed her pearly, sharp teeth. The humble, shabby old pub erupted with applause, cheers and whistles. She shyly bowed and played with her waist length, glossy hair as her eyes grew almost completely black.

“You were amazing up there! Why don’t you pursue singing?” I gushed when she sat back down and took a big gulp from her fresh glass of pink, fizzy wine.

“It’s something I would love to do,” she confessed as she steadied her breathing. “I’m an artist too. I can’t go a day without painting,” she beamed.

At eleven o’clock, Kiera had to head home. By this point, she was merrily smiling and giggling, aglow with a whole bottle of sickly sweet strawberries in her system so I insisted on walking her home, which I would have done regardless.

As we stepped out into the torrential rain, I wrapped my huge leather jacket around her and she huddled into my side as we walked. I could faintly hear her warm, humming, chesty purr gently rattling as we approached her street. Abruptly she stopped. Her broad, perfectly symmetrical, feline features and dome eyes appeared immediately sober and disheartened as she stared at me.

“Let’s runaway. Let’s just leave this place, now, tonight!”

Before I could respond, Kiera threw her arms around my neck and crushed her lips against mines. I held the small of her back and pulled her closer as her whiskers and soft fur tickled my upper lip. I instantly felt something so magnetic and electrifying that I forgot the rest of the world existed. There was something profoundly chemical about the two of us together.

Completely smitten, I couldn’t say no to her. We ran to the train station hand in hand, shivering, soaking wet and freezing with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We jumped onto the first glowing steam train that arrived and sped off, chasing the dusky, stormy horizon leaving only a trail of smoke behind.

The beginning.

Author's Note

All feedback is welcome.

Reviews

[Meraki]

A book! A book! Oh please make it a book? It was so wonderful. I imagined it was back in the 1920s you know during the prohibition and stuff oh it was magnificent. I was hypnotized this was so good. Sorry this is gushing but I really liked it. Had this been a book I wouldn't have put it down.

[Sophie McN]

omg thank you!! thats so sweet of you. I'd love to make it into a book but I very much doubt it'd get published or that many people would want to read it :') no no gushing is good! haha thank you!

[Meraki]

No I'd read it and then make sure everyone I know reads it haha. It's really great plus you'd never know if you don't try. If you don't get an A++ on this I have to talk to your professor there may be something wrong with him ;) hahaha

[Sophie McN]

aww thats so sweet! you've made my day :D well heres hoping I get a good grade for it then! haha thank you!!

[HeatherR]

You need to continue this, It's amazing! I'd love to see how the story plans out and the description of the girl is amazing!

[Sophie McN]

thank you!! I might continue it, I'll need to wait and see haha

[Gedalya]

I think the story shouldn't begin with character description. There were too many similes at one time, "like", "as" etc,.

[Sophie McN]

I see what you're saying but I feel that the character description at the beginning is important because without it, we wouldn't know shes partly a cat and the symbolism about the eyes is important to the whole story but I agree with you about the similes now that I'm reading it back :) thank you for the comments!!

[Pixieholt]

It was an awesome story; short, sweet and perfect. And I loved your descriptions-starting from the girl to the last scene of the train.

[Sophie McN]

thank you!! I really appreciate it.

[Academy6]

Sweet! I like this. Sounds pretty good. Will there be anymore like this or is this really the end? Cause if there's more i'd love to read.

[Sophie McN]

Aw thank you! I'm not sure. I might write more about them because I feel like theres a lot of loose ends that I could follow up and I keep thinking about what their families would do when they found out that David and Kiera had ranaway together.