that mouse

That mouse looked at me. Yes, I am telling you, that mouse looked at me! That little guy had eyes, within too small furrows in its face, shadowed. Then when it moved, the small lamp from the room would reflect on its shiny 'lil eyeballs and it gleamed.

Now what I have to say next is true to life, I swear on my hearts and balls and what-have-you. My memory is as accurate as can be, though all of this happened some years ago.

I'd had the most horrible day of my life - that very day. It had been a week after my grandparent's house had been sold since the last of 'em, Margo had died in care and the house was located in the remotest part of the city. Not right on the edge - where it's full of those richer - whaddya call 'em...nouveau rich lot, mothers and prams, mothers with cars bigger than your prick, motherhens with their feathers all ruffled because they can't get a receipt for their return, y'know. Anyway, that house weren't located there. My grandparents had lived in the city for the best part of forty years and what used to be the edge of the city is now all swallowed up - that's where the house is now. Between three parks and a school; further north is more houses, further south is more houses, east and west, all the same. Rows upon rows of double-glazed windows, front gardens, cars, recycling bins.

Now I did say that was the remotest part of the city. I wasn't just saying that - this part of the city is so hard to get to! No subway or metro, closest one is yonks away and you have either have to catch that invisible bus. Very inconvenient if you don't happen to drive. And out on the streets at mid-day, no one's around. Streets all empty. School bell rings and kids pour out of those things like floodgates just cracking under the pressure. But most of the time, it's so quiet. It's not near any shops. Nearest retail park is a whole half-hour away. No one really comes here, including me. I see Margo just once every two weeks. She has wispy hair, she's usually smoking something special between her yellow fingers and she yells at me in her gruff way at why on earth do I have so much shopping with me. Well, that's the shopping that I get for her because she's so lonely and far away from everything else to buy it all. That's two weeks worth of it!

For an old lady though, they don't eat or drink much so it's not that bad. Appetite is for the young is what Margo said.






Back to the incident.

So Margo died and the house was put up for sale. Now before that happened, we had to pretty it up, or rather I did it since I seemed to have most of the free time, the bum that I was. I ripped out the old wallpaper, took out the old ceramic bath - that plastering with mottled black with mould! and cleaned out the fireplaces. Margo's house had very nice carved, wooden fireplaces, inherited from the previous owner of the house. Cleaning out the fireplace was how I found the mousetraps and finding the mousetraps was how I met that mouse. 

I never stayed long in Margo's house and the last time I had cleaned it was when I was been fired from my job - I got another one some months later - and had nothing to do so I went over and turned the place inside-out. I probably wore down a pack of j-clothes in the space of a few days. That was ages ago. I never knew she had a mouse problem, so imagine my surprise when I was cleaning out the fireplace and seeing that she had laid out all these mousetraps. She had a few different ones - plastic ones which I guess you could wash more easily (after that mouse gets caught in there), and the old fashioned wooden ones. Heck, she'd even put out a load of glue traps, spread on pieces of card.

So what was I to do? The house needed to be sold - so mouse problem had to go. And I could tell that Margo had battled with the mice. Once I'd seen one, I started to notice the mousetraps everywhere. In the conservatory, the kitchen and the dining room but there was one in one of the her old shoes! A mousetrap in the walking boot... There were glue traps in the pantry and the cellar.

I cleared out the rest of the house. All the junk in the attic. I left a bit of the old furniture, like the ancient gilded wardrobes that were too big to fit through the doors but the rest was going tomorrow. I called the people from the moving company and then settled back for tea and then sleep. The house was pretty much sorted and I could lie back. Tomorrow, Margo's house would be empty except for a few things that had already been there when she first bought the place. It would put up for sale and I could get the hell back to my job.

The radio was playing a new popular tune but fuzzed because it was a small, portable radio. It was a warm static and I was enjoying this feeling of having done all I needed to do today when I heard that squeak. Looking back now, I might have imagined it, because the radio was playing. But because I was startled, I stood right up and rushed downstairs, forgetting my cup of tea and my moment of rest.

Downstairs, jogging down and down and I had a feeling the noise was from the dining room. I was right. I stood by the threshold, halfway between corridor and the room itself. The room was shaded a dull amber because of the dying light from outside and the small wall lamp from inside. The squeak came again.

And again. It was sharp, cutting through the windows, walls and doors. But it was also a weak noise, plaintive. That noise seemed to be directed just for me. I realised I was tense and relaxed my shoulders. To find out where in the dining room the squeaks were coming from, I looked through the door hinges...and saw nothing.

I stepped into the room. Carefully. Wearing socks is good for this, I tell you! The squeaking got louder then. And stopped. I was looking at the fireplace. The small dip in the floor where the coal was meant to be piled in was covered in newspaper. There were several  mousetraps, all different angles and unevenly spread out on the newspaper. And one of them had caught something!

The mouse was stuck on a layer of glue, sitting on its butt. It wasn't moving and it had stopped squeaking. Realizing that it wasn't going anyway, I moved closer, crouched down and took a good look. I'd never seen one of these guys up close y'see. Unlike others, or perhaps even you, I never had much for animals. Life in the city has no time for that I guess - a bird is bird. Some birds are just pests, like pigeons. Then there's the cockroaches. And most people I know hate mice, and they shudder when they talk about it when there's an infestation at home. I've seen little shadows scurrying around in the subway. I've seen foxes out in the snow but far - you can't get close to them, they never let you. Same with mice. They don't like you, you don't like them but we live in the same space, occupy the same buildings, do similar things in an abstract sorta way. Now though, I had the chance to get a good look at this creature.

Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't thinking about keeping it or killing it either - at least not myself! Mice aren't romantic creatures. Foxes are little more romantic, I think. Unless of course you happen to be the tailor of Gloucester in which case, thank your lucky stars! I had thought about calling some pest-control company and getting this sorted out.

But anyway, I was looking at a mouse and a mouse is rodent, so it had a tail and that twitchy snout. Come to think of it, mice are really dull looking things. Now a rat is larger, sleeker and more sinister whereas a squirrel has an wide, curling tail. Mice a none of these. The one in front of me was a grey-brown lump, sat on its tail. I moved away a little, smelling the stink of the glue.

That was when the light moved or because I had moved and I caught the sight of the mouse's eyes. And it was sure as hell looking at me, just as I was looking back at it. And thinking - small brain probably working like a machine, chugging away as it looked at me.

The next bit of my tale is where reality gives way a bit. I'm not sure if this ever happened. In the last minutes of the day, with the sun setting and radio still giving out that warm and grainy pop song, the mouse cocked its head and started to speak.

"So you're going to leave me like this?"

I didn't reply of course. I was little too dumbstruck. The mouse, now clasping and unclasping it's paws, went on in a shrilly voice, "well, don't be so gormless, hurry up with it! We're all going to die anyway! I want this to be quick and painless!"

I was still staring. I noticed that it's snout and ears twitched faster and faster as it got more worked up.

"We're all going to die! So why don't you just end it, here and now! I hate this place, I've had enough of sitting on my paws and thinking and thinking and thinking and nothing actually coming out of all that thinking -"

It looked at me directly. Paws suddenly gripped its face then grabbed its tailed, waving it to and fro. I gulped and struggled for the proper response to a situation like this. The beady eyes shone with some sort of madness. It was both human and inhuman. Then it began to speak again, but less shrilly, the words measured as if to ensure that I heard and grasped the meaning of it.

"We all end up like this. The war below has driven us out and through the walls and cracks. I come here to meet my end outside, with our old enemy. But the glue has got me caught and I suppose I won't be going any further. It's shame really..."

It paused again and then posed the question, "Did the hag every tell you that she found our warren a long time ago but that she never smoked us out? Rather, she took one look, screamed like we'd cut her arm off and never came back. The traps appeared of course but she never confronted us. When one of our kin was caught in the dangerous act of scrounging, we thought it was the end. When she lifted out the back of the fireplace, we thought we were done for. But she never came back..."

The voice trailed away. The mouse curled up as far as it could with it's bum still firmly on the card. It rocked back and forth for good measure. I rubbed my face with my hands and picked the piece of card up - the card that the mouse was sitting on and walked through the kitchen and conservatory to the garden. There was a layer of hardened snow on the grass and the pond was sheathed in ice. Paw prints were visible on it. I think then, I acted like a ventriloquist, like my actions weren't really my actions, but someone else's but the intent was not mine either. I was completely dazed. I remember putting the mouse on the pool so it was like a little Buddha, floating on a lily. That done, I walked back in.

Of course, nothing was there the next morning. But I never checked anyway. I looked out from my window and saw that the ice over the pool had melted, taking away with it, the paw prints and the mouse. The piece of card had also vanished.

The doorbell rang and I showed the men in to the packed boxes and the wrapped furniture. It was all done by mid-day. Last evening's incident was behind me.  Whatever it had meant or if it actually happened is of no concern really. After all, a mouse can do nothing. It's mark on the face of this earth, a creature which lives the stuff that we leave behind...I'm not getting philosophical or anything, I'm not the type but I hope you get the gist of what I mean. I mean, how is it to know that your own life is like this? Pretty drear if you ask me. Better to shut of your thoughts. But the remarks about the hag - I guess that would be Margo. Funny how she never told me about them. I never really looked around, never notices the mouse traps. She must've thought those little furries were a real pain, squeaking night after night.

On a final note. To my surprise, that house was sold fairly quickly.and the money which came from it was split three-ways between me, my brother and sister. Equal shares because our family believe in that sort of thing. The house was going to a young couple, which was odd, given that this place was, like I said, damnably inconvenient. Don't know why Margo bought it in the first place and don't know why this couple bought it either. Maybe it's that school. Catchment area stuff. People seem to put a lot on getting into the right schools.