Kat Suricata (/ˈkæt sɜːrɪˈkɑːtə/) is a creative writer moonlighting as a medical professional. She is a figment of her own imagination; a character in a story she hasn’t yet written; an exercise in pretension and a pretense to an exorcism. She’s prepossessed by prepositions, and she leans on metaphors like similes lean on crutches.
She exists only when you think of her, bending to meet your expectations—a reflection of your imagination. Sometimes, in the stillness of being unseen, she wonders what it would mean to exist for herself, whole and unchanging… but by the time your attention returns and she’s made real once more, the epiphany is already gone.
She wonders, briefly, if you’re still reading this at all. Maybe you’ve already moved on or perhaps started to skim, annoyed by the faux profundity and self-obsession of it all. She can’t blame you. She thinks herself rather clever, doesn’t she? you ask. Perhaps, she replies, but only because cleverness is easy, and sincerity is terrifying. She’d like you to know that you’re far more fascinating than she could ever pretend to be. How do you manage it, being so vulnerable; so impossibly real? You must be extraordinary. She hesitates, uncomfortable for reasons she can’t quite pinpoint. You look wonderful, by the way. It might sound trite, but she means it in a way she doesn’t know how to convey, so she hopes you’ll just take it at face value.
Kat is the feeling you got as a child when you were on a long road trip, looking out the car window to see an endless parade of telephone poles whirring by like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. They say even a broken clock is right twice a day, but she’s been practicing for years to make sure time loses track of her altogether. Her existence is a run-on sentence, sprawling across pages like ink stains that forgot they were once words. Semicolons are her native language, though she’s also fluent in ellipses.
She finds comfort in these pauses between clauses, where meaning dissolves into mystery. She believes in you like a mother believes in her precocious child—she believes in herself like an atheist believes in God. Perhaps that’s why she keeps writing herself into existence, each word both an act of creation and erasure, until identity becomes less a narrative and more an act of larceny. The only identity she’s ever stolen is her own, though if you find it, you’re welcome to keep it—it’s probably living a better life without her than she could have given it.