Cathy Schieffelin
Bio
Writing is breath for me. Travel and curiosity contribute to my daily writing life. My first novel, The Call, is available at www.wildflowerspress.com or Amazon. Coming soon: Snakeroot and Cohosh.
Stories (40)
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Knock Knock. Top Story - September 2025.
Decked out in fleece sweats, sitting on a newly purchased faux leather sofa in a retro brown, Mereille looks around. Not too bad. Boxes fill the room but she’s managed to find a packet of microwave popcorn. Bayou lays curled at her feet, snoring lightly as she shovels a handful of movie-style buttered popcorn into her mouth. Just as she lifts a plastic cup of Zinfandel, a knock at the door, startles both the phone and wine out of her hands.
By Cathy Schieffelin4 months ago in Fiction
Waiting. Runner-Up in Leave the Light On Challenge. Content Warning.
6 pm Smoke swirls around my face, I inhale another nicotine-saturated breath. Dogs bark in the distance. Samara howls, as if re-calling her long-lost wolf heritage. Button joins in, higher pitched, the soprano to Sammy’s tenor. The shriek of a redtail quiets them. I picture them, noses in the air, searching olfactory clues, on the hunt. Sometimes they’ll bring me their spoils, a mangled rat or stunned bullfrog, carefully dropped. Other times they return victims: muzzles bloodied, oozing the sick-sweet stench of death.
By Cathy Schieffelin5 months ago in Fiction
The Road Less Travelled
I’ve always loved a good road trip but my last one wasn’t at all that I expected. This road was unpredictable and not in the good ways a road trip should be. No stops at cute farmstands or antique/flea markets. No DQ runs just for the heck of it. In my opinion, there’s nothing better than a Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfait. Nope. None of that. Lots of dark tunnels where I couldn’t see my way through to the other side. I just had to trust the process and keep driving. It began when my daughter came to me with a deer in the headlights expression in her eyes and told me she needed to be moved out of her student housing by Friday evening. It was Thursday afternoon. Her college dorm room was 871 miles away from where we stood in our mango-colored kitchen, staring at each other blankly.
By Cathy Schieffelin7 months ago in Families
A Lark's Song
Silence lurked…. No birdsong. No crickets chirping. No wind rustling the trees. Dense fog choked the village. Alouette trudged, gathering herbs along the darkened trail. Her elixirs helped Father’s hacking cough. Hands, cracked and bleeding, ached from washing and wringing sheets. Life was hard… but Father’s was harder… stooped from hours toiling in the royal gardens for the demanding Empressa Evilina.
By Cathy Schieffelin7 months ago in Fiction
Resistence
I write to define the things I feel.. the frustrations, the fear and uncertainty of what’s coming. This is a piece I started writing for an NYC Midnight rhyming contest. I didn't use this but the story still speaks to me... In this world of crazy and false prophets, my hope is that we’ll see through this horrific charade to the other side of things. To those suffering from the actions of this heartless regime, I’m truly sorry.
By Cathy Schieffelin10 months ago in Poets
Transcendence of a Good Meal
I love food. I love eating. I love tasting new things, usually. I love the process of thinking about what to cook. I miss my taste buds. This is the worst part of chemo, I think. The exhaustion, I can take. The intermittent nausea, I can take. The headaches and body aches, like someone took a baseball bat to my torso, I can take. But not tasting food – is awful. I’ve had my third round of chemo and this has been the worst impact for me right now. I want to eat. I want to eat the house, actually. I’m hopped up on steroids, so having no taste buds is just cruel. I love whipping up something tasty. But now it’s starting to feel like work. No matter what I cook, it’s like eating the wall – flat and gray.
By Cathy Schieffelin2 years ago in Chapters
Runaway
The silence is deafening. Dustin strains to hear if the old man is still breathing, but stays as far from the stinking, slumped form as possible in the dilapidated one-room shack. At last a ragged inhale, rasping and gasping, gives Dustin the courage to drag his beaten body towards the door. The belt lays on the floor where the old man dropped it. Dustin knows he has to leave. This is no way to live and his mother’s death months earlier makes him realize things are never going to get better. He pulls himself upright, inspecting the damage – bleeding gash across his wiry chest, bruises the color of stinky cheese emerging, his head pounding with the hateful words and Jim Beam bottle hurled at him moments before his stepfather passed out. He needs to make some distance before the old drunk comes to.
By Cathy Schieffelin2 years ago in Fiction
Ghosted. Top Story - April 2024.
Her house was once a rustic retreat: Grammy’s ancient Afghan draped over the cracked, leather chair next to the wood burning fireplace. Sun-faded yellow gingham curtains in the kitchen danced in the afternoon breeze. She kept the windows open year-round, demanding to breathe in only fresh air. I spent many afternoons curled up with Aunt Bette, watching raunchy movies and drinking good tequila. That was her poison. She hasn’t been gone six months, but I still feel her in the weathered boards of the sagging front porch. I sit on the rough-hewn stairs, avoiding the papaya-colored porch swing. Can’t sit there. It’s not meant for one. Without a hint of a breeze, the swing slowly comes to life.
By Cathy Schieffelin2 years ago in Fiction
