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Rodential Housing: Downsizing
🕑 Added 2022-02-26 19:49:03 +0000 UTCChapter 1
“So,” the old woman asked, “will you be renting the apartment?”
Alex looked around the somewhat musty but surprisingly spacious upper floor to the old woman’s house and replied, “Yeah, for that price, absolutely.”
“This is excellent news,” she replied, over-enunciating the words, in order to hide an accent. Alex thought it might be something Eastern-European, but it was difficult to place.
“When can I move in?” he asked.
“What you say?” she replied, cupping her hand to her ear so that the sound might reach her hearing aid better.
“When can I move in?” he repeated in almost a shout.
“Oh,” she replied. “Anytime, you wish. Just not when I’m sleeping, please.”
“Of course not,” he said. “Thank you for letting me stay here, Missus Westwood.”
"'Granny,'" she insisted. "Call me 'Granny.'"
"Thank you 'Granny' Westwood," he corrected himself, smiling.
She smiled back pleasantly for a moment, and then her face became serious. “One last thing,” she said. “You may discover mice at some point.”
“Mice?” Alex said, searching the floor for signs of them.
“I have worked to remove them,” the old woman replied. “Whatever you do, never engage with the rodents. Do you understand?”
“Uh,” he said, thinking that she meant for him not to attempt to exterminate them by himself. “Sure, I’ll leave them to you.”
“Excellent!” she replied. “Come sign. Then, we drink!”
“Okay,” Alex said, following her out. A quick look back into the apartment before they left, and he spotted a fresh looking foot-long wooden board hammered onto the baseboard. Had she used that to cover a mouse hole? he wondered, but he did not linger long thinking about it.
***
Moving day came and went, and Alex soon settled down into his new place. It had more space than he had hoped to find in a new city for the money his salary allowed him to spend. He almost felt bad for ripping off the old woman. Still, he did his best to be a good tenant and avoid making too much noise, but after a few days of trying to block out the sound of her watching TV downstairs at full volume, he realized that she would likely never hear what he did upstairs. Fortunately, she went to bed early, and he was at work most of the day anyway, so the evenings and mornings were mostly quiet.
Anyway, Alex appreciated having her around since this was his first time living alone. Hearing her downstairs made him feel a little less lonely. As annoying as living with his parents after college had been, he did appreciate the company they provided. Still, he knew it was time for a change, time to stretch out of his comfort zone and start a new life on his own. The hope was that he could leave his anxieties behind and start fresh somewhere else. So far, he had not done as much socializing as he had hoped he would, spending much of his time either working or resting at home, but he was optimistic that his routine might change soon. Should he decide to invite someone over, he would not need to worry about asking for permission. This was his place, and he was free to do what he wanted with it. His life, which had seemed so small before, now seemed to be brimming with limitless potential for growth, all thanks to this comfy new apartment.
It was nearly perfect.
Weeks later, though, Alex gradually became aware of a problem with his new place. He started to notice that things were going missing. At first it was just small objects: a pencil, a spool of thread, a box of staples. It was easy enough to convince himself that he had only misplaced them. However, soon whole vegetables and fruits were disappearing overnight. He started to wonder if the old woman was sneaking in while he was at work to pilfer his belongings. That seemed unlikely, though. Why would she risk alienating him while he was paying rent to her? Still, he was willing to let it slide for now. At this point it was more of an annoyance than a problem.
Then, Alex found a fresh mouse hole in the baseboard of the kitchen. Although Granny Westwood had cautioned him against dealing with the mice, he set up a simple wooden snap trap in front of the hole, placing a bit of cheese on the trigger. The next day, he could not find his keys. He looked all over until he noticed them resting on the trigger of the mousetrap, as if they were a human lure. He could not figure out how he had let them fall there or how they had landed there without setting off the trap. It was a mystery, but he was in too much of a rush to get to work to think about it for more than a minute.
Then, one Saturday morning, Alex discovered that his phone had disappeared overnight. He had left it charging on his bedside table when he went to sleep. When he woke up, the phone and charger were both missing.
Alex searched the floor. He searched every shelf in the room. He searched on every table top. He searched between every couch cushion. It was nowhere to be found. Although he was certain he had it when he went to sleep, he started to wonder if he had dropped it somewhere. Again, he wondered if the old lady had swiped it, but it seemed unlikely that she had snuck into his bedroom while he slept.
It was another mystery and a serious inconvenience.
Alex sat in his kitchen, thinking it all over as he finished eating an apple. Gradually, he became aware of the sound of a video playing. It was much smaller and closer than the old woman’s TV downstairs, which was currently turned off. He followed his ears to the mousehole in the kitchen baseboard. He slid the trap aside with his toe and got down on his hands and knees to peek down the hole. Deep in the wall, he saw a flickering light cast on a wall in the back of the hole, clearly coming from a screen just out of sight.
“That has to be my phone,” Alex said and reached his hand down into the hole. Feeling a sudden needle-prick on his finger, he drew his arm out quickly. “Ow!”
“Go away!” he thought he heard a squeaky voice say as he checked his finger for blood. “We’re warning you.”
“What?” he asked. “Who said that?”
There was silence. Even the sound of the video went quiet.
“Must be hearing things,” he assured himself and reached into the hole again.
“You asked for it,” the squeaky voice said, just as his fingers brushed against the screen of his phone.
A flash of energy hit his palm, causing an icy chill and a searing burn all at once. That strange feeling rapidly spread up his arm as he withdrew it from the hole and stepped away from the wall. He looked at his hand, and watched as hair sprouted on the back of it, growing into a mat of gray fur. His fingernails grew long and pointy, like small claws, as his palm and fingertips thickened into paw-like pads. The fur spread up his arm like a lightning fast infection, reaching his chest and spreading outwards from there.
“What’s happening to me?” Alex cried as he felt the hair crawl up to his ears causing them to start growing larger and rounder. Once the fur covered his face, his front teeth expanded rapidly, stretching out his nose away from his face as they grew. At the base of his spine, he felt a lump of flesh grow out into a long rope-like tail.
When the power had spread through his whole body, he felt his skin begin to contract against his flesh. The compression of his shrinking exterior squeezed the flesh and bones beneath it, causing his body to dwindle away. He watched as the room seemed to grow larger around him. His clothes loosened and slipped off of his shrinking body as he became too small to fit them. He lost several feet of his height in seconds, his viewpoint dropping below the tabletop, then below the chairs. Just when he had become lost in the folds of his own underwear, the shrinking slowed to a stop.
Alex crawled free of the huge pile of clothes and stood atop that hill of fabric. He took a stunned look up and around the giant kitchen that loomed large above him. Feeling overwhelmed by the scale of it all, he turned his attention down to himself, examining his furry belly and limbs. His paw-like hands traced the shape of his enormous round ears, and then down over his snout of a nose. A quick look at his fleshy tail was the final confirmation.
“I’m a mouse?” he said, his voice sounding comically squeaky. He stepped down from his pile of giant clothes and stood on the linoleum tiles. At best, he was only three inches tall now. “This is… unreal.”
“We warned you,” said a voice from behind him.
He spun around to see another mouse standing on hind legs atop his huge pile of clothes. It was a girl, judging by the shape of her chest, indicating there was a single pair of breasts beneath her shirt. His first impression of her was that there was something strangely human-like about her eyes. He could see the whites of them clearly, giving her face a surprising level of focus and intelligence for a mouse. That she was wearing clothes only added to her human-like appearance. They were somewhat rudimentary, held together with simple stitches clearly sewn with a needle as long as her arm. Then, there was the long hair on her head, a light blonde, contrasting against the soft gray fur on the rest of her body.
Overall, she appeared to be either a mouse reshaped to look like a human woman or a human woman shrunk down to the shape of a mouse. Either way, she seemed like a peculiar mix of both.
If he was being honest with himself, Alex had to admit he found her strangely attractive.
“Well?” she asked him, sounding impatient. “Cat got your tongue?”
“I’m a mouse?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“How?”
“Magic,” she said, confident that she had explained enough.
“Okay,” he said, feeling not at all OK. “Can I be human again, please?”
The mouse girl took slow, deliberate steps on her proportionately stubby legs, descending from his old clothes as if coming down from a throne, and stopped in front of him to stare him in the eyes. Seeing how she was half a head shorter than him, it was a less than intimidating glare. “We’ll see,” she said at last. “It depends on what The Old One decides to do with you.” She stepped around him and walked towards the mouse hole in the baseboard, which was now proportionally a proper tunnel that they could both fit inside.
“Come on,” she ordered him without looking back. “He wants to see you.”
Realizing that he had no other options, Alex followed her into the mouse hole.
***
They passed through a layer of plaster and wood and through the wood framing of the wall, following the path his human arm had reached inside. They entered a room that had been crafted out of scraps of plywood. There Alex found a pair of mice sitting on a couch formed out of a cut up old glove. They were facing a large screen TV it seemed. After a moment of consideration, Alex recognized how warped his sense of scale had become already. That screen was not large; in fact, it was only inches across. What he was looking at was his phone. One of the mice got up and touched the screen, restarting a video that had been paused.
“This way,” the blonde mouse girl directed him into the next room. There was a platform in the room, suspended by a knotted web of strings connected to each edge.
“Is this an elevator?” he asked as he stepped onto it next to her.
“Yes,” she said, reaching for a screw set up as a lever.
“Who made this?”
“I did. Nice, isn’t it?” she said without any hint of modesty. “Watch this.” She smirked and pulled the lever, causing the floor to drop away beneath them. Some kind of counter weight braking system kicked in a second later, but Alex was worried for a moment that he had just been sent to his death. After a few seconds, the elevator slowed to a halt at a new floor. She gestured for him to get off, and he gladly leapt onto the solid wood ahead of him.
She led him to a double door and opened it for him. Inside, the room was lit by a dim purple light, he spotted a large figure seated before a glowing purple orb, apparently pondering some mystery within the cloudy interior of it.
“I brought him as you requested,” the girl said.
The seated figure was dressed in a dark hooded robe that shaded his eyes. He looked up at Alex, staring at him down a long rat snout. “You must be confused,” The Old One murmured with a croaky voice. “Come in.”
Alex hesitated at the door for a moment, intimidated by the rat inside and not only because he was twice as big as Alex. Eventually, he worked up the courage to enter.
“What is your name?” the rat asked.
“A-Alex,” he replied.
“Alex,” the rat said, pressing his finger tips together to make a peak with his hands. “Have you come into possession of some kind of antique jewelry recently?”
“No,” he said, surprised by the question.
“No new gems or jewels?”
“No.”
The Old One stared at the orb for a long while before declaring “It is the old woman, then, as we suspected.”
“I… have some questions,” Alex said to get the rat’s attention.
“Ask your questions,” the rat said, “but be quick about them.”
“What is going on?” Alex asked. “Who are you? What are you? ”
“I am a wizard,” The Old One said. “Cursed to live as a rodent, as is everyone else in this village.”
“Wait, did you curse me, too? Did you turn me into a mouse?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“You involved yourself. I needed to make sure you were on our side.”
“Your side?” Alex asked. “What sides?”
The old rat sighed and said, “I'm tired, too tired for answering questions. Take him away, Marianne, please.”
The girl mouse, Marianne, gently grabbed Alex’s arm and dragged him out of the room with her. Alex did not take his eyes off of the wizard rat as he walked backwards from the room, until the door slammed shut all by itself.
“Let’s head back up,” Marianne said. “I can explain more as we go.”
They got onto the elevator, and were rocketed upwards away from the rat.
***
They walked down a hall following a pathway of scrap wood behind the walls of the building, lit from above by white Christmas lights. As they went, they passed many other mice women and men. Most were ordinary adults, but there were a few children and elderly mice around as well. When they noticed him passing, each of them gave him a curious and somewhat worried look. Soon, Alex became aware that all of the other mice, although shoe-less, were fully dressed in clothes, making him self-conscious of his nudity.
“Come in here,” Marianne said, opening a door for him. “Let’s find you something to wear.”
It was a large walk-in closet, most likely some kind of communal clothing storage. Alex began searching for a pair of pants immediately.
“How long have you been here?” Alex asked as he checked the size of a pair of rough cloth pants.
“We moved in only a week or two before you did,” Marianne explained. “It was a lucky thing that we found this place.”
“Why here?” Alex asked, stepping into the pants.
“The Old One detected a source of magic in the building. We need that, desperately.”
“Why?” Alex asked as he tried to figure out how to button up his pants around his tail.
“With a strong enough source of magic, The Old One could turn us all into humans.”
“He seems to have some pretty strong magic already,” Alex said, looking for a shirt that would fit him.
“I’ve heard him say that being cursed and lifting a curse is like catching a cold and getting well again. It’s easy enough to become sick. It takes some effort to be cured of it.”
“Clever,” Alex said as he pulled a tunic up over his head, sensing that he had whiskers for the first time as he worked his arms into it. “So, what is this source of magic?”
“Something that the old woman downstairs owns.”
“You need to get it from her, then?” he asked after getting lost in the tunic.
“Yes.”
“So, if I help you, then The Old One will turn me back to normal?” He thought that he had located the neck hole.
“Yes,” Marianne said. “He’ll turn us all back to normal.”
Alex poked his snout out of the tunic and let it settle into place on him. Marianne stepped up to him and tied a rope around his middle like a belt. Something about having her so close to him made him nervous and a little excited.
“So,” she said, once she was satisfied that he was fully dressed. “Shall we find that source of magic in the building?”
Marianne turned to face a mirror that Alex had ignored up until then. Next to her reflection, he saw his own reflection for the first time since becoming a mouse. It was almost disappointing how much he still resembled himself even with the fur and the big ears and snout. One would hope that kind of change would have made more of a difference. He sighed and said, “Let’s go.”
***
They entered Mrs. Westwood’s bedroom through a hole hidden behind a flap of wallpaper. They stepped out onto the dusty top of a bookcase standing next to her bed. She was still asleep and did not stir when they came in.
Marianne waved Alex over to the edge of the bookcase to get a better look at the room. He walked cautiously closer to her, while avoiding looking down at what seemed to be a terrible height at his current size.
“We think it is some jewelry she owns,” Marianne explained, talking a little more loudly than Alex would prefer. “Most likely it's some family heirloom, something nobody knows is full of magic anymore.”
“Do you know where the jewelry is?”
Marianne shook her head and said, “We’re not sure, but we suspect she keeps it in a safe in the floor of her closet.”
“She’s waking up,” Alex said, seeing Mrs. Westwood stretching in her bed. He took a step back to move out of sight.
Marianne stepped back with him. She whispered, “We started working in shifts to watch her put in the combination, but she only opens the safe occasionally. Even then, we weren’t always sure of the numbers. At this point, we’re about one number away from having it all.”
“So,” Alex said, “we’re hoping she tries to open the safe so that we can see the end of the combination?”
“Exactly.”
The old woman got out of bed and shuffled to her bathroom, shutting the door behind herself before turning on the light.
Marianne took a seat and motioned for him to join her. “While we wait,” she said. “I could answer some more of your questions.”
***
Marianne told the story of her village.
Long ago, in Frankish lands, there was a kingdom, whose king was known for his bad temper. Eventually, his highness had drawn the wrath of a forest witch, having insulted or slighted her in some way. Despite the best efforts of the king’s wizard, the king and all of his subjects were cursed by the witch, transformed into rodents. The witch had her revenge on the king, feeding him and the rest of the royal family to her cats. The rat wizard escaped with the mouse villagers and led them to survive in the woods and in the houses and castles they found as they fled from the witch.
The wizard tried his best to return them all back into humans, but in the body of a rat, he lacked the power. Over the many years that followed, he lived on while the villagers continued their lives as mice, falling in love, raising mouse families, growing old and dying. In time, none of the mice villagers who had once been human remained. Still, their mouse descendants kept on living as a village, united together by their ancestral curse.
Centuries passed. They moved from land to land, seeking a cure. The wizard continued his immortal search all the way to America and, at last, to this house where the old woman and Alex live.
Alex was about to ask some questions when they were interrupted by the sound of Mrs. Westwood opening the front door of the house and heading outside with her grocery cart in hand.
“Looks like she’s going shopping,” Alex said.
Marianne stood up and pulled a fishing hook from her bag. She said, “Let’s get a better view of things.” She unspooled some thread attached to the hook and began spinning the hook at her side to build up momentum. Then, she flung it out towards a protruding light fixture on the ceiling, around which the hook did a loop and attached to the thread. Marianne pulled at the thread, testing that it was secure. Then, she gestured for him to join her and hold the thread.
“Are we really doing this?” Alex asked and he glanced down at the perilous drop below.
“Just hold on,” Marianne said. “We’re swinging to the window.”
Alex put his trust in her and stepped off the edge of the bookcase. They swung across the room and came to a rest standing on the upper edge of the bottom half of the window. Marianne tied the end of the thread to the window lock and walked over to the corner of the window, sitting down in a spot where her back was covered by the curtains. Alex walked over and took a seat on the dusty wood beside her as she gazed out at the street in front of them.
They watched as the old woman walked down the street and out of sight.
“She’s probably heading for the bus stop,” Alex guessed.
“We’ll wait here until she gets back,” Marianne said. “Okay?”
“Sure,” Alex said.
They sat together, watching out the window as they waited. On the sidewalk, a woman walked by with a young boy holding her hand. He was eating an ice cream cone and making a mess of his face. A man and woman on bicycles rode by them in the opposite direction, chatting with each other as they peddled. Somewhere out of sight, a dog barked at a passing pedestrian.
“What’s it like?” Marianne asked him, breaking the silence.
“What’s what like?”
“Being human?”
Alex considered his reply. “I’ve never thought about it much. I’ve just… lived.”
“You get to walk down the street without worrying about a cat eating you or someone stepping on you,” she said, wistfully.
“I guess I do,” he said. “It’s not totally safe. I could get hit by a bus or mugged.”
“Still,” she said. “Things are your size. Everything's made to fit you. You’re not tiny. You’re not a pest. You’re normal.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s true.”
“I’m kind of obsessed with you… humans, I mean. I read all about humans whenever I get the chance. I’ve spent a lot of time turning heavy pages in books, learning about you, how you live, how your world works. I want to be like you, live like you. I even try to imitate your technology when I can.”
“Like the elevator?”
She nodded. “I’ve got a talent for gadgets.”
“Well,” he said. “When you become human, you’ll have a lot of opportunities available to you. There aren’t many people who can say that they built their own elevator out of string.”
She looked at him and smiled, faintly. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’d rather not get my hopes up.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve been chasing this cure for centuries, always ending up disappointed.”
“You’ll get it this time,” Alex said. “I’ll make sure that you do. You’ve got my human experience on your side, now.”
She smiled and said, “You know, you’re not the first human to join us in our curse.”
“I’m not?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes The Old One curses a human for… reasons. Sometimes he even curses a mouse to make it more human-like. I think one of my grandfathers used to be a wild mouse when he was a boy.”
“So,” Alex said, “I’m not special.”
“Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had someone new join us,” she said. “That’s part of why you were getting so many looks from the other villagers.”
“Besides me being naked?”
“Yes, besides that,” she said, smiling.
Alex thought she had a very pretty smile, even with her large front teeth. He realized then that he had not had a conversation this long with a woman in months. However, now there was an awkward moment of silence. He considered complimenting her smile, but he kept quiet, instead. The two of them just sat there in silence, staring out the window, watching the human world go about its business without noticing them at all.
***
Later that day, they relocated inside the closet after Mrs. Westwood returned from her shopping. They had climbed up on top of a small stack of irregular boxes.
“I don’t think this spot is very stable,” Alex said, feeling the boxes shift slightly under their weight.
Marianne shushed him, and whispered, “It’ll be fine. Anyway, this is the only place in the room where we can get a good view of her putting in the combination.” Marianne handed him a crude spyglass, similar to the binoculars she was holding up to her face. “Keep a close eye on the dial.”
Alex gazed down through the lenses, seeing the magnified but slightly distorted image of the safe door buried in the floor below them.
“Here she comes,” Marianne said as the woman’s heavy footsteps approached. The closet door opened and Mrs. Westwood walked inside, pulling the string to turn on the single bulb in the ceiling fixture. Next, she knelt down slowly to reach the dial of the floor safe. When Marianne leaned in closer to get a better view, the box she was standing on started to tip forwards. She lost her balance and was about to fall off the edge. Alex lunged for her and grabbed her tail in his free hand, stopping her just as she was leaning forward at a 45 degree angle. Knowing that if his hand slipped from her tail, she would surely fall, he held on with all of his might. They both kept perfectly still, not wanting to cause the stack of boxes to shift anymore and possibly draw the old woman’s attention.
They just watched as Mrs. Westwood took some money from the safe. Then, she shut the safe’s door and spun the dial to lock it. Finally, she stood up, turned off the light, and walked out of the closet, shutting the door behind herself.
In the darkness of the closet, Alex whispered to Marianne, “I’m going to pull you back in.”
“Hurry,” she said.
Alex slowly stepped backwards, dragging Marianne with him as he went. When she was vertical again, she stepped away from the edge and moved to a more stable box with Alex following behind her.
“Thank you,” Marianne said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Uh,” she said. “You can let go of my tail now.”
“Oh,” he said, dropping it. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, you really saved me there. I owe you one.”
“You didn’t happen to see the combination while you were hanging over the edge, did you?”
“No,” she said. “I was a little distracted.”
“What now?” he asked.
Suddenly, the closet was filled with a deafening sound. They both covered their ear holes with their palms. Alex soon recognized the noise. It was the old woman’s TV, turned up to full volume. Even inside the closet, it was far too loud for their mouse ears to take.
“We should go back,” she shouted to him. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
He nodded and followed her over to a hole in the wall. Once they were deep enough inside the walls for the sound to be bearable, they uncovered their ears.
“We won’t be doing anything down there while it’s that loud,” she said. “For now, let’s go do a little food scavenging. Come on.” She led the way back to her elevator.
***
“This is so strange,” Alex said.
“Is it?” Marianne asked.
“I’m so used to seeing this kitchen from a different viewpoint… and scale,” he said as he stared out across what felt like the expanse of an airplane hanger but was actually just his kitchen as seen from the perspective of a mouse on a countertop.
Marianne grunted and said, “Well, if you can get over feeling strange, I could really use your help with this apple.”
He turned to see her head poking over the rim of the fruit bowl behind him.
“Coming,” he said and walked over to the thread she had hanging from the bowl by a fish hook. Climbing up was surprisingly easy with his tough mouse hands. In fact, most of their athletic feats that day had seemed almost effortless. Alex figured that being as small and light as he was made him a lot more agile than he had been as a human. After swiftly pulling himself over the rim of the bowl, he slid down into the bowl and stood up next to apples and oranges that were taller than he was.
“Over here,” Marianne said, waving him towards an apple. “Let’s push it over the rim together.”
They gripped the bottom of the huge apple together and started to slide it up the curved side of the bowl.
“Do you do this a lot?” Alex asked between grunts.
“All the time,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I’m one of our best scavengers.”
On the increasing slope of the bowl, the apple was feeling very heavy now, but they kept pushing.
“Almost… there,” he said as they reached the rim.
At last, the apple tumbled over the edge and landed with a bounce on the counter.
They both sat down side-by-side, panting from the exertion.
Marianne held up her fist, and Alex gave her a fist bump.
“Nice work,” she said.
“We’re only half done,” he said.
“Always the optimist, aren’t you?” she replied, smiling.
They climbed out of the bowl together and Marianne collected her hook and thread. Then, they started rolling the apple along the counter to a particular point near the edge. Down below was his old shirt and socks, stacked into a giant pile.
“Is this really going to work?” he asked her.
“I hope so,” she said. “Otherwise we wasted a lot of time moving all of that.”
They gave the apple a push, and it rolled over the edge of the counter. They watched as it fell to the floor, coming to rest on his shirt and socks with a light thump.
“See,” she said. “No problem.”
Alex nodded.
“Now,” Marianne said. “Watch this.” She stepped off the edge of the counter and Alex gasped as she dropped to the floor, landing on the pile of clothes just beside the apple.
“You gave me a heart attack!” Alex yelled down to her.
“Come down here,” she said, smiling up at him.
“No way,” he said.
“I thought you were a mouse, not a chicken,” she said.
He sighed.
“Jump!” she said. “You can do it. Trust me.”
He took a deep breath and leapt from the counter, after a brief fall he landed softly on the clothing pile next to her.
“Okay,” she said. “Now, let’s bring this big boy home for dinner.”
They started pushing the apple towards the hole on the floor, the same one in which his arm had been cursed earlier that day. It was hard to believe that had only happened this morning. It felt like a lifetime ago, now. He wondered what tomorrow held for him, but he hoped it would include turning back into a human.
***
Later, Alex lay down to bed on a small cot that Marianne had set up in her room. She had to move aside a stack of odd gadgets to make space for him, but there was enough space for him to get comfortable. She seemed to be unusually nervous at having him in her room. He offered to sleep somewhere else, but she insisted he stay.
“That apple really hit the spot,” he said, as he repositioned his pillow.
“It was quite a feast,” she agreed.
They had eaten the apple with a large group of mice. Alex had felt particularly out of place, but Marianne had done her best to get him talking to the other villagers. They had all been very curious about his human life. Simple things like public transit had fascinated them, particularly the young mice. Overall, it had been a nice meal, the first he had shared with other people in a long while.
“Hey?” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied and yawned.
“What do you want to do first when you become human?”
“Put on some clothes,” she said.
“Right,” he said. “And, after that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Eat in a restaurant, maybe. It’d be nice to have a meal that didn’t involve so much climbing.”
“It’s a date, then,” he said.
She went quiet, and he thought that she had fallen asleep. Soon, he went to sleep himself.
***
The next day, the two of them were back in Mrs. Westwood’s bedroom, watching her prepare to go out again. As soon as the old woman left the house, Marianne tossed her hook to the light fixture as she had done yesterday. The two of them swung over to the window again and stood on the top of the bottom half of it. Together, they watched as Mrs. Westwood, again, walked towards the bus stop down the street.
“Looks like we’re in for another wait,” Alex said, taking a seat near the corner of the window.
Marianne sat down next to him. After a minute of silence spent staring off into the distance, she said, “Thanks… for waiting here with me. You didn’t have to come again.”
“Well,” he said. “What else am I going to do? You’re the only mouse I know here, the only girl I know in town, actually… aside from Mrs. Westwood, of course.”
“Why?” she asked him.
“Why what?”
“Why isn’t there someone else? Why don’t you have a girl in your life?” Marianne had an oddly serious look on her face all of a sudden.
“I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “I get kind of nervous around people. I’m not very social. I suppose I just think that I’m not a very interesting person.”
“I think you are,” Marianne said, then she looked away nervously. Alex thought that he saw her ears go red as if she were blushing.
He thought for a moment and said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” she replied without looking back at him.
“Are you the one that stole my phone?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was me. I'm the one who got you mixed up in all of this.”
“Well, I’m sure you didn’t mean for me to…”
“I did,” she said, turning back to face him, tears welling up in her eyes. “I wanted you to join us.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I stole things from you every day, more and more each time.” For a moment, she hesitated to go on. “I would linger a little too long in the room when you came in, just watching you. Maybe I was hoping that you would spot me and catch me. You never did. You almost stepped on me once, but you had no idea I even existed.”
The words poured out now. “I thought about you all the time. I couldn’t help it. There was just something about you that kept you on my mind. Maybe it was because you were the first human I even spent a lot of time near. Maybe it was because I wished I could live like you did. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, I would come check in on you when I had nothing else to do and sometimes even when I did have something to do. I enjoyed watching you, even if you were just doing ordinary human things. After a while, though, I realized that I never heard you talking to anyone. You were always alone, eating alone, watching TV alone… sleeping alone.”
She sniffled and continued, “And, I realized that I didn’t want you to be alone. I started sneaking into your bedroom to watch you sleep. I would climb up on your bed and sit on your pillow and just listen to you breathe, in and out, feeling the warmth of your breath blow past my whiskers. I wanted you to hold me in the palm of your hand. I wanted to kiss your lips. I wanted you to love me.”
“Marianne…” he said, reaching out to her.
She stood up and walked away from his consoling hand, over to the other corner of the window, wiping the tears from her eyes as she went.
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking a seat with her back to him. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I had no idea,” he said.
“And if you did?” she asked, turning to look him in the eyes. “If you had found me and talked to me back when you were human, what then?”
“I would have listened to you,” he said. “I would have tried to help you.”
“We can’t trust humans,” she said. “That’s ended badly for us many times in the past. We’ve learned that lesson the hard way. Never trust a human.”
“But, now that I’m a mouse…”
“You’re one of us, our kin,” she said. “Do you see why I did it, now?”
“I see,” he said, standing up and walking over to her.
Alex held out his hand to Marianne, and she took it. He pulled her to her feet and stood snout to snout with her, their noses almost touching.
“Can you forgive me?” she asked him.
He nodded. “I’m glad that I got to meet you,” he said.
“Kiss me,” she said.
It took some maneuvering to find her mouth with his own, but he did it. They kissed.
Then, Alex watched as Marianne began to remove her clothes. Soon, he was undressing as well. In their bare fur, they lay down in the dust together. As they began, he wondered briefly if anyone on the street would notice them, but he realized that it would not matter, anyway.
***
Later that day, they were both dressed again and waiting in the closet. They had stabilized the boxes in their viewing spot shortly before Mrs. Westwood came home.
“Here we go again,” Marianne said as the woman approached. Just like the day before, the closet door opened and Mrs. Westwood walked inside, pulling on the light. She knelt down to open the floor safe. Alex watched through his spy glass and Marianne through her binoculars as Mrs. Westwood’s fingers spun the dial clockwise and counterclockwise. They paid careful attention to the numbers it paused on. Then, the old woman turned a lever and opened the safe. She pulled some cash from her purse and deposited it inside, right next to an old jewelry box. Then, she shut the door and locked it. She got up, turned off the light, exited the closet, and shut the door, leaving them in darkness.
Alex whispered to Marianne, “Did you get it?”
“I saw it,” Marianne said. “20 left, 33 right, 9 left,” she said.
“That’s what I saw as well.”
“We did it!” she cried and hugged him to her, pressing her breasts into his chest, making him think he might like another go with her later. “Finally, we did it.”
The closet was once again filled with the deafening sound of the old woman’s TV. Again, they covered their ear holes to block it out.
“We should go back and tell the others!” he shouted to her.
She nodded and stood up with him, and together they headed to the hole in the wall.
In the relative quiet within the walls, they uncovered their ears and exchanged a fist bump.
“This is so exciting!” Marianne cried, skipping along playfully, as Alex followed. “I can barely believe it! I’m going to be human soon. It’s like a dream come true.”
He smiled, watching as she gamboled along the passages inside the walls, back to her elevator. While they walked, he wondered what she would look like as a human. No doubt, she would be beautiful. For an insecure moment, he worried if she would no longer want him once other men started to take notice of her good looks. As they both considered their futures, they got on the elevator and rode it upwards, stopping at the doors to The Old One’s room. Marianne entered his room and declared, “We have the combination!”
The rat looked up from his glowing orb and grinned at her. “Excellent,” he said and listened to the distant sound of the old woman’s booming TV. “We remove the curse tonight, when it’s quiet again. Tell everyone we will gather in the closet once she is asleep.”
***
That night, when silence fell on the building, the mice leapt to pull the closet light on and began to file inside and climb down the old woman’s clothes to the safe below. Alex stood beside Marianne by the dial to the safe and watched in amazement as the floor to the closet filled up with mice. He lost count after the first hundred arrived. Then, their number doubled and tripled until the whole floor of the closet was filled with standing mice.
“We’re not going to have enough space in here if everyone suddenly turns into a human,” Alex said.
“Don’t worry,” Marianne replied. “The wizard will probably put a delay on the spell so that we’ll have time to get out before the curse is lifted completely.”
Alex nodded, hoping that she was right.
The last to arrive was the wizard himself. The Old One descended slowly with the aid of a string hung from the highest shelf in the closet. A team of mice below lowered him down using the string as a pulley.
“Ladies and gentlefolk,” he addressed the crowd. “Tonight is the night. After all these years, at last our salvation is at hand. The curse will be broken tonight!”
An excited murmur spread through all the mice, but they controlled themselves, having practiced discretion their whole lives as a matter of survival.
“The safe,” the wizard said, gesturing towards Alex and Marianne. “Open it, please.”
The two of them worked together to spin the dial, taking care to stop on the correct numbers as they went. Then, they turned the lever together, hearing the satisfying click as the lock disengaged. The rope The Old One had ridden down to the floor was tied around the lever and used to pull open the door to the safe. Sticks were used to prop the door open all the way. Then, several mice climbed inside, and lifted the jewelry case out of the safe and set it on the floor of the closet right in front of the wizard. The mice worked together to pry open the case. Everyone craned their necks to see what was inside when it opened.
There were gasps and cries of “Oh no!” when they found that the case was empty.
The wizard looked back inside the safe, searching for any other jewelry that might be inside. There was nothing there, though, besides some documents and a pile of cash.
The closet door swung open suddenly, and there stood a giant staring down at them. It was the old lady, Mrs. Westwood! She grinned in satisfaction, her gentle grandmotherly demeanor having turned severe and almost cruel. “Are you looking for this?” she said, holding up a silver necklace with a strange violet jewel set in a pendant hanging from the necklace chain.
The mice started to try to run and hide, but the jewel in her necklace flashed blue, and there appeared a glowing wall surrounding all the mice, like panes of blue glass. They tried to press through it, but it was solid to the touch. They were trapped!
“I could feel your magic, rat wizard,” the old woman said. “Granny Westwood is no fool. I knew you had invaded my home, sniffing around for my magic like the hungry vermin you are. You silly fools. In your haste, you fell into a witch’s trap.”
The mice chattered worriedly, fearing that this might be the end for them at last. They looked to The Old One and were dismayed to find him simply standing there, defeated, bowing his head in shame at his failure.
“Now,” Granny Westwood said, rubbing the sparse hairs on her chin. “What shall I do with the lot of you?”
“Wait!” Alex cried out, waving his arms up at her. “Wait! It’s me! It’s Alex! I live upstairs. I rent your apartment. Please help me! Help us all! I was transformed like the rest of the mice here. We just want to break this curse on us. Please. Don’t you recognize me?”
The old woman squinted down at him, frowning, and cupped her hand to her ear so that she might hear him better.
“It’s Alex!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I’m a human! You know me!”
Granny Westwood stared at him for a long silent moment before she said, “Bah! I can’t hear a word you’re saying, you squeaking little pest. Save your breath. I’m done with you all.”
In despair, Alex collapsed and Marianne caught him in her arms.
“Fortunately for you rodents,” Granny Westwood said. “I have no wish to clean up your filthy corpses, so I will send you away alive, far away to another city where you may face your death in the streets. Maybe you’ll make a nice meal for some cats. One can only hope.”
The old woman waved her hands, and the closet filled with energy. Then, she began to chant some foreign words. The rodents were all lifted off the ground by a magical force. The energy intensified and, in a flash, the room disappeared around them.
They dropped to the dirt and looked around in confusion, finding that they had been transported to some dusty empty lot, like a canyon between tall old houses. The only light came from a nearby street lamp, which illuminated the area a dim orange and cast many menacing shadows. Above them the sky was overcast and seemed to be threatening rain.
Marianne held Alex to her, as they looked around, fearfully. In every shadow they expected to find an enormous cat, crouched and waiting to leap out and devour them whole. Panic was spreading through the crowd, and cries of fear began to erupt from the mice.
“Silence!” cried the wizard, producing his orb from the sleeve of his robe and lighting up the surrounding lot with its purple glow.
They all stared at the orb for a long while, before The Old One declared, “I sense magic nearby, maybe a new home for us. There is hope. Follow me.”
He walked through the crowd and headed towards an alleyway. Everyone fell in line behind him and followed his lead, still glancing around fearfully at the strange city around them. Their exodus had begun.
***
They walked. Hours passed as they traversed the city streets, sticking to alleyways where they could and traveling through parks when convenient. They crossed streets, running in small packs, always on the lookout for cars or pedestrians. Hiding when they heard any human approach.
At last, Alex understood the mice’s fear of humans. When one walked past, it was like a giant monster had stomped by them. That size and power was unimaginable. They had no hope of opposing a human. Evasion and escape was the only option.
It was not long before tragedy struck. Out of the darkness, on silent wings, an enormous owl appeared and snatched up one of the mice in its talons. The mouse squealed in terror for a moment, as did the other mice around him. Then, in a rush of air, the unfortunate mouse was lifted off into the darkness and was heard no more.
They did their best to keep under the cover of bushes after that.
When what seemed like days of darkness and fear had passed, they reached an old gothic house, and The Old One told them all to halt there. Again, he raised his glowing orb and stared into it, reading what it had to tell him.
“This is the place,” he said. “We must find a way inside.”
The tired mice got to work searching around the foundation, looking for some hidden entry. A gap leading beneath the porch was soon uncovered, and they all filed in under it to the relative safety it provided above them. Rather than enter the house that night, they settled down to rest in the dust and dirt. Having found hope at last, they let go of their fear and slept until the morning.
