Little Creatures

Little Creatures, a novella, explores secrets, trust, friendships, and the meaning of familial love. Charlotte is a college senior who enrolls in a general education Art History course where her final assignment is to recreate a painting and present a research project on the artist. She turns to her late grandmother, who was an avid painter her whole life, for inspiration. Motivated by her mother Cecelia's love and an unstoppable ambition to complete the project, Charlotte digs deeper into the family's past in hopes of rectifying the present. She attempts to reconcile her own perceptions with the truth in order to confront betrayal, lies, and even the paranormal. As Charlotte learns more about her family and Grandma Annie, she begins to lose her sense of self and is unable to find her way back. Little Creatures uses flashbacks, multiple perspectives, journal entries, and tense shifts to paint an incomplete portrait of Charlotte, her family, and her relationships. I initially set out to write a story about a girl in college who struggles with an assignment and is eventually driven mad, but as I wrote, I was compelled towards themes of motherhood, femininity, friendships, and generational curses. Ultimately, Little Creatures is about a mother and daughter and what happens to shared family bonds when they are severed, repaired, distorted, and irrevocably altered.