Workshop: When A Dead Cat Walks Into The Room

Sometimes a scene doesn't need more information. It needs the right information in the right order.

I was looking at this passage from Gravity, Maine and thinking about how much more unsettling it could be without changing what actually happens.

The original:

The image showed a cat that looked as though it had died years ago and somehow remained in Gravity. Its pink fur had faded to a sickly, powder-pale shade—or perhaps the color only seemed lighter where the fur had fallen away, exposing the darker pink flesh beneath.

Kirby thought someone gasped when the cat appeared. It was a small sound, almost swallowed before it escaped, but he heard it. The cat wasn’t what he had imagined. Judging by the silence around him, it wasn’t what anyone else in the room had expected, either.

There are things I like about this already. The cat is disturbing because it isn't simply dead. It looks old. There's something wrong about its condition, especially the uncertainty over whether the fur has faded or fallen away.

But I think I can make the reader sit with the image a little longer. Instead of telling the reader that the cat looks as though it died years ago, I want the details to make that conclusion themselves.

And I want Kirby to notice the room's reaction before he fully processes his own.

So I'd try it this way:

The image appeared, and for a moment Kirby couldn’t understand what he was seeing. It was a cat. Maybe.

Its pink fur had faded to the color of a ribbon left for years in a sunlit window. In places, the fur was gone entirely, exposing patches of darker pink beneath. The skin looked damp, though Kirby knew it couldn’t be. Along one side, the body had collapsed inward, as if whatever had once held it together were slowly vanishing.

Someone gasped. Kirby couldn’t tell who. The sound was so faint it might have been nothing more than a breath catching in a throat, but he heard it.

Then the room went silent. Not the ordinary silence that followed an image no one expected. This was different. No one laughed. No one made a comment. No one asked what they were looking at.

Kirby kept staring. The cat looked as though it had been dead for years. And somehow, it was still walking the streets of Gravity—not walking, exactly, but dragging itself forward in small, laborious movements, each one seeming to require whatever remained of its strength.

What I like about this version is that the horror arrives in stages.

First: What am I looking at? Then: Oh. It's a cat. Then: Is it dead? Then: It looks dead. And finally: Why is it still here? That last question is the one I want the reader to carry forward.

I also like the little sound in the room. The gasp isn't important because we need to know who made it. It's important because Kirby hears it. He isn't alone in finding the image disturbing.

And that's something I think is worth remembering when writing unsettling scenes: sometimes the best way to tell the reader that something is frightening is to let another character react to it first.

You don't necessarily need to say, This was terrifying. A swallowed gasp can do more. Silence can do more. A character staring a second too long can do more. The trick is to give the reader just enough to see the thing—and then let their imagination finish the job.