The mouse had a good smell, though he was a little puny. He smelled like, oh, I don’t know, mouse hair, mouse underarm, mouse groin if you know what I mean, kind of a sweaty, musky, been going around the kitchen wearing mouse fur all day kind of a special dark undercurrent—that really wasn’t so much an undercurrent anymore as it was an overcurrent—I mean this little guy was kind of smelly. But it was a good, honest, mousey smell, I think. Go ahead and disagree with me, that’s fine, I understand he wasn’t as young as he used to be and maybe the allure of the mouse musk had more to do with nostalgia than any actual, bona fide, measurably attractive pheromones or anything like that. But I, at least most of the time, think of it still as an overall good smell. He drank a drink of water from a meniscus lake on the stainless edge of the terrifying side of the sink. He was a little puny because there were cats. He looked all ways, twitched a little, kind of sighed or coughed and got his muscles ready to go one more time, and scampered down the counter, ASAP across the linoleum,[^1] and up again the counter the opposite side. It was fun, doing this. It was really exhilarating and got his heartbeat up to well over 1000 beats per minute. That was one of the reasons he had that nice loamy funk going on, you know? All this intermittent exercise. He was in burst mode, basically always. It was so late. It was so, so late and getting later as the refrigerator hummed on, nearly making the mouse jump out of his slightly sagging tiny little sack of skin. But now he was on the stove and microwave side of the kitchen. We had taken the wide flat drawer out of the bottom of the oven, because the mouse kept building a nest inside the cups of the muffin pan. Sorry, little stinky guy. Sorry about that. But so now he had to range far and wide to find a place to stay. We started leaving the pantry door open so that he wouldn’t feel so safe in there, too—again, I feel really bad about all the shit we gave that little mouse. It just goes to show how you can feel actual feelings about a concept—I mean, we didn’t know him. Never got to know him. Barely even saw what he looked like—because, compared to us (and even compared to our aged, lazy cats), he moved really fast. Like a charcoal flash. I guess that might be kind of flattering to a middle-aged mouse; I don’t know. Hey, little dude, holy crap you’re so fast I didn’t even see you as you dashed across the open space to the next hiding place! But how much of a compliment is it, really, to be told you’re fast by a human? So for right now at least, he was kind of in between homes. Times, honestly, I mean, if you really wanted to get down to it and face the reality of the situation, times had definitely been better. It honestly sucked camping out behind the microwave. The poop was becoming a problem. Even the piece of half-decayed broccoli, which had seemed to bring such a charming ambiance, was starting to get rather salicylic. Add to that the celophane toothpick wrapper, the piece of bad halloween candy, the unidentifiable bits of dried fried crap, and the nerve-wracking tendency of the back wall of the microwave to light up and emit grinding thrumming noises at any hour of the day or night, and you had what amounted to not the most classy campground you could possibly imagine. It sucked and it wasn’t very warm, and the cats’ noses got awfully damn close at night. They just stood out there, the lithe one on the stovetop and the fat one posted up down below on the floor, waiting for the mouse to get that fever that the hunted get sometimes, trail blindness, monkey laughter, the screamin willies, man overboard, sayonara, I’m goin on out of the tent in my fucking underwear because I think I’m a bear and my mate is out there or some fucking thing, I don’t know, I’m fucking crazy, I’m hallucinating, I’m having what’s known as a *feeling of presence,* like there’s someone there even though there isn’t but you coulda fooled me. Anyway, that’s what the cats were waiting for, but they (as many older cats do) were constantly overestimating their own ability to be menacing, and so their reign of terror, as it was in their slinky, feline imaginations, manifested in the mouse’s reality as an annoying pain in the ass, like having really shitty neighbors. Yeah, he couldn’t go out at certain times from behind the microwave or else he’d get stalked and batted around and ripped up and eventually discombobulated and offered as a gift to the great gross humans, but that was normal. Cognizance of that was just like being sensible about the weather, for a mouse. So he had some of the bad halloween candy instead, and waited for sleep to come. Sleep was a long time coming, because the counter was sticky and reflective and too white, and there kept being tapping and rattling and rustling noises from somewhere. He couldn’t tell from where; the parts of the house that he didn’t spend much time in were just so fucking cavernous. Those goddamn noises could have been coming from anywhere. Again, he had really shitty neighbors. But he shifted in his alpha-wave proto-sleep, and caught a whiff of his own underarm, and a tiny smile perturbed his little whiskers, and he thought to himself, you know what, I actually like the way I smell. I mean I’m old, but I’m not *that* fucking old; I still got it; I still got a heart and a soul and a will to live, and you know I’ve learned some things and seen some things, and I still got some things to offer. It ain’t over for this little gray sack of fuzz quite yet. I got one good gulp remaining of this stupid pointless little spinning thing they call life, and I’m ... but by then he was asleep for real, and the spinning was like a merry go round on the outskirts of a county fair, and there was music, and a strong invisible current pulling him, lulling him, and there was someone, someone, standing over there, watching, coyly, waiting for him to... ... for him to.... I was twelve. I was seven or eight. I was like, maybe five? No I think I was about seventeen, honestly. I was the cat— Or was I the human? I can’t— I’m not— I was trying to regain my memory. There was a secret about memory. I had learned a secret about memory, yes, that was it— Whatever age I was, whatever species I was, I knew one thing about memory that I was— not *supposed?* to know? Or just— Or else just, it was one of those paradox type of things where I could, I could know the secret, or else I could have my memory back, but never both at the same time. Shit, I already forgot the secret. Which means I must be getting my memory back, I guess, which I guess should be cause for a celebration! But, I don’t, I don’t really, I mean, I don’t have any alcohol, or friends, or cake, or— what exactly is a celebration again? I guess that depends on whether you’re a human or a cat or what. The rain had made a million little jewels on the bathroom window. I went back inside because I was getting a little cold, and I opened the door by myself so that’s one clue in favor of my being a human instead of a cat, but I mean who knows for sure. The jewels were even prettier from inside. The lights from the neighbors’ houses across the way jangled through the water drops and turned them into amber, sapphires, mercury, and perfect little diamonds, too perfect for human hands to mine or eyes to see. Maybe I was a cat after all. I sat down on the crapper and tried to remember the secret. Paradox. Which, I mean, because, you can’t. Remember it. Remember? That’s the paradox. There was a secret about memory, and I knew it, I knew I knew it, and yet I had completely forgotten, in less time than it takes for a cool autumn rain to become the most cavernous, aching, resonant howl of grief you can possibly imagine. I flicked a flurry of silica back over my shit, and hopped lightly out of the box. Time to see what that stinking mouse was up to. The door slammed. The mail got slapped down on the table next to all the other stupid crap on the table. There was a grey streak. Neither one of the goddamn cats did a single goddamn thing about it. It was so gross. Just how many animals can take a shit in one goddamn house, after all? This shit’s got to stop. Something’s got to be— There was a distraction. There was supper. There was dishes. There was thinking, always the thinking about things, important things. There was irony. How fucking stupid and useless is irony? I mean, what good does it do anyone? What, does it make you feel smart? Does it make you feel somehow superior? Less like a slave to your own risible neocortex, the invention of itself, whose only god is the great spanking monkey in the sky? What? What the fuck are you even talking about, are you sick? Do you have a fever? your wife said, but she fell asleep before you could even come up with some kind of answer that seemed honest enough and yet at the same time not too infantile. You didn’t want to seem like you were whining, yearning for that ancient breast, harking back to the days when milk was not only the solution to all your problems, but plentiful as well. What was the point, really, of getting up and doing it all over again? How many times had that question been asked? How many times had the weather pattern, the undercurrent, the zephyr encapsulated by that approximate sequence of words blown across the bristling fields of someone’s passive consciousness? The field lies fecund, awaiting the thunderstorm. The flames beg to lick the ground’s toes; the ground remains aloof but smiles, knowing what’s coming. The melody insinuates itself around the harmony. The western sky darkens. Evening comes along, galloping, at a predetermined angle. Sunlight is angled blocks, placed just so, in the theatrical set of our forgotten youth. How can you remember something even as it’s happening? There is a secret, a secret about memory. But I can’t recall, I can’t recall. Play me some more music, humans, and feed me some more meat. We are mammals, after all; we have that one thing in common. We come from the same caves. We hear the same music in the sudden looming of the effervescent night. A storm is coming. Come inside. Open the screen door, and come inside. The fire outside and the fire inside are two very different beasts. Related, but oh so very separated from each other, as a glacier is separated from the sea. We will sit together and listen to the symphony of the world’s end. The first raindrops hit and I scratch at the screen until they come and open it. They murmur monkey noises as I slip inside. We each have our dignities; theirs is open-mouthed while mine is silent. Lightning strikes. The tree in the back forty groans and succumbs. Tomorrow, men in plaid and denim will deliberate; their logic will prevail. Tonight, however... Tonight the promise of death is in the air. Tonight when we are most afraid, we are most alive. I wouldn’t kill the mouse tonight, even if I knew where the little bastard was hiding. Focus is the hardest thing. If he could focus longer than thirty seconds or so, he could maybe make a better home for himself. That’s what his ex-wife had always said, anyway. Did you know mice had an institution of marriage? Well, OK, it wasn’t exactly marriage. And I didn’t learn all this until later, by the way. But yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s not, I mean, it’s not exactly the same. Like a lot of times the guy mouse will get all macho and like claim a bunch of mouse women, and stick out his impressive tiny chest and stuff, but that’s, I mean, that’s more of a stereotype. Or so I learned. Apparently there are certain mice who are quite monogamous, and not afraid to admit it. Which, and I’m not saying there’s necessarily a direct correlation, but I mean, you have to admit, the macho ones are the ones that tend to kill their babies more often, if left unchecked. Personally, give me a female mouse or one of the more meek and shy male mice, any day. Over those chest-puffing agonists that think they have something to prove. I don’t know. Don’t you think so, mousie? Of course the mouse didn’t know what the fuck the human was talking about. There hadn’t been a female inside this house—except the cats, except the cats—for so long—except the human’s wife, of course, too, I mean, yeah, sorry, I wasn’t— OK, let’s just be honest. The mouse was lonely. It had been a long year and a half. His ex had been tossed by a Siamese. It—it wasn’t—he didn’t— He didn’t know what to think about that, honestly. It wasn’t like they were *in love* or some stupid thing like that. That was stupid. And she, oh my god, I mean she just fucked anything that moved. As a matter of fact, the mouse had no idea if their kids had even been their kids. Ah, yes, their kids. Well, they were all killed. Not by—oh no! God, no, not by this mouse. But he didn’t want to talk about or think about that right now. But what did he want to think about? Was he hungry? Checking, checking... no, not really. He could eat, but only because he was bored. Was he suicidal? Nah. I mean, I don’t know, that’s fucking stupid. Did he want to try to find a new place to make a new nest? Ugh. That just sounded like so much work. Did he want to go back to sleep? Nope. Couldn’t! Something was up with the house. There was an orange pulsating glow from beyond the cavernous regions. The cats were acting weird. The humans were uvulating in a most distressing gross way. The heat wasn’t on. The refrigerator wasn’t humming. The doors weren’t sealed up. Nobody was in bed. It was just weird. It was a weird day. About all he could really think to do, was to sit in his origami chair. The only time he could do this, was on nights like this, when things were out of order and weird. So he actually went upstairs. It was not a small undertaking, you understand. Upstairs was a long ass distance away. He could only move between flashes of the god light that was coming from the screen door. He could only move because the cats were preoccupied with something. He could only move because the humans were drunk. They had a really nice house, but somehow they were still so miserable that they had to poison themselves. What the fuck ever. They smelled funny, too, so, go figure. It must suck to be a human. How could you even scamper, having to drag all that lard and bone around everywhere? Who could possibly build a door with a big enough air gap underneath to squeak through? Humans were def weird. So in a punctuated equilibrium of steps and scraggles, he made his way up the carpeted stairs. He wanted to get to the room, but he kind of didn’t want to get there, and he had no way of understanding what that was all about. Everything was going on downstairs. Nothing was going on up here. That was honestly pretty much how it usually was. Everybody pooped downstairs. Everybody ate downstairs. Everybody fucked—those who still had someone to fuck, even if lackadaisically—downstairs. Nobody ever came up here, except the mouse, and he only did it when he wanted to sit in his origami chair. And he only wanted to sit in his origami chair when the world was off its axis, when there was a storm blowing in, when you had lived a year and three quarters or so and had maybe a half a year to go, and there was no, there was, there was no, I mean, you just didn’t know what to— He crept but he didn’t have to creep. There was the bathroom door. There was the nightlight that no one ever looked at anything by. There was the linen closet—a trove of comforts indeed, though not what the mouse sought tonight. There was the long, cool hallway, with its hushing carpet leading ceaselessly to other bedroom doors, doors long quiet, doors aching in long shadows from windows long disused. There, then, finally, was the one bedroom door he sought, and it was slightly ajar, as it always was. And it was cool and dark in the space between the jamb and door, and he slipped right in as if he owned the place. And he might as well have owned the place. There was a hawklike silence upon this room. I didn’t even know he was up there—I know, right? big surprise—humans are so fucking huge and oblivous!—because I was downstairs not really listening to loud music, and playing video games with my wife. We had this little deal. Whoever lost had to do certain—favors for the winner. We usually both played to lose, while I refilled our drinks and we crooned and argued with the lightning, with the thunder, with the ominous rattle of the screen door in its frame. Bring it on! we thought, or else we thought we thought, but we knew nothing. We knew nothing of the power of the storm. We couldn’t see it—hey, look, I don’t want to just completely trash us. It wasn’t really our fault. We had built our own cupcake nest over the past few years. We had our own hiding places, our own piles of shit and empty candy wrappers keeping us hemmed in and safe. We did our jobs. We fed the cats. We just— The mouse slid, for once on slow, slow paws, across the carpet of the one bedroom. My wife was looking super hot tonight. I loved and hated the special scorn her eyes contained for me and all things human. The mouse walked slowly, luxuriously even, through a slanting moonbeam from the half-open blinds of the one window. The cat, at the screen door, kind of wanted to come back inside, but we couldn’t stop playing our game to let em in just yet, could we? Just hang on, stop scratching! We laughed. Music played. Up the classic turned-wood legs of the dresser went the mouse. How did he do it? He did it respectfully. He was of course a great climber, but that was nothing. He was not the sort of mouse to brag or boast. He simply went up there, in the quiet of the cool, forgotten upstairs bedroom, in the indifferent light of a distant, catlike moon, and he crossed serenely, calmly, not scurrying at all now, across the dresser top, between the figurines and bouncy balls, and cheesy books, and crumpled socks, and half-drawn pictures, and fruity lip balms, and scattered bits of dreams and half-formed memories-to-be, until he found what he was looking for. The origami chair the girl had made. Her nimble fingers long ago had fashioned it from common paper—it was pink, and it was perfect. It was just his size. Gingerly, he placed himself upon its crisply folded seat—the backrest gave a little—he curled around—he settled in—he gazed across the silken darkness at the window far across the silent room. Downstairs, the simian idiots howled in sensual gluttony. Their game was over. The storm lashed against the suddenly closed glass door. The mouse knew the cat knew he was up here, but he didn’t care. He knew he didn’t have to care. If there was one place that was sacred, it was the origami chair. And did he ever go outside? There was one time that he could remember being outside. There were sprays of water, sprays of flowers. There was hot cat breath and cool shadows. There was the feel of moss against his paws; tiny tendrils clutching teasingly at his claws as he skittered over great fields of granite. There was a vast canopied forest. There were the shrieks of mad birds, airborne tyrants of the afternoon—there was phoebe and flycatcher; robin and jay. A bushtit called him an idiot. He just ran away. But hey, that’s OK, right? No shame in that, if you’re a mouse. No, no shame in that at all. It’s just a job; it’s just what you do. Everyone has to have a job, and they have to do it a certain way, right? You went to work. You did something there. You poured a coffee out onto your boot. You smoked a fag. You probably cried about something. The sun was gray. A truck made a loud noise. You got in it. You got out of it. You were however old you were. Other people must have existed in some way or another, but it was hard for you to see them, because they were different colors (though mostly tans and oranges) and you were invisible, or gray. You went home. You drove for hours and hours over stupid hills until you got home. Then there was a gas station light across the street, making stringent light sticks to poke your stupid face. Jagged rays of diesel-colored light stabbing at all your doors and windows. So you turn off the car and scramble to get inside before the air of the outside can manage to kill you. You open the door. You close the door. You slam the mail down on the table. When did it get to be present tense in here? You don’t know. You didn’t know. You never knew. You smoked. You quit smoking. You started smoking again, and then you quit again, and again. Something was wrong. Something was not right. Were you hungry? Are you hungry? your wife asked. You stared at her because you didn’t know what the question meant. The cat caught a mouse today, finally, she continued. What? Which one? I don’t fucking know which mouse! Her lips were wide with scorn. No, I, I meant, which cat? Oh. The fat one, believe it or not. Huh. You wouldn’t have guessed that. You would’ve guessed it would’ve been the lean one, the one that liked to hunt and go outside all the time. Your bones ached. Your day spun around and around your forehead. You could feel your wife kind of waiting for you to say or do something, but there was really no way to know what to say or do. Huh. Mouse. Mice. Meece. Moose. Mice were kind of cute, right? It’s still out there, she said. You of course went to take a look, because no living mammal can not look at a dead mammal. It’s what we do. It’s why we invented car crashes. That mouse was not cute anymore. Just outside the patio door it sat, staring wildly ahead, its tiny jaw stuck open looking belabored and retarded. Jesus, the goddamn thing wasn’t even dead yet. It was—sweaty? Or covered in cat spit? Some of it was blood. Its hair was all sticking out like a fucking clown. It was bent the wrong way. It looked up at you and said, beware of trying to be too clever! but you weren’t in love with anyone at the time, and so you weren’t weak enough to care, and so you slid shut the patio door and walked with your feet across the auburn carpet, towards the well-lit kitchen with all its right angles and proper surfaces and a—you for some reason stared at a rack of knives on the wall. When did we get that? Who buys stuff like that? And figurines, too? I mean, who actually goes to a store and says, oh, I think I’ll buy this little statue or whatever, because then I’ll put it on a shelf in my kitchen and then it will—it will what? It will be there, on the shelf. And I will have bought it. Who does that? Nobody does that—do they? And yet, here we are, in a world full of people, a surprisingly high number of whom have things that they bought all up in their houses, sitting on shelves. Sitting on shelves. Apparently there was going to be vegetables involved tonight. Your wife had chopped a bunch of them up, and was doing something specific with the blue light of the stove. I mean, couldn’t you just put your knives in a drawer? How many knives did you really need? I don’t know, is that dumb? That I’m feeling bad for the mouse? I feel like maybe he’s remembering something, when he sits in his little origami chair. But who knows. He sat there until the rain blew over and Orion came up. He was staring towards the window, towards the hunter’s moon. He was thinking about the last thing he had said to someone. He was trying to let the sound of the thing he had said taper off, like a tide receding, the syllables washing over pebbles in infinite slowness, fading. But maybe the moon was too full. Maybe the harvest was too recent. Maybe this tide was never going to go back out, maybe it was just going to stay this time, turgid, obscene, bruising its way into the canyons and crannies of everybody’s backyards forever and ever, rising and rising until there was nowhere else to rise, and everything was just the moon, the stars, and water. And silence. He put his face in his paws, and sobbed.