An Ordinary Black Cat (Short Story)

As promised, I'm posting a short story to battle my fear.

I saw a black cat one day and this short story sprouted from my overactive mind.

The first time I saw the cat, I was walking back home from work. I wouldn't have paid any particular attention to it, if not for its black velvet fur and bright yellow eyes. It was not often I saw a cat like that. The kind of cat featured in folktales about witches or the devil. The kind of cat that people believed brought bad luck if it crossed the street in front of them. That kind of cat.

But truth to tell, I thought it was probably just an ordinary black cat.

It sat still on the lawn of someone’s front yard with its head turned the other way, ignoring the people who walked by, just a few feet away. After that one time, I never expected to see it again.

However, when I stepped out of the house to get the mail on the very next day, there it was. Almost as if waiting for me to notice it. It crossed the front yard and paused to look at me for the briefest second, before it was on its way.

And then I started seeing it at the most unexpected times. I would gaze out of the kitchen window in the middle of doing the dishes and it would return my gaze from the backyard, before jumping the wooden fence to the other side. I would randomly look out of my bedroom window and see it perched on the charcoal-tiled roof of my neighbor’s house and it would turn its head to look at me at that exact moment.

The days stumbled after each other. It became a little game of sorts. I would spot it and it would pause to acknowledge me, before running along. Not a day passed without our unspoken exchange.

Until one day, a full fortnight after I’d first seen it, it came treading along as I stepped out on the front porch on my way out. This time it stopped and sat a couple of yards away from me, waiting like it wanted to tell me something. Unfortunately, I didn’t speak cat.

It turned out, I wouldn’t need to. I’d barely locked the front door when I accidentally dropped my keys. I cursed, bending to retrieve them. But the cat swooped over them and scooted away in a flash.

“What the–?” I turned around to find the cat standing several yards away, with my keys firmly held in its maw. I cursed again.

The Corridor Of Broken Dreams (Short Story)

Following The Burden of Expectations post, here's a short story that's sort of inspired by it and other things. Life is too short to waste it away in a miserable cubicle job. I needed a well-deserved kick in the butt from the universe to remind me of that. Also, this is my first short story after a very long time. I'd forgotten how much fun they can be.

Credit: The Corridor by Adikko (from deviantART)

I push the bar-handles of the double doors open and enter the school building. A long hallway stretches out ahead of me endlessly. There is no one in sight. But I can see them. I can hear their voices in my head. Voices that belong to the past. I start walking down the hallway. Its lockers are full of memories of countless events involving the countless teenagers who used them.

Locker 137. This is where my first boyfriend asked me out. This is also where I had my first kiss.

I keep walking. Locker 156. This is where we broke up. My first ex-boyfriend's locker.

Locker 301. This is where I poured my eyes out to my then best friend and told her I was so done with boys. It was stupid to fawn over them anyway. They were selfish beings who put themselves first.

Two months later, I had no memory of saying that, as I kissed my next boyfriend at Locker 307.

The so-called significant events in the life of an ordinary teenager.

It’s not just the lockers, but the hallway itself. I remember thinking about being a vet or sometimes a lawyer or a fighter pilot amidst the whirlwind of crazy activity that was my life.