I have 20 mice, and I've named all of them, and I swear to God my life is an ocean of regret. No peasant or slave has endured harsher rule than I, under these rodents. If you get this note - which is doubtful - it means I've successfully evaded them for the first time in years. Excuse my composition - I'm typing in a hurry.
The mice are perfectly ordinary. I got them for a dollar fifty each at a pet superstore. When I got them, they were white and cute and their black eyes had that normal look of uncomprehending fear. I bought just one at first. I named him Fobo.
I like my pets - and pet supplies - cheap. I made Fobo a cage out of an old broken aquarium. I covered the jagged parts of the glass with duct tape, which Fobo chewed happily. Some dirt and grass clippings on the bottom, a cup of water... Well, all in all it was a pretty dingy-looking home. So when my Grandmother visited my apartment, she clucked and fretted and insisted that I use an old cage she had in her attic instead. She came back the next day with it - an absurd, elaborate cage. It was a massive dome of criss-crossing dark metal wires. Inside was what looked like a miniture temple - elaborate stonework surrounded by a maze of hollowed-out wooden branches and stumps. The wood was a deep, tarnished brown. Every surface was riddled with little windows, caves and crannies.
It was ridiculous, but I couldn't just ask my grandmother to take it back. I put it in my living room, pushing chairs and tables to the corner of the room. With due ceremony, for my grandmother's benefit, I lifted my mouse from the aquarium into the cage. Fobo sat petrified where I placed him in front of the temple. He didn't explore - didn't even glance around - just sat there, trembling.
"He loves it, see how happy he looks!" My grandmother clapped her hands together, closed her eyes, and took a great breath in through her nose, smiling serenly. "I'm so glad to finally put that cage to use. It was so important to Grampa."
Fobo spent two days cowering in that cage. On the third day I bought two more mice. I named them Charles and Xavier. Fobo, upon seeing two more mice, immediately cheered up - racing through the branches and stones of the cage. He and Charles and Xavier had races around the cage constantly. They ran together, night and day, for a week. I slept little.
And one morning I woke blearily to a silent apartment. The three mice were huddled in the center of the cage again, heads pressed together, shivering and squeaking softly. When I approached, the squeaking stopped and they faced me fearfully. And - in retrospect - rather beseechingly.
I would have welcomed a few days of silent trembling from them, but instead, they took to squeaking at me incessantly. Food, toys, music, nothing would quell them. For whatever reason (and I do regret it now), the thought of simply abandoning the mice in some public park or forest did not occur to me. Instead, after four days of noise, I found myself back at the pet store, buying four more mice. I was, at that store, becoming something of a regular.
Thomas, Francis, Tolstoy and Grinch were exactly the company Fobo and Charles and Xavier wanted. They stopped their squeaking and began another earnest series of races around and through the cage's inner landscape. The seven mice never fought - if one caught up with another, it would simpler turn down a different route and continue its frantic run in another direction. It was dizzying to watch them run, but greatly preferable to the incessant squeaking.
This went on for two weeks. Over time, the running became less frantic. They paused more often, and slowed their pace. Occassionally they would all follow one another closely in a line, crawling around their cage, through the hollowed branches and stumps. They would occassionally scatter suddenly, scurrying in all directions, only to meet up again in a few seconds, and again inch along in a huddled line. I found them to be a spectacular distraction, and proudly invited friends over to see them.
But their antics slowed and eventually stopped altogether. They huddled together beneath their temple, heads pressed together, motionless. I could get no response out of them - they were together as comatose as Fobo was when I first put him in the cage. Feeling encouraged by how my mice had impressed my friends, I decided to add just one more mouse to the cage. I purchased her for another buck fifty, named her Ursula, and dropped her into the cage.
To my surprise, the mice did not resume their running. Instead, as Ursula dropped beside them, they turned and faced me. Fobo took a few steps forward, stoof up on his hind legs, and moved his forearms in a way that looked almost exactly like a "come here" gesture. Some social instict took over - my head leaned forward towards the cage.
The mice seemed suddenly overcome with ecstasy. They burst away from the central portion of the cage, climbing the branches and wire mesh of the cage itself. There erupted a cacophony of squeaking. They squeaked with a passion and dedication I had never before seen in any animal or man. At this point - and rather rapidly - I did consider abandoning, smothering, or outright destroying these mice.
But my thoughts were interrupted. Their squeaking, which had previously taken on the random character of a crowded cafeteria, became steady, rhythmic, and synchronized. My mice squeaked in unison - fast then slow, loud then soft and loud again. At first I was simply amazed, but as the chanting - for that was exactly what it resembled - coninued, I became thoroughly disconcerted.
evil mouse cult :<
I like this.
Nice, but remember to finish this!
I saw something like this in a lab, only it was more like an arena.