27 September 2004

Another idea for a story...

I've got a few more chapters to fiddle with before I send the typescript of my novel Labyrinth to my publishers and agent. I feel - like any author at this point - that I have too much in my head, too many details I'm trying to hold in the front of my mind. All those loose ends to be tied up!

Rather than deflect my attention, here's a continuation of a Labyrinth story developed in one of our creative writing classes by my husband Greg.

The stones fell like a mad destructive hail. The first night was terrible. But, of course, it was not the worst. Each of the three days that followed was accompanied by the terrifying expectation that the bombardment would continue – much more frightening than the fact itself.

It recommenced each night. In the homes where people were either irresponsible or devoid of sense, fires were lit and the stones smashed chimneys and hearths, raising fountains of sparks from the wreckage into the hot summer night air and spreading fire from house to house, street to street.

People were shouting, racing this way and that or standing glum and purposeless in the road. The animals seemed intent only on bombarding the houses.

On another day, two small boys were playing at the side of the road. Two birds with a wing span the width of a cart picked them up and carried them high into the sky until we could no longer hear them calling out. Then they dropped them and we heard their cries coming closer and closer. Then they stopped.

At the end of three days, the nights became quiet. Perhaps the giant animals judged that the humans had learnt their place. They came picking their cumbersome way into the wrecked towns. They smelt the air and turned over stones that two or three of us would find it hard to heave aside. When they came across a dog or a cat, we saw that the pet would be transfixed, gazing awestruck – as well it might – at the enormous animals.

A massive bird the size of a boat, with the wild, almost fluorescent plumage of a hummingbird, found a cat. It cowered in the rubble. The bird advanced a massive claw like the roots of a tree and trapped the pet. At first we thought it was going to be crushed and eaten. Then we heard its pitiful mewing for escape. The child it belonged to threw stones at the huge bird. It turned its horrible black eye on her but it did not move. Then the child's parents hurried her away.

Soon, summoned we could not see how, a giant cat came sidling along the damaged houses. It pushed its tender black nose up against the claws of the bird and peered at the tiny cat. We saw its black tongue rasp through the claws as if between the bars of a prison.

Then the bird and the cat stalked away, for all the world a married couple strolling in the afternoon sun.
Over the next few days the cat sickened. It wouldn't eat but drank prodigious quantities of water and – if its owner could find it – milk. Then it began to grow.

It was obscene to watch. Over the course of 5 awful days, petted and wept over by its owner, that cat appeared to swell, awkwardly, just a part at a time. After 48 hours its huge inflated head lay slavering in the dust as its poor shoulder couldn't hold it up. But its rear legs had developed out of all proportion. It became like an exhibit in a circus booth. 'Roll up. Roll up. Marvel at the grotesque cat-bear!'

But it wasn't turning into a bear. It was simply becoming a giant cat that some of us wanted to kill before the transformation was complete. But we were cowed by the thought of the enormous cat that had licked it as the giant bird held it imprisoned in its claw. And by the love of the child for its awful pet.

The cat was the first I saw transform, but there were many others. And, as time went by, we became aware that each was strangely discontented. Often they would come and sit by the house that they had once inhabited, gazing mournfully at their old home.

Like amnesiacs attempting to recapture lost time …

… in the Labyrinth of memory.