Yesteryear Fiction

The Dreaming Cat
By Melinda Giordano


There is a bookstore in North Hollywood which houses a small, dainty cat. Her name is Zola, and she has that peculiar feline quality of making one ashamed in her presence.

Before being accepted into that literary haven, she had a hard life. Misuse and untended infections destroyed her teeth, and took away one of her golden eyes. Her remaining eye, though scarred, has still kept all of its facets: a yellow diamond embedded in a petite icon.

Her paws are like snowflakes: small and silent. Her voice is a little song: I can see notes and flats and sharps falling from her mouth each time she meows. My boyfriend and I hadn't seen her lately. But the last time we were at that bookstore, I quietly pointed out to him the warm, dappled rug curled on top of a pile of books, fast asleep.

Now, when asleep, most cats will dream of champagne-colored mice, spilling out of glasses, with infuriating whiskers and tails. They will dream of velvet pillows, smelling of feathers and sky, warming in the sun. They will dream of exploring fields of white flowers that nipped at their noses and drove their muscles into delight and madness.

But it is the special cat that will make a bed of books. She absorbs the visions and histories, adventures and tragedies, poems and meters that drive upward like roots from a fertile, creative ground. Languages that are not her own course through her and create new, purring dreams.

She might be stalking through jungles, drawn towards heartbeats hidden in the thick darkness. She could be on the seas, riding on the back of a whale - with every twist and turn thundering like an earthquake. Perhaps she will be in a Victorian alley - concealed by the smoke of nearby opium dens - watching a man in his parlor reading about murder and brandishing a syringe. Or maybe she would be lost on a battlefield, stepping over shredded flags, glancing distastefully at the stale, red pools, comforting the dying horses' white-eyed pain with her whiskers.

Or that lucky cat would feel its substance losing dimension, until it could walk through centuries of art. She would nibble at Dutch still lives: broad plates of tulips, bread and cheese. Her form might appear in a carved frieze of warriors and slaves, riding in a chariot. She would invade the portraits of women who hunted the courts with feral intensity. Resting by their petticoats, her tail would wrap around shoes painted with scenes of masquerades and banquets.

Before we left that day I saw that Zola was awake, and was yawning luxuriously. Whatever story she had chosen (or had chosen her), it must have been a very fine and lengthy journey.


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Melinda Giordano is from Los Angeles, California.  She has been published in Lake Effect Magazine and dansemacabreonline.com, gloomcupboard.com, and batteredsuitcase.com. She studies many histories - artistic, political - and anything to do with Aubrey Beardsley.

The Mermaid
By Melinda Giordano


When she fell upon the land, her scales had quite evaporated. Her torso was now fused beneath a satin cuirass, and flowering pleats grew down her dorsal side. The adoring fish that swam next to her had vanished; she was now surrounded by sharks that watched her and measured her...scales appearing in their eyes.

Her skin was warm, and glowed in the unfamiliar candlelight. The heat was very uncomfortable and she missed the nacreous water that cooled her until her body was as rare and precious as marble. The atmosphere was filthy with perfume and she choked on the scented oils that stained the air.

There were no starfish to wear in her hair. Her crown made from the skeletons of crabs and blue-eyed scallops was gone. Her currents of hair were now imprisoned in a painful sweep that sparked her eyes with tears - memories of the salt water that she missed so much.

She missed her pelagic ways; listening to the whales talking, the seals barking like salty dogs. She missed leaning against the rocks, singing: her voice lifting above the shells floating in the brine, the yellow froth, the marine layers.

Now, she had no voice at all.


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Melinda Giordano is from Los Angeles, California.  She has been published in Lake Effect Magazine and dansemacabreonline.com, gloomcupboard.com, and batteredsuitcase.com. She studies many histories - artistic, political - and anything to do with Aubrey Beardsley.

A Night Swim
By Melinda Giordano


The moon had been in Pisces. For several days it was a slim crescent, providing just enough light for the starry fish to swim in – breathing in the radiance, the austere, pale light.

The luminous curve did not lie on the left or right side of the capricious satellite. It was on the bottom: a drink that will become larger as the moon grows full and generous. Pisces splashed in the glowing ocean as the astronomers waited, marking its orbit across the arid night sky. Like hooks, their numbers and equations will pull the fish from their tranquil sea, trapping them in a net thrown across the galaxy.

And when the mystic trawl drags them from the bright water they will lay gasping against the sky. Stars and planets will swirl around fins and gills, edging against scales – glittering like a diamante skin.

There was no bait that could lure the fish from the moon’s pretty shores. They swam throughout the night until the moon became filled with light, forcing Pisces into the dry darkness. Sprawled in constellations, the fish wait – for the waters to recede, giving them a chance to slip once more into the moon’s shining waves.


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Melinda Giordano is from Los Angeles, California.  She has been published in Lake Effect Magazine and dansemacabreonline.com, gloomcupboard.com, and batteredsuitcase.com. She studies many histories - artistic, political - and anything to do with Aubrey Beardsley.