Description
Jimmy bolted upright in complete darkness.
The bed was empty. This was nothing new. His unfortunate habit of complaining to Seth “Blabbermouth” Crey about the little irritations of his life meant that the newly crowned king made it impossible for his butler to keep a long term relationship with anyone, even his mother.
However, he’d felt a rustle in the covers beside him. Probably wishful thinking, he thought sourly, settling back into the covers with a sigh.
A moment of silence occurred.
“Mew.”
“AAAHH!!”
Something fluffy had squirmed up his shirt and he nearly bolted from the bed and set his shirt on fire trying to light a candle. Two green eyes peered at him from within his collar and mewed again.
He grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck and yanked it out roughly. It gazed at him mournfully and pawed at his face feebly in an attempt to inspire release.
He swallowed carefully. A supernatural intuition he’d inherited from his mother prodded at the back of his mind and a fear peeled off: black cats are bad luck.
He snorted derisively. This was his mother he was thinking about – his mother, who thought that putting on a pair of trousers inside out first thing in the morning meant your dog would die, or that if a bird came into the house, there would be a death in the family. No chance of that, he thought reproachfully. He hadn’t seen a bird of any description come near him since he began working with the infamous Prince Crey, and he doubted he ever would until his retirement at least.
He carried the cat to the front door and placed it outside, closing the door behind him. With a tired sigh, he went back to bed.
“Mew.”
“AAAAAHHHHH!!”
This time he really did leap out of the bed. The cat had returned, once again making a home within the confines of Jimmy’s shirt. He tugged it out and examined it, turning his gaze then to the door.
It was open a crack.
Failing to remember if he had closed it properly, he took it outside again and ushered it halfway down the hall with the sole of his foot. Returning to the warm confines of his bed, he managed to doze off again.
“Mew.”
“HOLY—”
He threw the cat out of the door and slammed it shut.
He dropped off completely and dreamed of his former girlfriend, with the blonde hair that was perfect except for the fact she kept putting the washing into the wrong shelves of the wardrobe. She turned into a black cat and crawled up his shirt to claw his chest off before he fell off a cliff and landed on the floor of his bedroom.
“Mew.”
The cat was back up his shirt.
He opened the door wide, threw the cat into the air and kicked it out of the door, sending it screeching in the direction of the spiral staircase. He dusted his hands off and closed the door firmly behind him, placing a chair in front of it as an afterthought.
He crawled back beneath the covers and threw the pillow over his head.
Only for it to explode in his face.
He screamed in fear and bemusement as a beak drove into his head and face over and over again. He escaped from the attack and collapsed into the corner of the room to stare at his oppressor.
It was a magpie, standing imperiously on his bed and glaring at him with a hideously evil expression. The pillow lay in pieces on the bed behind it, feathers strewn everywhere...
Magpie feathers.
If a bird comes into the house, his mother’s voice informed him internally, there will be a death in the family. If it comes into your bedroom, she added as an afterthought, there will be a death in your bedroom, but that never happens unless your pillow is stuffed with its friends'—
He fled from the room, pursued by the magpie. He stumbled on the first step of the spiral staircase and tumbled halfway down before grabbing onto the rail alongside him.
The black cat sat in front of him nonchalantly, licking its shoulder as the magpie descended. “Should have let me in to kill him,” he said haughtily as the magpie descended upon Jimmy’s eyes.
Comments: 56
JessaMar [2018-05-07 18:45:00 +0000 UTC]
Congratulations from CRLiterature on your Daily Deviation! We are holding a chat event in #CRLiterature on Saturday, May 12 from 11am-1pm PST to discuss April's batch of Literature DDs and we hope you will be able to join us. Readers will be discussing and reacting to a selection of Literature DDs; we're not sure how many we will have time for, but priority will be given to works whose author is present for the chat. We also encourage you to spread the word to your watchers! Or, if for any reason you prefer that we not include your work in our discussion, just let us know.
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salyssong [2018-04-23 21:10:37 +0000 UTC]
I love when people i watch get a DD have a nice day tomorrow.
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QueendomD [2018-04-23 16:36:24 +0000 UTC]
Love it! 😂👏🏾
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Lily-Lucid [2018-04-23 16:18:49 +0000 UTC]
Hahah nice! So the cat was just trying to protect him, then, huh? Really charming story! The DD was deserved. Congrats!
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Lily-Lucid In reply to BlueNightFire [2018-04-23 21:15:15 +0000 UTC]
YW! It's really funny! Now I'm motivated to read that copy of Rosethorn!
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dreeky971 [2018-04-23 10:27:27 +0000 UTC]
Good screenplay, i'm do screenplay too if u work with me tell me
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SCFrankles [2016-04-01 21:09:22 +0000 UTC]
That really is bad luck ^^
Great punchline - and you really know how to pace a story.
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MidnightDaybreak [2015-10-07 18:29:37 +0000 UTC]
That was great! I loved his attempts to get rid of the kitty; it made me think of an old Looney Toon cartoon (can't remember specifically which one, but it definitely rings a bell).
And then that ending, when things took a turn for the dark side. Wasn't expecting thing that o..o
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MidnightDaybreak In reply to BlueNightFire [2015-10-07 18:43:58 +0000 UTC]
I love the stories that just pop out naturally; they always seem to turn out best n..n
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BlueNightFire In reply to MidnightDaybreak [2015-10-07 18:45:13 +0000 UTC]
They do. Last Christmas was the same, actually. I intended it to be an extract for a story I was going to write later, but It was so good on its own I just left it.
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MidnightDaybreak In reply to BlueNightFire [2015-10-08 07:07:41 +0000 UTC]
I think it could go either way; it's great on it's own, but there's room to expand if the mood ever takes you.
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Rhoder [2015-08-02 05:36:42 +0000 UTC]
Revisiting the Rosethorn shorts because I finished the novel... Somehow, this is a dozen times funnier now that I'm familiar with Jimmy's character.
And like I said before, I really sympathize with Jimmy because my black cat likes to wake me up super early in the morning by meowing at my window so I can let him back in the house... I feel Jimmy's frustration in such a real way, you don't even know.
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BlueNightFire In reply to Rhoder [2015-08-02 17:33:29 +0000 UTC]
What makes it worse is that he doesn't even have a cat. So he can't even get used to it before his eyes get eaten...
As you can probably guess, this isn't anything to do with the actual storyline. I'm not killing Jimmy off anytime soon, believe me. He's one of my top four - and I completely identify with him because when my dad was alive, and I used to live with him and my mum and not claim jobseeker's allowance or anything, he used to make me pay my way by making him and my mum coffee on demand. And he drank GALLONS of the stuff. Like, literally, he had a bucket sized mug with THE BOSS written on it and it still needed filling again every half an hour. I identified with Jimmy so much then, because he was my whinging outlet - and still is every now and again, when I visit my mum and get roped into making the coffees again.
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Rhoder In reply to BlueNightFire [2015-08-02 18:26:18 +0000 UTC]
Yeah, I guessed that bit. You've actually inspired me to make some non-canon shorts for Skeleton Crew and Minus Human... Now, if I can only get ideas for actual scenes, I'd be scribbling away.
Hey, have you tried applying at a café? Seems like you'd be good at it! LOL! Cafés are writer haunts, perfect place for our type to work until we're discovered and become superstars...
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BlueNightFire In reply to Rhoder [2015-08-02 18:39:41 +0000 UTC]
ALL THE TIME. Always applying for jobs in cafes, only to be given the generic "we need experience" crack.
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mtnboy64 [2015-01-30 00:55:42 +0000 UTC]
Love it!! The dark turn it takes is wonderful!!
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Tara-E-H [2015-01-16 17:23:56 +0000 UTC]
Ooh, what a twist! You built it up really well too.
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Antebelle [2015-01-15 04:30:49 +0000 UTC]
Oh my word I love this xD Really well done! I like the descriptions and the little twist at the end 8D
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Antebelle In reply to BlueNightFire [2015-01-15 18:33:08 +0000 UTC]
That's awesome though that you already have books planned out! I only have two so far that I want to write, my draft I'm working on now, and the sequel--more like a prequel cuz it deals with time and the angel of time, and I have that problem where I make too many characters. xD I one time counted and it was up to two hundred! They have been with me since about twelve years old! and I haven't done much in getting their stories down! I feel ashamed lol xD
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Antebelle In reply to BlueNightFire [2015-01-15 19:37:56 +0000 UTC]
Heheh Yeah I tend to think mine look extremely gorgeous lol xD
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CarmineDauntless [2014-11-04 17:51:02 +0000 UTC]
Ha! Stupid Jimmy! You must allow the cat up your shirt. It's kind of like having a free space heater, one that will push you off the bed if it feels it necessary.
On a side note, look! Another one of your pieces that I like! I loved the unexpected twist of the talking cat. And the magpie attack, geez! This'll be a classic when your stories are published.
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Rhoder [2014-10-22 23:10:44 +0000 UTC]
This story really resonated with me because I happen own a very vocal black cat... He's cute but can get annoying.
Really like this. Very Gothic turn at the end.
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