THE MOUSE IN WINTER
(A report from Urth)
The Lonely Old Man slid his limp stinky fingers between the dusty yellow slats of the venetian blinds covering the sole window of his rented room, parting them ever so slightly. Then, he peered secretly out through a tiny peep hole in the aluminum foil covering the glass. His eye flitted nervously up and down the quiet Costa Messy street as he looked for any sign of movement. He knew from reading about sniper training that the first thing you look for is movement, then shape, then color. He saw nothing out of place.
Behind him, the flickering light of his black and white TV threw scary shadows on the aluminum foil covered walls and ceiling that made him tremble a little before he put them out of mind.
Over the sound of his children--his pet cockroaches--he could suddenly hear the voices of the City Council members discussing this and that on the TV.
The Lonely Old Man had been certain that Mayor Alien Menswear had been hiding in the bushes in front of his room to torment him and to beam thoughts into his brain, so he was relieved to see that the Mayor was there on the 12" TV screen. But, wait a minute...the Lonely Old Man's sweat suddenly turned cold and his dirty underwear failed to keep him warm as a shudder went down what passed for his spine.
His blood shot, beady eyes narrowed to slits as he adjusted the duct tape holding his brain-ray protection helmet--fashioned from TV rabbit ears, aluminum foil, and two empty tuna fish cans. He knew that the Mayor would have trouble beaming any brain-rays into his head so long as he wore the helmet correctly and so long as the Mayor was over at City Hall. But, what if the City Council meeting was a tape?
Could that fiendish and devious Menswear have tricked CMTV into running a tape to throw the Lonely Old Man off guard? Could the Mayor be creeping around outside the Lonely Old Man's room right now with his brain-ray, as the Lonely Old Man knew he had done so many times before? The Lonely Old Man quickly removed his fingers from the blinds and flattened himself against the wall trying to be as quiet as possible. He heard his heart beating as though it were a kettle drum. He was frozen in fear against the wall and couldn't move. He was certain that Mayor Menswear was now sneaking around outside looking for a way to use his brain-ray.
The Lonely Old Man was obsessed with the Mayor and hated him with every gray hair on his neurotic head.
The Mayor was young, intelligent, good looking, and virile. Everything that the Lonely Old Man wasn't. But, the Lonely Old Man didn't consciously think these thoughts. Madness has its own rationalizations. His mind simply told him that the Mayor was evil and that the Mayor was after him because the Lonely Old Man knew that the Mayor was planning on taking over the planet and that the Lonely Old Man and his beloved cockroaches were the only ones who could see the Mayor's devious plans.
Ah, a crooked smile flickered across the Lonely Old Man's flaccid lips as he thought of his beloved cockroaches--his children. They loved him and understood him. They were the only friends he had ever had. They had never left him as so many others had. They never made fun of him. The Lonely Old Man spent hours knitting tiny little sweaters and booties for his cockroaches and they repaid him by telling him what they learned from their cousins who lived in City Hall.
It was a warm July night, but cold winter was within the Lonely Old Man who had spent his working life as a file clerk and who had never been able to have real children of his own. The doctors said that was caused by the Lonely Old Man sitting naked on the office copy machine too often. But, the Lonely Old Man didn't buy that. After all, he had only done that twice a day for 20 years. No, somehow, Mayor Menswear had kept the Lonely Old Man from having children. The Lonely Old Man was certain of this.
The truth of his being, but unknown to the conscious mind of the Lonely Old Man, was that he was bitter now that his mortality was evident in the signs of age that were his daily fare. In a rare moment of lucidity, the Lonely Old Man knew that the Mayor wasn't the cause of his problems or his condition. He knew, just for a moment, that it wasn't the Mayor's fault that nature had filled the Lonely Old Man's veins with a thin liquid that was more like prune juice than blood, and which made him old even when he was young, and it wasn't the Mayor's fault that the life force had always been tepid within the Lonely Old Man.
Nature has a way of cutting its losses when it makes mistakes. Even though nature had allowed the Lonely Old Man to live a full life span--even beyond his useful years--which in his case ended at about his first birthday--nature had prevented him from really living or seeing what life was about, and nature had shown mercy to the species by keeping the Lonely Old Man from reproducing and passing on his sour disposition to others.
The muse of idiots suddenly inspired the Lonely Old Man to get down on his hands and knees and crawl over to his Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor. Once there, he typed his latest hate-the-Mayor message to the local newspaper.
To be continued...
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The Lonely Old Man is a fictional character on planet Urth in our alternate universe. Any resemblance to any person living, or claiming to be living, or dead is purely coincidental.
