She heard rather than felt the soft crunch of mouse bones beneath her feet, and when she looked down, she imagined she could hear tiny voices squeaking in panic and confusion. She took the broom and dustpan and swept up the parts, sealing them into a plastic bag before depositing them in the trash. She didn’t want Catsnip digging his nose into the garbage all night long. She cooked and ate dinner, cleaned Catsnip’s litter box, and went to bed.

That night she woke to the sound of feet scurrying over floorboards. She felt for Catsnip. He was lying against her left shoulder, his favorite spot, purring softly. She turned on the bedside lamp; the scurrying stopped. She looked over the side of the bed but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Satisfied, she snapped off the light and rolled over.

Two hours later the soft scurrying woke her again, this time louder and more furious. It seemed thousands of tiny feet scampered over the floorboards, across the ceiling and between the walls. She clicked on the light and looked, but saw nothing.

“Catsnip?” she whispered. “Did you hear that?”

The cat looked at her with sleepy eyes. He yawned and stretched. She picked him up and dropped him on the floor. “Find the mice,” she told him. He looked at her, annoyed, then padded out of the room.

She had moved into the old house nine months ago. Her realtor had told her about a mouse problem they had had a few years back, but which had been taken care of–“Nothing to worry about, just want to be up front about it.” She had nodded and brushed it off, joking that Catsnip was the luckiest cat in the world.

Now she got out of bed, looked under it, and behind the dresser, and in the closet, but saw no darting shadows or piles of droppings. After calling for Catsnip, who did not return, she went back to bed.

#

The next morning she found her cat, rankles high, hissing madly atop the kitchen cabinets.

“What are you doing up there?” she asked, getting a stepstool. Catsnip swiped at her, scratching her wrist and the back of her hand.

“Ouch!” She pulled her hand to her chest. “Stay up there then.”

When she came home from work, Catsnip was pacing in front of the door, his tail flicking back and forth anxiously. His hair was matted down in spots and bloody like he had been in a fight.

“‘Snip?” She took him into her arms. “What happened?” She checked him over for injury but found nothing more than a small bite to his ear. “Have you been outside? I thought I closed all the windows.”

#

That evening, she woke to the flickering of shadows, like someone passing in front of her nightlight. Catsnip stood on the edge of the bed, hissing and arching, staring out into the darkness of the bedroom.

She snapped on the light and, heart pounding, got out of bed. She searched her apartment, room by room, but it was empty.

“You saw something too, didn’t you, ‘Snip?” she asked when she returned. She pulled him to her, and lay back down. She clicked off the light.

Not more than twenty minutes later, the flickering, passing shadows woke her again. This time she looked into the darkness. Tiny shadows crawled up the walls, across the floor, over the ceiling. Catsnip hissed, and a roaring sound like hundreds of bodies, squeaking and chattering, a thousand scampering feet, and a million claws clicking across the floor, rose up from the night.

Fumbling on the bedside table, she clicked on the light and screamed because there was nothing there.

#

The sounds and shadows continued every night for a week. Scampering and scurrying, flickering and flowing. Dark bags formed under her eyes from lack of sleep, and Catsnip grew thin, refusing to eat and always glancing around nervously. He rarely left the house and took to shredding the wooden legs of the furniture–a trait she thought he had outgrown years ago.

She called her realtor to ask about the exact nature of the mouse problem, but he was unable to give anything more specific than “‘Problem’–-that’s how they described it, ‘problem.’”

#

One evening after a particularly hard day at work, she came home and found that Catsnip was gone. She checked under the couch and in the closets and under the blankets, but the cat had disappeared. She phoned her neighbors and asked if they had seen him. No one had.

Uneasy, and lonely, she walked the neighborhood until dark, calling for Catnsip, but he was nowhere to be found. Finally, exhausted, she collapsed into bed and cried herself to sleep.

The skittering and scurrying woke her a little after midnight. She sat up and groaned irritably. Shadows flowed across the floors and the ceilings, but she didn’t care.

“I’m tired!” she shouted at the darkness. “My boss yells at me and now my cat is missing. Will you please just go away?”

The running feet grew louder, but this time, there in the middle, she thought she heard the tinkle of Catsnip’s collar.

“‘Snip?”

The tinkle grew louder.

“Catsnip is that you?”

The scurrying intensified. The sound possessed the walls, the floors, the ceiling. And now there was no mistaking it. Catsnip’s collar, and maybe, in the darkness, the echo of a meow.
There it was again.

“Catsnip?”

Yes. Definitely a meow. And it sounded hurt. She snapped on the light, threw her legs over the side of the bed, and stood up.

This time she felt, as well as heard, the crunch of bones beneath her feet. She jumped back and looked down.

A pile of bones, larger than a mouse but smaller than a dog sat crunched on the floor, and in the middle a red collar, the word “Catsnip” embroidered in gold. And on the bones she could see, albeit faintly, hundreds of tiny marks made by thousands of tiny teeth.

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©2010 Kendra Lisum

Tell our readers about your new web serial.

It’s part of my wider Tales of Vertigo City project. The first ‘tale’ was simply called The First Tale, and has since been released as an e-book on Smashwords, but the current serial is a “mini-serial”. It’s only five instalments long, and while it fits within the universe of the fictional Vertigo City, which is inspired by Victorian London, it stands alone as a self-contained story. The main character, Selina, is a very minor character in The First Tale, and the events in this serial happen before the events of The First Tale, though they aren’t connected.

How did you first come up with the inspiration for this story?

I was going through my bookshelves trying to find something to read, and I found a couple of books I’d forgotten I had. I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to find a book you didn’t recognise, and for it to be completely different from what you expected.

Without giving away any spoilers, what can readers expect to see in upcoming episodes?

Selina ends up discovering that books really can take you to amazing places!

Is the story complete, or ongoing?

This serial ends with part 5, so it’s complete in itself, but there will be more stories from Vertigo City.
I’m hoping to keep them as separate as I can, so that someone could just read one without needing to read the others. Having said that, I do want to include references to other tales, just to build up the City for regular readers.

What do you find the most challenging about writing a serial as opposed to other formats?

Self-contained stories are straightforward enough as they tell a complete story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. With a serial, you still have those three elements but the entire process is stretched out for a period of time, and you need to keep a firm control over the story so that it’s not completely impenetrable for new readers, but not so convoluted that existing readers can’t remember what’s happened. You need to keep moving the plot forward with each instalment. The rhythm on a serial is very different from a novel or a short story.

Are you working on other projects that you’d like to tell us about?

I’m currently working on a novel set within Vertigo City, featuring superheroes, and I’m also working on a collection of flash fictions about a pirate and his telepathic parrot. Those stories are more of a series than a serial as they can be read independently from each other.

What inspired you to start writing in general?

I can’t actually remember. I asked my mother when I started writing and as far as she can remember, it’s something I’ve always done. I started out with crayon and paper, and learned to use her typewriter when I was fairly young. I’ve just always wanted to tell stories, and it seemed logical to pursue that as I grew up and started to learn the actual ‘craft’ of writing.

Do you have a favorite piece of fiction that you’ve written so far?

Choosing a favourite is like choosing your favourite among your kids but I’d say I’m probably most proud of Checkmate or The Midas Box, which are short stories I had published online a while ago. They’re both available in my free e-book collection which I released on Halloween. I’m also very proud of The First Tale as it was the first serial I ever wrote, and it got a good reception.

What would you like to see in popular books or movies right now?

I want to know when the horror cycle is going to swing around to mummies. Werewolves and vampires are really overdone and there isn’t much that can be done with zombies any more, so I’d like to see more of the classic monsters getting some screentime.

What do you like to read?

I read anything that catches my interest but I do read an awful lot of history books, especially local history for London, where I live, or the North East of England, where I’m from. Local history provides real rich inspiration for writing, and I think knowing the history of a place adds a real dimension to your experience of that place in everyday life.

Do you prefer to write good guys or bad?

It depends. I suppose most of my characters are ‘good’ but there’s often something flawed about them. Liss, one of the main characters in The First Tale, is quite feisty and often solves problems with her gun. She has problems emotionally connecting to people but she’s strong and she gets the job done, so she’s a lot of fun to write even if she’s winding up the other characters.

Do you like to set a particular mood for writing? Do you work at a particular time of day?

I don’t artificially set the mood - I wait until the mood grabs me. I generally work better towards the beginning of the day as I’m very much a morning person, so I might find myself writing on the way to work, or on my lunch break. I don’t really need a set environment or a set routine - I just need the urge to write.

What three or four elements make a good story, in your opinion?

Good dialogue, strong characters, and an avoidance of cliche or coincedence. I need to be able to read the dialogue and not need the speech tags to know who’s talking. I suppose good dialogue grows out of strong characters - if your characters are so defined that they speak for themselves, then that’s great. If they all sound the same, then I get suspicious.

Is there a type of story (or character) that you’re itching to try, but haven’t gotten around
to yet?

I’ve often wanted to write a straight science fiction story but an idea for one has yet to present itself to me. I guess I don’t read that much science fiction anyway, but life on other planets and fancy technology seems like it could be fun to write.

Did anyone give you a piece of writing advice that you have found to be true?

A long time ago, another writer told me to stop saying “Character X had been….” or “Character Y was…” and to find a verb that did the job. So “X was walking” becomes “X walked”. It’s amazing how much stronger and tighter the prose becomes when you really stop to think of a better way to say things.

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©2010 Lori Titus

Check out Icy Sedgwick’s Tales From Vertigo City here: http://vertigo-city.blogspot.com/