fading sunlight –
tiny mouse
exits a thin pipe
Tag: mouse
#quikfic 76
The mouse skittered across the floor, and I tossed it a piece of cheese. It was the only visitor I ever had. Best to be friends.
#quikfic 61
Only the owls spoke to her, but just of mice they had eaten and trees they had known, and she was still alone and not comforted.
Fiction: A Halloween Interlude
“Pumpkin! Pumpkin! Come here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Pumpkin!”
As twilight approached, Karen zipped up her jacket against the chilly wind and searched for her cat. He had managed to slip past her as she gave a candy bar to an early trick-or-treater.
Karen pulled the flashlight from her jacket pocket and used it to search the places where evening’s shadow had already fallen. When she reached the end of the block, she aimed the light at the porch of the long-empty house just in time to see Pumpkin enter through a broken window. She huffed and trotted up the sidewalk.
It was an early ranch-style house and wouldn’t have required much work to make it look nice again. But silly rumors about odd noises and spooky sights combined with the horrible economy to keep the “For Sale” sign permanently at curbside.
Karen was surprised that the real estate company hadn’t put a lock box on the door. The doorknob turned easily and she went inside.
“Pumpkin?” She walked in, shining the light around the floor. “Kitty, kitty, kitty?”
She turned to look down a hallway. There was Pumpkin, placidly considering the ghost at the far end.
Fiction: Security Breach
Arvid8 sat in the security room watching the monitors. The half-starved population outside the gates knew about Lord Grazorius’s food storehouse; Arvid8 looked for criminals who had slipped past the guards. Peasants could be tricky.
He was also vigilant for smaller intruders. Mice still plagued humanity in the late 22nd century. There hadn’t been any trouble since the Great Raid when more than ninety mice made off with an astonishing amount of food. Lord Grazorius had been furious, and security had installed hundreds of additional traps.
Arvid8 heard a motion alarm. He switched the view to the holographic tank, recreating the scene life size in his office.
A single mouse crept toward a box of food. The trap sitting by the box caught the mouse’s attention. As it should, Arvid8 thought as he magnified the view.
The trap’s enclosure was almost invisible. The mouse walked straight in and a little door folded down, sealing the opening. The mouse walked onto the platform and grabbed the bait. As the trigger tripped, the powerful spring propelled the titanium hammer onto the mouse’s back.
The hammer bent around the rodent.
Arvid8 gasped as he watched the unharmed mouse eat its prize. Then it backed out from under the hammer and one back leg kicked the trap’s door open. The mouse skittered out and looked directly into the hidden camera, making Arvid8 feel uneasy.
The mouse leaped to the box of foodstuffs, and its powerful jaws made short work of one corner of the steel box. Arvid8 dispatched a hunter-killer robot, but the mouse fled with its loot.
Arvid8 cleared the holoimage and turned to his hardwired communicator.
“Security Control, this is Security 2, Arvid8.”
“Go ahead, Security 2.”
“I need a probe team in here, armed and with extra robots for perimeter security. And tell Lord Grazorius the mice have evolved again.”
haiku 120
mouse flops around
alive in the trap —
decisions…
Fiction: Appeasing the Appetite
The mouse’s eyes darted around. He had been maneuvered into a corner and there was no way out. He looked up and up again. There towered a great gray cat with evil and hunger in its eyes.
“Oh, please, please, Mr. Cat! Please don’t kill and eat me!”
The cat was amused. “Whyever not? I am hungry and you are food. This has been the way of things since our kind first shared the earth.”
“Please! I … I could pay. I could get something for you that you wanted,” the mouse pleaded.
“You are what I want,” the cat replied reasonably, and he lifted his right forepaw for the coup de grâce.