A New Short Story for You
- petemitchellauthor
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Easter is a time that often invites reflection, so here’s a story about loss and discovering something deeper. This story explores what remains when words slip away but connection endures. Let me know what you think.
A Cat’s Translation
The alarm clock shrieked in accusation. William Humboldt, seventy-four, retired professor of comparative linguistics, sat up abruptly. His terrace house, long, narrow and lined with bookshelves, felt colder than usual. German philosophers leaned against Japanese poets and a collection by Estonian novelists. Once, his books had defined his world. Now they formed a mausoleum of languages.
He shuffled to the kitchen, brewed black coffee, and turned on his radio to News of the World. A torrent of syllables crackled from the radio—lyrical, rhythmic, alien. Not English. Not anything he recognised. He checked the dial. Adjusted it. Static. Then another voice blared musically like Mandarin, then throaty like a Tibetan chant, then something like Italian sprinkled with Arabic. The tones shifted faster than his mind could follow. William frowned and rubbed his temples.
‘Still dreaming,’ he muttered, though he felt awake enough to ache.
Outside, Collins Street hummed with tram bells, delivery van engines and a scattering of early suburban chatter. William opened the front door. Two women walked past, deep in conversation. Their voices rose and fell in harmonic melody, half singing, half speaking, but he couldn’t place a single word. Icelandic? Basque? Something else altogether?
The boy on the corner shouted to his father in what could have been a rolling, vowel-rich chant of Estonian. The mailman called out and William heard fragments that reminded him of his old seminar rooms, lost languages and misremembered field notes, but none of it came together.
A chill shuddered through him and he drifted outside himself. ‘What in God’s name... Is this what it feels like to have a stroke? Should I call an ambulance?’
Something softly brushed William’s ankle. Cornelius, his overweight ginger cat, blinked up at him with piercing eyes.
‘Good morning,’ William whispered, scooping Cornelius into his arms.
The neighbours waved as they passed. Their mouths moved in a frantic mosaic of sound: Ancient Greek tangled with the honk of a car horn, soft vowels followed consonants that punched the air. He tried to read their gestures, but even those felt unfamiliar.
Then Cornelius stretched up, touched his whiskers to William’s ear, and said, ‘She’s saying she’s frightened or confused. I find it hard to tell with humans.’
William froze.
‘You can… speak?’
Cornelius gave a nonchalant flick of the tail. ‘Of course. I have always been able to speak.’
They walked together down the street. William, carrying Cornelius close to his chest, savoured the warmth. The city bustled as always. Commuters with takeaway coffees, cyclists weaving between lines of cars, but every voice scraped past in languages William couldn’t understand.
In a café, a barista recited something that reminded William of a Hindi opera he had once attended. But now William failed to catch any scrap of meaning.
Cornelius sighed.
‘She’s saying the weather’s awful and she hopes her coffee bean order arrives. I’ve noticed humans speak mostly about coffee in such places.’
William laughed weakly, but fear pulsed anxiously in his chest.
They reached the park where William had once prepped his lectures, sitting under the trees with a treatise on Goethe, or something similar, in his lap. Children swung on the playground equipment, their calls a kaleidoscope of noise; bright, chaotic, swirling. A man played violin on a bench, bowing through a mournful tune while chanting deep, vibrating sounds that seemed to bend scales.
Cornelius shifted uneasily on William’s lap.
‘There are too many dogs here, William,’ he murmured. ‘If one of them gets too close, you must protect me. I hold you responsible.’
William stroked Cornelius tenderly.
‘I don’t understand any of them, Cornelius,’ he whispered. ‘Not a single word.’
‘Words are overrated,’ Cornelius said. ‘Most beings convey more with silence.’
William thought of his years in academia. Rooms full of clever people competing for academic space, grants or significance. The ladder of languages he’d loved had once felt endless. Now he couldn’t even climb the first rung.
He closed his eyes. The world continued on without him, but it sounded like an orchestra with too many conductors. When he opened them again, Cornelius nudged him.
‘Let’s walk,’ the cat said encouragingly. ‘I find it helps.’
They wandered through a narrow alley between the shops. A tall man spray-painted symbols onto a brick wall. Shapes coiled and snapped like serpents, almost resolving into familiar letters before dissolving into mystery again.
The man turned, eyes bloodshot and strange.
‘Boing, fikka…gestat, Lop!’ he barked.
William shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
‘He’s anxious,’ Cornelius interpreted. ‘And Lonely. Mostly lonely, I think. He’s wondering why people just can’t get along.’
William inhaled the sweet solvents that hung in the air from the spray paint and gave the man a small nod of salutation. The man shrugged sympathetically, then returned to his graffiti.
William scratched Cornelius’s ears, ‘Loneliness. That I understand. It appears to be the one commonality that time has not eroded.’
They walked on for some time. Two youngsters stood under a tree holding hands. The girl whispered something to the boy, and he laughed, gently brushing her hair from her cheek. Whatever their words were, William sensed their meaning. A soft thread of connection was unmistakeable.
Cornelius followed his gaze.
‘See? Some things don’t require language.’
William exhaled nervously.
‘I spent my whole working life studying how people speak. Now I can’t understand anyone.’
Cornelius brushed his face against William’s cheek.
‘You understand more than most, William.’
Dusk fell early and the city lights bled into the darkening sky. The languages around him, whatever they were, became richer, stranger, like the sound of the ocean heard through old speakers. People and their conversations rose and dipped as if they were a murmuration of starlings. William walked home slowly. His knees ached. Cornelius dozed in his arms, heavy and warm.
Near the corner store, a woman tripped and spilled her groceries. A man rushed to help her. Their voices collided in impossible soundscapes of chirps and guttural sighs, yet William sensed their intentions as clearly as if he’d understood every word. Care. Apology. Gratitude.
He stood watching, suddenly feeling the seeds of calm germinating within.
William whispered, ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter if the bridge of language collapses. Perhaps I don’t need it to cross such a wide divide anymore.’
Cornelius cracked one eye. ‘You’re finally catching on.’
When they reached William’s terrace, they paused on the doorstep. The street hummed with an incomprehensible symphony that had so recently terrified him. But something had shifted. The frantic fist of meaning had finally unclenched. Voices no longer felt like locks for which he had no keys. The voices felt like Melbourne’s weather; complex, changeable and unpredictabe, but sometimes beautiful.
He looked down at the cat curled in his arms, its tail flicking like a slow metronome.
‘Will it stay this way, Cornelius?’ he asked softly. ‘This… whatever it is?’
‘Everything stays the same until it changes. That’s how the world works.’
William envied Cornelius’s feline pragmatism as he pushed the door open. Inside, the books waited on their shelves. Silent, stately, ready to outlive him. He did not feel accused by them but he knew he would never read them again. He might never understand another human in this word. But he did not feel adrift.
William stood in the dim light, listening. Beyond the walls, the city sang in a thousand impossible tongues; discordant, beautiful and beguiling.
Cornelius leapt from his arms onto the hallway rug, circled once, and settled with a soft grunt.
William closed his eyes and let the sounds wash through him. Cornelius purred, a small contented engine anchored to the rug.
William was no longer a scholar, just a man. A man who could feel meaning and his place within the world without needing to understand it all.
If you've enjoyed this story (there are more in the blog below and in my latest book "Read My Shorts") send me your thoughts via the link below or to:
Another really nice story. Happy Easter.