Cora – A Short Story
Below is a short story I’ve written exploring point of view. I wanted to write something short from a child’s perspective, attempting to capture how they perceive and interpret the world around them. My inspiration for this piece came from Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Sun and Moon’; you could say mine is a modern retelling of the story.
Mummy leaned over the hob, looking into the silver pans, which shone like mirrors beneath the little, bright lights. Cora stood at her elbow, watching the blue flames tickle them from beneath and the cloudy air floating out the top. How inviting they looked—they made her think of a steamy, hot bubble bath after stomping fresh footprints in the powdery snow until her toes hurt with the cold.
‘Goodness, Cora!’ Mummy exclaimed, making Cora jump. She gazed up into her mother’s face. ‘You gave me such a shock, then, sweetie!’ Mummy said as she pulled Cora against her thigh, squeezing her gently.
‘Sorry, Mummy.’ Cora replied, the sudden clenching in her tummy fading away. She tilted her head to rest on Mummy’s leg. ‘Mummy? Can I do some drawing?’ she asked, her hand resting on the back of her mother’s thigh, whose grip had begun to loosen as her attention returned to the gleaming cookware.
‘Hmm? Oh. Sorry, darling. We’ve got guests arriving soon, and you ought to be getting ready, really,’ Mummy replied. ‘Daddy! Are you busy?!’ she called out to the kitchen doorway.
‘But…’ Cora started; she only wanted to draw her Mummy a picture. Her cheeks always plumped up and made her eyes crinkly when she looked at Cora’s drawings, and she always noticed every important detail. It made Cora feel important.
‘I’m sorry, sweetie…but you do have a pretty new dress to wear! Daddy can help you get it on. Daddy! Hun!’ she called out again, casting a frown towards the door.
One of the pans began to froth, catching Cora’s attention. She watched until the bubbles tumbled over the side. It reminded her of when she pushed the little plastic stick with a circle at the end into its bottle to get more rainbow water for blowing bubbles – and how the soapy foam always spilt over the sides and made her hands all slick and sticky.
As the froth slid down the side of the pan, it left a dull slug-like track and hissed when it reached the tickly blue flames, causing them to flicker yellow and Cora to clap her hands to her ears.
The hissing made Mummy turn back to the hob. ‘Shit! Argh, Cora – just get upstairs now, please! I’m trying to cook!’
Cora tramped out of the kitchen, letting her arms fall to her sides, then crawled slowly up the stairs like a slinky cat. She’d watched one recently and saw it stop and stand perfectly still with one of its front paws raised, like it was about to take another step. She almost thought some invisible magic had made it freeze, except its ears carried on twitching. And its tail moved. She was fascinated with how it could stand so statue-still without losing balance and wondered what had made it stop so suddenly. Could it see things that were invisible to her?
The bathroom door was closed when she reached the top, a golden strip glowing along the bottom. Daddy must be on the toilet. She crawled past to her bedroom, nudged the door open with her front paw and squeezed around the gap, just like a slinky cat would do. She stopped briefly to stretch onto her hind legs and reach the light switch, then climbed onto her bed, turned in a circle, and pawed her duvet like she’d seen Sugar, her Nanna’s cat, do.
Sugar always got her claws caught in Nanna’s cushions, and Nanna always tutted as she gently prised them out, trying not to leave little loops in the fabric. Sugar was as soft as her plushies with grey, peach and white fur that she’d never seen on any other cat. That made Sugar extra special. Her purr was so loud you could hear it from the other side of the room. It made Cora a little nervous whenever she saw Sugar’s claws poking out from her pretty pink paw-toes, though.
Once Cora had settled on the bed, she looked up.
And spotted the new dress.
It hung away from her other clothes, against the open door of her wardrobe. Her eyes absorbed every stitch and sparkle, her mouth agape as she moved closer to touch the tulle skirt and Peter Pan collar, both sprinkled with tiny, glimmering beads. It was pastel green, the colour of pistachio ice cream. She’d never had anything as pretty as this before; it looked like it belonged to a princess from a magical land. It made her heart feel as though it was swelling, and her tummy filled with hundreds of tiny butterflies. She desperately wanted to put it on.
A sudden rush of water brought Cora back from her daydream; she quickly pounced off her bed and raced to her favourite hiding spot – time to play hide and seek with Daddy. He always pretended not to know where she was, even though she often hid in the same spot. He’d find her and get all of her tickliest tickle spots, like her sides and her underarms. Then he’d munch on her neck and cheeks, his scratchy face prickling hers, and sometimes Cora thought she might stop breathing from laughing so much.
She waited, flattened against the carpet on the far side of the Big Bed. Trying her best to hold her breath inside her grin, she listened out for Daddy’s heavy steps…but he headed down the stairs. Mummy called again, then, asking him to check that she was getting dressed, and he stumped back up the stairs and into her bedroom. Cora fought to keep the giggles in her throat from bursting out as she imagined Daddy looking about her room, all puzzled.
‘Cora? We haven’t the time to play games, Monkey,’ he called.
‘You need to find me first!’ Cora sang out, clamping her hands over her mouth to block the giggles from bubbling over.
‘Coraaa’ he drew out in a low growl.
‘Please, Daddy! Just once!’ Cora replied. Her throat tightened when she heard him puff out a long breath. She didn’t want him to get cross. She just wanted him to find her.
All of a sudden, his head and hands appeared, grabbing for her over the side of the bed and making her tummy tumble horribly about. She let out a scream; he must have leapt right over, and she hadn’t any idea he was even in the room.
‘Ahahaha! Gotcha!’ Daddy said in his bad-guy voice, and Cora’s fear-tightened face melted deliciously into a huge smile.
‘Daddyyy, you WEARLY frightened me then! You made me go ‘woah’!’ Cora said, re-enacting the jolt her body had made. Daddy’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he scooped her up and carried her back to her bedroom, dangling her upside down so that her strawberry hair brushed along the carpet, causing another squeal to erupt.
‘Did I scare you?’ he replied, switching to his silly voice. She loved his silly voice. He tickled Cora’s neck and underarms with his strong fingers until she gasped for him to stop, clenching her elbows to her sides and kicking her legs.
‘Come on, then, Monkey. Let’s get you dressed,’ he said, heaving himself off her bed from where he’d tumbled them both during the tickle attack. Cora pushed up her chin, making her lips pout, before she noticed, again, her beautiful dress.
‘Look, Daddy! Look at my dress!’ She raced to get undressed so she could put it on.
‘Wowee, is that yours?’ Cora nodded, bouncing on the balls of her feet. ‘Are you sure a princess didn’t leave it here?’ He asked.
‘No, Daddy, of course not! We’d have seen a princess if she put her dress here, silly!’
Daddy helped pull it over her head after she stubbornly got lost trying to find her way through all the layers on her own, and then he fastened the small bead at the back of her collar.
‘There we go, let’s have a look at you, then,’ he said, stepping back. Cora twirled, dropping her chin to watch the sparkly netted skirt fan out wide from her waist. It was perfect. ‘Beautiful, Monkey.’ His eyes crinkled again, and he planted a whiskery kiss on her forehead.
She ran back to her parents’ room to twirl in their mirror, and her father followed, leaning on the doorframe to watch. She spun and watched the dress flare and twist over and over again until she began to get dizzy. She felt like a ballerina, like one of the dancers she’d seen in the Nutcracker show on telly at Christmas time. The way the skirt continued twirling when she stopped delighted her, as though it was alive and joining in.
Cora then skipped back to the kitchen to show her mother, taking care to go down the stairs steadily.
‘Mummy! Look at my beautiful dress, Mummy!’ Cora exclaimed at the doorway. She lifted her chin, trying to hold in her smile as she stepped regally into the kitchen and twirled as big as she could. Mummy’s face was pink, and little tufts of hair stuck out around her head. She turned to face Cora, carefully taking her all in, and her pinched brows relaxed into a warm smile.
‘Well, look at you. Aren’t you just gorgeous! You look so happy and confident in that dress, sweetie,’ she said as she opened the fridge to take out some broccoli. Cora caught sight of something brown and glossy beneath Mummy’s arm, taking up almost an entire shelf.
‘Mummy, what’s that?’ she asked, dipping her head below her mother’s elbow to try and catch another glimpse.
‘What’s what?’ she replied, turning back to the open fridge, ‘oh, er, it’s for our dinner party guests, sweetie,’ her mother explained, her voice determinedly light. The indulgently large chocolate dessert sat directly in her eye line, and she knew that was what Cora had referred to. A chocolate fudge cake, coated in glossy ganache and decorated with intricate golden icing piped to resemble lace and carefully dotted with tiny bead-like golden balls. Cora’s mouth hung open, her new dress momentarily forgotten. Her mother gently closed the fridge and returned to the hob.
‘Can I have some? Can I have some now? It looks yummy!’ Cora said. Her mother’s eyes clenched shut.
‘Come and help me with the table, Cora,’ Daddy said behind her. ‘I still need to set out the knives and forks. My little helper can handle that, right? And I’ll set out the glasses.’
She looked up at her Daddy. She was certain it was a chocolate cake she’d seen in the fridge. What if the adults ate it all up, and there was none left for her? Maybe Mummy would save her some…but she would really like to eat it now, just in case. Just in case they forgot to save her some. Daddy eats a lot. The other adults might, too. Mummy might not get a chance to save her any before it’s all gone…perhaps if she reminds them both.
‘Ok, Daddy, I’ll help! Mummy? Make sure Daddy doesn’t eat all the cake so I can have some, too, ok?’ Her parents both chuckled.
‘I’m going to eat the WHOLE thing all to myself,’ Daddy said, poking Cora’s ribs and then lifting her up in his arms, ‘I’m not going to let anyone else have a single bite!’ He pretended to take a big chomp out of Cora’s tummy, causing her to shriek with laughter, then set her back down, taking her hand.
‘Ok, ok,’ interrupted Mummy, ‘I promise there will be plenty of cake left, Cora, now get out of my kitchen, the pair of you,’ she said as she playfully smacked her and Daddy’s bottoms. Cora bounced over to the counter and pulled on the drawer handle, bumping it against her chest in her enthusiasm to retrieve the cutlery. A metallic crash rang out, and the drawer retreated back beneath the kitchen counter again, causing another gush of giggles to bubble over. Adults didn’t seem to like big, loud noises, and she could tell from the mouth-sucking noise her parents both made that she oughtn’t do it again. Instead, she sensibly opened the drawer and helped Daddy count out six knives, forks, and spoons, sharing the silver bunches between them and leaving Mummy to do the cooking.
Shining plates, winking glasses, and glimmering candlesticks shone across the table at her when Cora carried the cutlery through to the dining room. The napkins had been fashioned into lavish bows and held in place with sequin-covered rings. Fairy lights wove around the table, entwined with a delicate garland of golden stars, and a deep emerald tablecloth cascaded over the sides. Cora was mesmerised. She gazed at every magical detail; it looked like the dinner table of a fairy queen. She desperately wanted to touch everything.
The rest of the story will be coming soon.