when a mouse kills himself
very short story, fall 2022
Professor Roden Snout knew all things mice and had come to the ultimate scientific conclusion that he hated those little shits.
“One more squeak,” he said, slim nostrils flaring angrily, “and I will lock my head into a hamster ball, clog up the holes, and die from asphyxiation.” Same, Professor, same.
The origin of his frustration was the bright blue bone-shaped squeaky toy Cook Jr. was chewing; Cook being, of course, his second-born son of eight months, two weeks, five days, twenty hours, three minutes, and eleven seconds, though the Professor was indifferent of the child’s age as well as its birthday, which is why he eventually chose February 29th as Cook’s day of birth in order to spare himself from singing “Happy Birthday” every year. Having to pick a birthday was a task he would most willingly avoid, however, the decades of his experience in research had taught him the importance of keeping a biographical record of his specimens - the primary disciple of rodent investigation. And of course it was that thing that produced the sickening high-pitched sound; Sprout Jr. would never cause him any sort of distress, him being such a loyal companion and a good, gooood boy who would turn precisely one and a half years old on November 26th, as the Professor would always remember.
Sprout Jr. was his firstborn and a Sprocker Spaniel. Professor Sprout at first thought that to be a stupid name for a dog breed, which is kind of true, but after running a few cognitive learning tests to measure puppy Sprout’s mental abilities, the canine’s extraordinary intelligence made him conceive an epiphany: he can always refer to the breed as S.S. or the double S or Sp bond (inspired by the sp chemical bond, the Professor called the breed that way only when wanting to check his interlocutor’s fundamental knowledge on science). Apart from the dog breed name, an obstacle which, as elaborated above, was swiftly overcome by the P r o f e s s o r ’s g e n i u s , P r o f e s s o r S p r o u t w a s f u r t h e r c h a l l e n g e d b y t h e potential disgrace he would face as a crossbreed owner. For that reason, he published a sixty-page long paper arguing on the Sprocker Spaniel representing the purest form of Spaniel, given its relatedness to the original land Spaniel.
There is not much to be said about Cook.
Professor kept the mice locked inside glass baskets in the lab on the first floor. He slept in the basement. Sprout Jr. had his own room upstairs and a summer house in the backyard. Professor didn’t like sunlight so he wore full diving gear when he played with his son outdoors, but even that
joyful event happened rarely because he was always so busy studying the small mammals he so deeply detested.
Six generations of my family died in his hands for plenty of reasons: drug overdose, trying to escape. I used to have children. I’m pretty sure he killed them all.
So jumping off that bunkbed was an easy decision. I’d done skydiving before, but never without the parachute. My neck broke and that means I was lucky. I could have been lying on the wooden floor for hours, bleeding slowly, or worse. He could have saved me.
Of course I knew he would never walk into his childhood bedroom to look for a missing mouse. I bet he didn’t even know I’d staged my death five months ago.