The Mouse
This little 99-word flash fiction is a response to Charli Mills at the Carrot Ranch. Unfortunately, life – and a criminal misallocation of time – sometimes has a tendency to get in the way of the important stuff like reading and writing and that’s what happened this week and I missed yesterday’s deadline. Anyway, I kinda liked the story so I didn’t want to just file it away in the What Do I Do With These folder so I thought I’d post it. Click the links in the first sentence above and go read some of the stories from people who are not only good writers, but better time managers.
The March 7th prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about a mouse. It can be real, imagined, electronic or whiskered. Go where the prompt leads!
Tuesday’s Mouse
The mouse was dead.
There are four steps leading to the front door and the mouse was laying on the second. I saw the body when I returned from the store. Greyish brown and wrinkled, highlighted in a spotlight of sun. I thought it was an oak leaf and when I went to sweep it away with my shoe I saw that the stem was a tail.
And then I saw the face. He looked, I don’t know. Calm?
Seeing him made me feel sad; surprisingly, not frightened. It felt odd, that feeling of not having to be scared.
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Good to see you at the Ranch, Michael! An introspective flash. Sometimes we see our fears differently when they art squirming in front of us. I like the oak leaf description.
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Thanks, Charli!
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I do like yours a bit better than all those “cold, steel mousetrap” flashes. 🙂
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Thank you. I don’t like mice but mousetraps are pretty brutal. I saw a mouse in my garage once and so I put a box of mothballs in there and I never saw him again. Maybe he just learned how to avoid being seen when I was around?
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There’s a mouse who lives in the garage. My roommate wanted me to get a trap. I refused. She finally got a sonic device that’s supposed to scare them away. I haven’t seen him since.
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