The Mouse Catcher
“I saw the mouse again last night.”
“There’s no mouse.”
“Yes there is. I saw him.”
“If there was a mouse it would scratch at the walls and it would stink.”
“Just get some traps.”
“Fine. There’s no mouse.”
“There is a mouse. When are you going to get the traps?”
Sally overreacts. She can never be calm about anything.
“Tomorrow” I say.
We’re sitting at the table tonight, instead of in the TV room. Dinner is grilled salmon with organic asparagus and boiled new potatoes. No butter, no sauce, no salt. It’s part of Sally’s diet, which means it’s part of my diet. I make up for it by getting a breakfast roll on the way to work. She doesn’t know about that.
I wish I had remembered it was tonight. I’m on the back foot now. Sally went to a lot of trouble with the dinner all the same. She’s wearing her nice dress and her fancy earrings and I’m sitting here in a pair of torn up old jeans and work boots. It’s a special night. The big One Zero. We’re using the good plates and everything, the ones we got from Sally’s mother for a wedding present. Neither of us speak. Sally makes little yummy noises every now and then. She’s not fooling anyone though, I know she’s not enjoying it any more than me. She raises her fork half way to her mouth and freezes. Bits of potato skin are stuck to her teeth. A flake of salmon falls back on her plate with a quiet slap.
“Shhh,” she hisses.
“What?” My chair creaks as I turn to look around the kitchen.
“Do you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That scratching.”
“There’s no mouse.”
“Just listen.” I hold my breath and listen. Rain crackles on the pavement outside. Mrs. Grant next door is watching a repeat of *The X-Factor* with the volume way up because of her hearing aid. A car drives past the house and honks the horn. “I don’t hear anything,” I say.
“It’s stopped.”
“Yeah. Ok.”
She slams her fork down. “There is a fucking mouse, Tom. A big, dirty, hairy mouse and he’s in our kitchen. You always do this.” She’s standing up now, slapping the table and rattling the plates. Slight bulges of flesh squeeze out from underneath the arms of her dress.
“What, Sally? What do I always do?”
“You just…jesus. Just get the fucking traps. I’m going to bed.” She pulls out her earrings and stamps out of the kitchen. The house rumbles as she goes upstairs and slams the bedroom door. The food on her plate is only half finished. The candles drip thin, opaque wax onto the tablecloth. I take another sip of wine. I pick up my fork. The house is silent.
Then I hear it, small and slow and quiet. A tiny little scratch. Well fuck, maybe there is a mouse. Sally is crying upstairs. I’ll get the traps tomorrow.
Catching a mouse is not a simple matter. You have lots of choices to make: Do you want snap traps, or catch and release, or poison? Each has its pros and cons: Snaps are messy, catch and release are a hassle, and poison could mean that you have a dead, rotting mouse corpse in your wall. It could stay there for weeks, stinking and festering with disease. I can picture Sally whining about it already, telling me that I can’t even catch a mouse without fucking it up.
Up at the B&Q, I walk up and down the aisles trying to find all the stuff I need. It feels like a maze and I can’t find the mouse traps anywhere. After a while I find someone wearing one of those horrible orange shirts wandering around looking aimless and bored. She’s about sixteen at a guess, with purple tips in her blonde hair.
“Excuse me,” I say, “where are the mouse traps?”
“What?” She says it like I just woke her up.
“Mouse traps?”
“Eh, yeah?”
“Do you have any?”
“Like, in the store?”
“….yes.”
She sighs. “This way.” She turns like she’s about to fall over, hands shoved in her pockets. I follow her. She’s wearing tight blue jeans that sit low on her waist and fit to the curve of her legs. Her shirt comes loose as she walks, uncovering a cluster of small, black stars tattooed just above her hip. She trails a finger over them absently, tracing out the shape of the ink infused into her skin. Her fingernails are painted the same shade of purple as her hair. A bruise on her arm sits just below the elbow, smoky and yellow and pink.
“Mouse traps,” she says.
“Hm? Oh, thanks.”
I’m not quick enough. She catches me looking at her and sneers. “You should use the catch and release ones. The other ones are cruel.”
“Yeah, I think I’m just going to go the traditional route.”
“Pfft. I bet you eat meat too.” The teenage look of disgust on her face is magnificent.
“Actually, I’m a vegetarian.”
“Whatever.” She walks back down the aisle, leaving me in a cloud of vanilla perfume. I watch her swagger away, graceful and belligerent like a house cat. As she turns the corner she looks back and catches me staring again. A middle finger flips out of her pocket and she’s gone.
I pick out the traps, and go to gather the rest of the things I need. Then I get a bunch of lilacs from the garden centre and head to the checkout. Beside the tills there’s a stand full of greeting cards. I get one that says Happy Anniversary, and think about getting an I’m Sorry as well, but it’s too expensive to get both.
“Did you get the traps?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, what you have to do is…”
“I know what to do.”
“Oh. I just thought that…”
“I’m not an idiot.”
I put the shopping bag down on the kitchen table and take out the supplies one by one: Steel wool, caulking, traps, peanut butter and chocolate. I left the card and the flowers locked up in the boot of the car.
“What are the chocolate and peanut butter for?” Sally asks.
“Bait,” I say.
“I got cheese for bait.”
“Well if you’d done any research you’d know that the cheese thing is a myth.”
She looks at me, just like the girl at the shop. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Talk to me like I’m an idiot.”
“That’s…just leave it.”
“No, what is it? Come on, say it.”
“I’m going to set the traps.” I start unwrapping the plastic packaging.
“Fine.” She sits down at the table and starts flipping through her copy of *Heat* magazine. She’s not reading, she just wants to flip the pages. She wants *me* to know that she’s flipping the pages.
“I know what I’m doing,” I say.
“I know.”
“Good then.”
“Good.”
I’m not expecting it to work very quickly. You have to wait for a couple of days before you get anything. They’re night animals, mice, so the best time to set up traps is right before you go to bed. It’s late, maybe two in the morning and I’m in the living room watching the Adult Channel with the volume down. Sally went to bed right after dinner again. I didn’t get a chance to give her the flowers, so I’ll just have to be one more day late. There’s a quiet snap in the kitchen, like a chicken bone being broken in two. I pull myself up off the couch and rearrange my erection so it won’t be as uncomfortable.
The lights are off in the kitchen and the door squeaks open. Grey moonlight shines in through the window. One of the traps has sprung. Tiny brown specks stain the linoleum. In the stillness I hear a scrabbling noise and a pathetic, distressed little squeak. A mouse is caught in the trap, its back legs crushed. It isn’t dead.
I crouch down beside the mouse and watch him squirm for a minute. He’s in so much pain. His little jaw works and chews at the air. His paws claw desperately at the floor, trying to run away from the terror behind him. His little mouse brain can’t comprehend what has happened.
Poor mouse. I can’t leave him like that. I don’t know what to do. Should I just leave him and let him die slowly? Maybe I could fill the sink with water and hold him under. I think about feeling his wriggling little body in my hand fighting to get to the surface, his movements getting slower and slower until his lungs fill with water and the life just diffuses out of him. I don’t think I could do that.
There’s a meat cleaver on a magnetic strip on the wall. Sally bought the set from Ikea a few months ago. We only ever use one of the knives, but she says it makes the place look more like a real kitchen, where real people cook real food and actually talk to each other. I snatch the cleaver off the wall, and get a chopping board from the sink. It’s still dirty with tomato juice and withered salad leaves.
The mouse wriggles and squeals as I pick up the trap. It’s so loud. My fingers brush against his fur. It’s not coarse and wiry like I thought it would be. It’s soft, like the tiny hairs on the nape of your neck. I put the trap down on the board and try to line up the cleaver. He’s squirming too much though, so I hold his head in between my thumb and forefinger. Then he stops. He isn’t fighting any more. A soft, pink tongue licks my skin. Black, glassy eyes look right at me. He’s quiet now. Calm. I stroke the top of his head. “Shhh,” I say, “it’s ok. You’re ok.” I push down on the knife as hard as I can. There’s a crunch. I hadn’t expected the crunch.
Thin, opaque fluid flows out from under the blade, staining the wood. This is what had to happen. It’s not my fault.
The door opens and Sally comes into the kitchen wearing the horrible frilly pink dressing gown that her mother gave her last Christmas. She switches on the light. Under the fluorescent bulbs the blood looks dark, almost black.
“What’s going on?”
“It was…”
“What are you doing with that knife?”
“The mouse was hurt.”
“Did you get it?”
“I had to. It would have been cruel to leave him.”
“Oh, that’s disgusting. Put it in the bin and disinfect that chopping board.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Jesus Tom. You’re shaking.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s just a mouse.”
“I thought I could just…”
“Just what?”
“This isn’t my fault.”
She looks at me, eyes narrowed with confusion. I imagine her taking off the dressing gown, her skin prickling in the cold. I imagine stroking the soft delicate hairs at the nape of her neck, her eyes looking at me with desire. I imagine making love with her again. There is no stirring in the pit of my stomach. My breath is slow and shallow. I don’t remember how I’m supposed to feel.
I gather up the pieces and throw them in the bin. It’s a humiliating end.
My breath mists in the night air as I unlock the car to get the lilacs. They’re frozen solid, petals brittle and cracked with frost. There are no cars around, so I walk along the white line in the middle of the road. I don’t know where I’m going. Away, maybe. I keep thinking about the mouse, and his last little squeak before the knife crushed his neck. That was me. I did that. I’ve never killed anything before. I keep reminding myself to make sure I don’t forget.
Headlights flood the road in front of me as a car screeches to a halt. The driver leans on the horn. I turned around, shielding my eyes from the glare and stumble to one side. The engine roars as the car speeds off into the dark. Two glowing red lights shrink away, getting smaller and smaller. I put the flowers down in the middle of the road, like I’m putting them on a grave. Maybe someone else will find them. Maybe they’ll get hit by a car and explode into a million tiny pieces.
A few flakes of snow begin to fall. Within minutes the road is a clear white. Everything is silent. My footprints are made and covered again in seconds, like they had never been there. I hold my breath and I listen to the crackling snowfall. When it stops I will breathe again.
David Peter Bernard was born in Ireland and currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He completed an MA in creative writing at University College Dublin in 2011. He writes short stories and flash fiction and he makes really good coffee.
“I saw the mouse again last night.”
“There’s no mouse.”
“Yes there is. I saw him.”
“If there was a mouse it would scratch at the walls and it would stink.”
“Just get some traps.”
“Fine. There’s no mouse.”
“There is a mouse. When are you going to get the traps?”
Sally overreacts. She can never be calm about anything.
“Tomorrow” I say.
We’re sitting at the table tonight, instead of in the TV room. Dinner is grilled salmon with organic asparagus and boiled new potatoes. No butter, no sauce, no salt. It’s part of Sally’s diet, which means it’s part of my diet. I make up for it by getting a breakfast roll on the way to work. She doesn’t know about that.
I wish I had remembered it was tonight. I’m on the back foot now. Sally went to a lot of trouble with the dinner all the same. She’s wearing her nice dress and her fancy earrings and I’m sitting here in a pair of torn up old jeans and work boots. It’s a special night. The big One Zero. We’re using the good plates and everything, the ones we got from Sally’s mother for a wedding present. Neither of us speak. Sally makes little yummy noises every now and then. She’s not fooling anyone though, I know she’s not enjoying it any more than me. She raises her fork half way to her mouth and freezes. Bits of potato skin are stuck to her teeth. A flake of salmon falls back on her plate with a quiet slap.
“Shhh,” she hisses.
“What?” My chair creaks as I turn to look around the kitchen.
“Do you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That scratching.”
“There’s no mouse.”
“Just listen.” I hold my breath and listen. Rain crackles on the pavement outside. Mrs. Grant next door is watching a repeat of *The X-Factor* with the volume way up because of her hearing aid. A car drives past the house and honks the horn. “I don’t hear anything,” I say.
“It’s stopped.”
“Yeah. Ok.”
She slams her fork down. “There is a fucking mouse, Tom. A big, dirty, hairy mouse and he’s in our kitchen. You always do this.” She’s standing up now, slapping the table and rattling the plates. Slight bulges of flesh squeeze out from underneath the arms of her dress.
“What, Sally? What do I always do?”
“You just…jesus. Just get the fucking traps. I’m going to bed.” She pulls out her earrings and stamps out of the kitchen. The house rumbles as she goes upstairs and slams the bedroom door. The food on her plate is only half finished. The candles drip thin, opaque wax onto the tablecloth. I take another sip of wine. I pick up my fork. The house is silent.
Then I hear it, small and slow and quiet. A tiny little scratch. Well fuck, maybe there is a mouse. Sally is crying upstairs. I’ll get the traps tomorrow.
Catching a mouse is not a simple matter. You have lots of choices to make: Do you want snap traps, or catch and release, or poison? Each has its pros and cons: Snaps are messy, catch and release are a hassle, and poison could mean that you have a dead, rotting mouse corpse in your wall. It could stay there for weeks, stinking and festering with disease. I can picture Sally whining about it already, telling me that I can’t even catch a mouse without fucking it up.
Up at the B&Q, I walk up and down the aisles trying to find all the stuff I need. It feels like a maze and I can’t find the mouse traps anywhere. After a while I find someone wearing one of those horrible orange shirts wandering around looking aimless and bored. She’s about sixteen at a guess, with purple tips in her blonde hair.
“Excuse me,” I say, “where are the mouse traps?”
“What?” She says it like I just woke her up.
“Mouse traps?”
“Eh, yeah?”
“Do you have any?”
“Like, in the store?”
“….yes.”
She sighs. “This way.” She turns like she’s about to fall over, hands shoved in her pockets. I follow her. She’s wearing tight blue jeans that sit low on her waist and fit to the curve of her legs. Her shirt comes loose as she walks, uncovering a cluster of small, black stars tattooed just above her hip. She trails a finger over them absently, tracing out the shape of the ink infused into her skin. Her fingernails are painted the same shade of purple as her hair. A bruise on her arm sits just below the elbow, smoky and yellow and pink.
“Mouse traps,” she says.
“Hm? Oh, thanks.”
I’m not quick enough. She catches me looking at her and sneers. “You should use the catch and release ones. The other ones are cruel.”
“Yeah, I think I’m just going to go the traditional route.”
“Pfft. I bet you eat meat too.” The teenage look of disgust on her face is magnificent.
“Actually, I’m a vegetarian.”
“Whatever.” She walks back down the aisle, leaving me in a cloud of vanilla perfume. I watch her swagger away, graceful and belligerent like a house cat. As she turns the corner she looks back and catches me staring again. A middle finger flips out of her pocket and she’s gone.
I pick out the traps, and go to gather the rest of the things I need. Then I get a bunch of lilacs from the garden centre and head to the checkout. Beside the tills there’s a stand full of greeting cards. I get one that says Happy Anniversary, and think about getting an I’m Sorry as well, but it’s too expensive to get both.
“Did you get the traps?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, what you have to do is…”
“I know what to do.”
“Oh. I just thought that…”
“I’m not an idiot.”
I put the shopping bag down on the kitchen table and take out the supplies one by one: Steel wool, caulking, traps, peanut butter and chocolate. I left the card and the flowers locked up in the boot of the car.
“What are the chocolate and peanut butter for?” Sally asks.
“Bait,” I say.
“I got cheese for bait.”
“Well if you’d done any research you’d know that the cheese thing is a myth.”
She looks at me, just like the girl at the shop. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Talk to me like I’m an idiot.”
“That’s…just leave it.”
“No, what is it? Come on, say it.”
“I’m going to set the traps.” I start unwrapping the plastic packaging.
“Fine.” She sits down at the table and starts flipping through her copy of *Heat* magazine. She’s not reading, she just wants to flip the pages. She wants *me* to know that she’s flipping the pages.
“I know what I’m doing,” I say.
“I know.”
“Good then.”
“Good.”
I’m not expecting it to work very quickly. You have to wait for a couple of days before you get anything. They’re night animals, mice, so the best time to set up traps is right before you go to bed. It’s late, maybe two in the morning and I’m in the living room watching the Adult Channel with the volume down. Sally went to bed right after dinner again. I didn’t get a chance to give her the flowers, so I’ll just have to be one more day late. There’s a quiet snap in the kitchen, like a chicken bone being broken in two. I pull myself up off the couch and rearrange my erection so it won’t be as uncomfortable.
The lights are off in the kitchen and the door squeaks open. Grey moonlight shines in through the window. One of the traps has sprung. Tiny brown specks stain the linoleum. In the stillness I hear a scrabbling noise and a pathetic, distressed little squeak. A mouse is caught in the trap, its back legs crushed. It isn’t dead.
I crouch down beside the mouse and watch him squirm for a minute. He’s in so much pain. His little jaw works and chews at the air. His paws claw desperately at the floor, trying to run away from the terror behind him. His little mouse brain can’t comprehend what has happened.
Poor mouse. I can’t leave him like that. I don’t know what to do. Should I just leave him and let him die slowly? Maybe I could fill the sink with water and hold him under. I think about feeling his wriggling little body in my hand fighting to get to the surface, his movements getting slower and slower until his lungs fill with water and the life just diffuses out of him. I don’t think I could do that.
There’s a meat cleaver on a magnetic strip on the wall. Sally bought the set from Ikea a few months ago. We only ever use one of the knives, but she says it makes the place look more like a real kitchen, where real people cook real food and actually talk to each other. I snatch the cleaver off the wall, and get a chopping board from the sink. It’s still dirty with tomato juice and withered salad leaves.
The mouse wriggles and squeals as I pick up the trap. It’s so loud. My fingers brush against his fur. It’s not coarse and wiry like I thought it would be. It’s soft, like the tiny hairs on the nape of your neck. I put the trap down on the board and try to line up the cleaver. He’s squirming too much though, so I hold his head in between my thumb and forefinger. Then he stops. He isn’t fighting any more. A soft, pink tongue licks my skin. Black, glassy eyes look right at me. He’s quiet now. Calm. I stroke the top of his head. “Shhh,” I say, “it’s ok. You’re ok.” I push down on the knife as hard as I can. There’s a crunch. I hadn’t expected the crunch.
Thin, opaque fluid flows out from under the blade, staining the wood. This is what had to happen. It’s not my fault.
The door opens and Sally comes into the kitchen wearing the horrible frilly pink dressing gown that her mother gave her last Christmas. She switches on the light. Under the fluorescent bulbs the blood looks dark, almost black.
“What’s going on?”
“It was…”
“What are you doing with that knife?”
“The mouse was hurt.”
“Did you get it?”
“I had to. It would have been cruel to leave him.”
“Oh, that’s disgusting. Put it in the bin and disinfect that chopping board.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Jesus Tom. You’re shaking.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s just a mouse.”
“I thought I could just…”
“Just what?”
“This isn’t my fault.”
She looks at me, eyes narrowed with confusion. I imagine her taking off the dressing gown, her skin prickling in the cold. I imagine stroking the soft delicate hairs at the nape of her neck, her eyes looking at me with desire. I imagine making love with her again. There is no stirring in the pit of my stomach. My breath is slow and shallow. I don’t remember how I’m supposed to feel.
I gather up the pieces and throw them in the bin. It’s a humiliating end.
My breath mists in the night air as I unlock the car to get the lilacs. They’re frozen solid, petals brittle and cracked with frost. There are no cars around, so I walk along the white line in the middle of the road. I don’t know where I’m going. Away, maybe. I keep thinking about the mouse, and his last little squeak before the knife crushed his neck. That was me. I did that. I’ve never killed anything before. I keep reminding myself to make sure I don’t forget.
Headlights flood the road in front of me as a car screeches to a halt. The driver leans on the horn. I turned around, shielding my eyes from the glare and stumble to one side. The engine roars as the car speeds off into the dark. Two glowing red lights shrink away, getting smaller and smaller. I put the flowers down in the middle of the road, like I’m putting them on a grave. Maybe someone else will find them. Maybe they’ll get hit by a car and explode into a million tiny pieces.
A few flakes of snow begin to fall. Within minutes the road is a clear white. Everything is silent. My footprints are made and covered again in seconds, like they had never been there. I hold my breath and I listen to the crackling snowfall. When it stops I will breathe again.
David Peter Bernard was born in Ireland and currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He completed an MA in creative writing at University College Dublin in 2011. He writes short stories and flash fiction and he makes really good coffee.
