It was seven o'clock when the doorbell rang. I was just getting dressed for dinner. The sun was setting quickly for the season it was. The horizon slipped into the belly of blackness with more haste than I could slip on two stockings.
The entryway proved unlit and unwelcome, as the air whistled warnings, and edged on the door to open wide and make way for cold ghosts. I looked up the driveway, and down the back yard, only to wonder where my bell ringer had run. Of course, he stood just before me, too near to the ground.
My shoulders had shrugged entirely, and all wonder had caught wing to wind. I was sure to return to my affairs indoors, and my torso was privy to pivot, when a high pitch note hit the lobe of my ear, at the very last available minute. It was a squeak squeaking weakly from the reaches of my feet. My eyes searched low and lower, I squinted, and squatted, as the squeaks grew clearer, then plopped I on my bottom, and bent even nearer.
He was furious, with nothing more than the threshold holding him back. He peeked over with bursts and lunges, and promises of death. Curses and calamities hurled from his lungs as high as his breath could spit them. Once he'd realized that I was listening, I already flicked him.
"Oh! You're home, are you?", the mouse mocked my digit. "I looked all around, didn't see you anywhere", he added while twirling his whiskers, untimid.
The tiny attitude made puny impact in comparison to it's capturing cuteness . "How did you ring the doorbell, Mr Mouse?", I adored. The mouse sucked his teeth for a reserved crumb of patience, and squeaked determinedly through the biases of culture.
"My resources are the least of your concerns, my lady. I come to take claim of a head!" His mouse brows raised, as to lure suspense. "I come.." He paused, lengthening his spine to sniff the brewing electricity, "For The Pope!"
The black beady eyes behind the threshold popped wide. The teeny feet scurried and inch in retreat before bravery snared and rerooted the rodent to identify the enemy he sought to defeat. "Her!", he pointed behind me, so I turned. The Pope was perched prettily on the staircase to my quarters. She bowed and meowed graciously, as cats learn to do, but Mr Mouse was too keen for cat etiquette. He whispered then, trembling and chilled, "She's a murderer. I have right to avenge my father."
"I want to sit where The Pope's sitting", Olive yawned, waking her limbs with stretched strides down the steps, creaking each board with a strut. "I'm a cat too", she reminded us all, flashing her fuzzy marshmallow cow coat. The Pope could sense Olive's intrusive approach through vibrations in her bones, and sulphur through her nostrils.
The mouse whispered more allegations of horrors, collecting the courage to collect his reward. One more word needed not be heard, for as brisk as the breeze I discarded every squeak as lies, and slanderous jokes.
Olive descended on The Pope like a blimp falling limp, leaking gases. Anyone could have predicted what's next, for the door stood wide open, an inside pet's test. One cat bolted invisibly into the night, and one cow settled hungrily into the body heat left behind. "Golly, that's speed! I love you! Come back!", mooed my marshmallow, as the mouse and I braced to chase after. "Can I come too? I'll come too", Olive trotted in tow as we raced for The Pope's tail.
We criss crossed vast meadows, the mouse slipped under fences, as I hurtled, and stumbled, and dirtied my dress. The trail eluded my humanly sense. There were no clues to follow in the mist, or the grass, but I followed the mouse, and Olive was last.
Mud caked my slippers, and I paced with a pant. Olive flailed her flippers round layers of fat. The critter that led us dashed this way and that, with no indication of breaking a sweat. We came to a forest when he took his first rest, and smugly implored that I desert the quest.
"Don't fret now, fair madame, you're tousled and soggy. Hurry back to your house while the wolves are still groggy. Allow me my justice, I've no quarrel with you. I'll slit the cat's throat before you've sipped your stew."
The forest wall promised of shadow bound terrors. A blanket of nightmares, a curtain of uncertain foreboding and fear. The creatures beyond had no names or apparel. Beasts, blobs, and wraiths, ravenous and feral. How brave The Pope to breach such waters. I prayed no danger reached her collar, and vowed to save my feline daughter by any means of feat or barter.
"You'll never kill her. You know that, right? She'd spill your guts with just one bite. You're cute, it's true, but The Pope is much cuter. If I were you, I'd too want to shoot her", I lashed as I buried my frock in my bloomers.
He waved off my words with impudent flak. Smoothing his fur, he pridefully laughed, "Stop rhyming, this business is not for your pleasure! I'll sever her head, and stuff it with feathers! I'll mount it with toothpicks atop of my mantle. My children will drum her dry tongue with their rattles! Your beauty, nor begging shall sway my resolve. Now shoo, my dear lady. Go play with your dolls."
He strummed at my heartstrings like a rat in an afghan. Any former trepidations towards the forest had been trumped by the very audacity of his perceptions. I snidely asked him the question, "How exactly to you exact to decapitate a cat?"
"The same way I pushed your bell button, my lovely. With vengeance, and first dibs on this week's rubbish."
"Look, mommy! Rubbish! I found it!", bubbled Olive over a half eaten banana.
The mouse turned up his butt to her, and strutted tenaciously toward the tapestry of trees. I cast aside caution, and let my conscience do the walking.
"I'll be right behind you.. nmm nmm.. in a minute, nmm.. My blood sugar..", Olive cheered with fruited encouragement, as she watched me disappear into the inkwell of darkness.
I kept to the mouses heels nearly blindly, allowing my vision adapt to the absence of starlight. Deeper and deeper we crept ahead without speaking. My reflexes tense, and wits all about me. Alert of the faintest echoes and moans in a cacophony of splitting twigs, cracking leaves, and the clicking of something unknown. There were claw marks etched in the bark of a maple who's roots had grown over the bulk of an outdated lap table. Other trees revealed signs of overuse from climbing things battering their branches with food.
The constance of clicking conducted into music. A siren that swam to the depths of the spirit, alarming my vulnerability and need. It's rhythm, a beating of subliminal direction, an encryption of maps to my treasure. I listened to decipher it's meaning, and began to here riffs of familiar sounds. "A-a-a-a, puh-puh-puh-puh", huffed like a train on the rails of a click symphony. The verses repeated, nothing added or taken away. Tempting with intentions of expressing something whole, by sharing a fraction of two syllables.
Relief washed over the suspense of the chorus when The Pope presented on the floor of forest. I gestured at her to come to me, but she was apprehensive as I've know her to be. I tiptoed more closely, wiggling my fingers low.
"Don't touch that, you twit!", the mouse nipped my toe. The Pope dissipated like a dusting of midsummer snow. In her place was a white woven silk bed of webbing, splayed vertically, diaphanous, and glistening with dew. Dozens more materialized as the song receded to a baseline of disorganized clicks. It seemed the east side of the forest was a metropolis of thin fabric patches, constructed trunk to trunk, meticulous lattice works of malice.
"What are they?", I awed with lingering entrancement.
"Precisely what they look like, gullible girl. Trapps. Though the devils which weaved them have no sound for "tr". Be careful not to stare, or they'll draw you in like a fly. One of them may not be able to snag a fool large as the likes of you, but if one drop of it's poison finds your skin, you'll be trolling the forest in circles for the remainder of your days. Due north, now. The cat can't have gone much farther. Her scent glands are pungent with depravity", he improvised, matter of factly.
I was shaken by how willing I'd been to hand myself over to doom. How fragile my mind that when put to the test, bends at the whim of deception. I amended to be intuitive thereon, and steadied north, with the wits about me expanded tenfold. Cackles in the canopy couldn't taunt me, nor the thickening of fog sweep me astray. I would rescue my skittish kitten, or die as some thing's prey.
Mr Mouse didn't flinch, he fixed on his target. His nerves held firm, despite the escalating pulse of anticipation. The dream which he bated cradled at the cusp of reality. His gratification sparsely retained when he pointed, "There! Just beyond the barricade of bike frames and slinkies. There's passage through the tricycles if you suck in your teats."
I hadn't a portion of patience to question the origin of this site. The border of some asylum and graveyard alike. I mastered the passage with ease of my size, and emerged into a land of litter and mice.
Mr Mouse reveled with accomplished delight. "Aha! You've been had, you dense dung beetle! Bind her, and gag her, and stab her with needles! The cat was but bait to a greater betrayal, you absently brained homosapion snail!
"All cats jet through doors unclosed. What set her course was your repose. You could have lapped her round your lawn, but at my tact, her path was drawn. You could have drove her anywhere, but who drove who, you obtuse mare?"
Crowds of his comrades bound my ankles in chords and chains. The pope meowed from a dangling parakeet cage.
"But if she didn't kill your father, why keep her here!?", I begged Mr Mouse, to which he declared, "She did kill my father, not that I care. She's here as a hostage, you'll do as we say. Unless you want her noggin filleted. I'll let you chose the marinade.. Now take her to Moussan Moussein!"
The mob of mice led me, chanting this name. There were piles of refuse purposefully arranged as caverns and bridges where worker mice slaved. Several paces after, was a flooding of cups. Yogurt, and jello, empty and crushed. I waded as far as I could without retching. It rose as I treaded, and streaked me in stench. It peeked at it's climax, furnished with torches, and the seat where Moussan reigned, vermin proportioned.
My waist was too buried to tear him an orifice. The containers compressed me like a corseted blowfish. I gasped and splashed in the trash with a panic.The filthy rats had me as wrapped as a sandwich, pitted at the base of this pyramid of plastic. It was endless in width, with the height of a cabin.
"Quiet, flatulent damsel! Your Majesty wishes to introduce himself!", Mr Mouse ordered, and cordially knelt.
"I am Moussan Moussein, the mouse of Mouse Mountain, son of the gods, sorcerer of peace! Kneel and pledge your loyalty to my throne!", he bellowed well practiced, with arms akimbo.
"I'm pleasantly immobilized by your pile at present, but thanks", I retorted his high expectations.
"You are immobilized by my mountain", Moussan opened his arms to his kingdom, demonstrating it's vastness before continuing. "..something bigger than yourself. The real present is your presence. Thank a veteran"
"Ahhhh", reflected his minions with admiration.
"Silence!", commanded Moussan, and he was obeyed. "Bring forth the Visionary!"
Mice scurried and hustled to posts and began pulling pulleys. A quarter hour later, a lawnmower came into view. An entire lawnmower, lowering from some unseen anchor in the distant sky with the momentum of stale sap. It hung from scarves, tied hankies, and smiley face britches, fastened to it's handle with rubber band bracelets. Fastened as well, was a gay feathered dreamcatcher, swinging gently in the gap of the sidebars secured to the frame of the machine. The busy mice stressed and herniated to maneuver the exuberant weight of the motor. They fixed their raggedy ropes tight in place when the dreamcatcher came parallel to their leader at the tip of the mountain.
Spread eagle against the framework of feathers and beads was the Visionary. An old frail gray furry thing strapped flat in a flamboyant crucifixion, as the centerpiece of an ill crafted design. His eyes were milk white and frozen, and his face was fashioned with stripes.
"Visionary! I have done what you've asked, I have brought to you the unvarnished broad!", Moussan showed me off to the old lawnmower ornament.
The Visionary hmm..ed and hmm..ed, inspectively, and concluded, "Yes, her profile is quite plain.. Tell me, broad, how does one as blank as yourself remain unchanged while your neighbors fall victim? Hm? Even if by some expert luck you've kept safe from the mark of the Flagfilder, you would be plagued by it's mutants, your fellow man, prospering in shared evolution. No?" He delayed for reaction, then disappointedly added, "Do you have any idea what's going on in the world??"
Whatever this was, it was weirdly extravagant. If rubbish was their poison, these weirdlings could have it. "Could you just tell me what you want, so I can have my cat?", I answered, impatiently awaiting demands.
"I want you to embrace what's happening to everyone else. I want to see it on your face, as you see it on mine. Join your brothers. Surrender yourself to the Flagfilder", the Visionary hissed with sublime conviction.
"When your powers combine, I will become captain of this planet!", bragged the mouse of Mouse Mountain, like a miniature mad man.
"Yes.. And I helped", the elder one more or less elated.
I ignored their sacred exchanges of brilliance. "I don't know what a flagfilder is, but I'm sure it's just as great as everything else you've made in this village."
Moussan took the compliment as a cue to describe, "It is a misunderstood being. An artist, starving, and sensitive. It will transform the nothingness that is yourself into a glorious and angelic model of compassion and progressive thinking. It will bring color to your dim expression, and reason to your spacious existence. It will be a blessing for everyone alike. Do something that matters for once in your life."
A bone rattling hum bellowed from the depths of the Visionary's diaphragm. His old eyes twinkled with the torch flames of the mountain as his toothless lips spouted tears of scarlet. Sounds of rustling brush and junk rumbled in gusts of thundering air. The pitch of the humming raised with each tear to a frequency that deafened, and debilitated the nerves.
Behind me, the cups of the far bottom edge of the mountain were parting like water, being whisked left or right, clearing a clean defile that was on route to release me from the grips of the landfill, and feed me to the Flagfilder. My only hope was that I might be freed with a moment to run, and a chance at The Pope. But she was heavily guarded by terrorists with icepicks and a like for the looks of swiss cheese. I'd give anything to trade her place with Olive.
My imagination spiraled with worries about baby seals, and hepatitis. Army wives, amputees, anemia, and abortions. Alien, and queer afflictions of legends and myth ravaged my innocent misconception. From what hell must such maladies spawn? Every thought I forged was of new horror, crisis, and remorse. Thoughts I'd never choose to explore. The obstacles of a million maniacs fought to be foremost on my agenda.
Where was the Flagfilder? I strained to comprehend. The storm it brought was upon me, and the parting of garbage was nearly plowed to completion. There were mice, and their mountain, and their city, and my kitty.. The last scrap of trash that shackled me flew magically over the lawnmower and the elderly blood hummer who was entranced in religious invocation. A path of opportunity laid open, tempting and threatening, bombarding my mind with guilty repercussions, and an unusual sympathy for underprivileged philosophers. Suddenly I was afraid for everyone and everything that ever was or will be. What would they do without me? I had to make a move. My muscles paralyzed, and my cognizance petrified stiff as a Christmas possum. I sprinted internally, looping the halls of my ineptness, as the wind whipped it's welcoming party at my motionless vessel like a flagellum. I saw no sign of an entering artist, until it's slime soaked the cloth of my garments.
It had a hold of me. It's nose, only hairs distant from mine, oozing sticky liquid that streamed down my thighs. It snarled, and chortled, and hissed sweet syrupy nothings. It's pupils were hallow, they blinked and smiled, communicating feelings that I've only dreamed of in private. It had oily scales that were chipped and unhealed, and bruises on each tentacle, with suctions popped and frilled, each with a voice that winced as it gripped. It's flesh was a melting of man and zen candles, a rainbow of sickness and health. It was a hideous monster. A creature created not like myself.
I couldn't tell if I was floating, or being lifted by my coiled limbs. A jaw unhinged from the crevice of it's malformed chin, revealing a tangle of rich colored tongues, slithering and moistening in the ooze between us. Four of the tongues stuck forward, with bristle length tastebuds sponged with pigmented saliva. Colors that reflected the Visionary's stripes.
How I yearned to earn those tongues, to be slathered in solutions, and branded with my deeds. The burdens of the world that boiled in my soul screamed to be soothed and smothered. I wished my past self to be forgotten, and the person who the Flagfilder had chosen to embrace to preserve for eternity in perfect trusted grace.
The first tongue brushed upward against the right edge of my face, tingling, and permeating my pores with esteem. The second was warmer, wiser, and informed, sashing me with answers to questions and concerns. The third lick slid up, to the left of the second. This color quenched and refreshed, and motivated every atom. Puzzles were coming together with trembles and shudders, and foreign awareness.
When the last brush ended, kissing my left temple, I pulsed like a pustule, and bloomed flower petals. Peace was conquering war, diseases were discovering profitless cures, deserts of dust would sprout seedlings of orchards, the wheels were turning, I could sense it in my ora.
A utopia of ecstasy awaited in the future. It took cunning, and force, and sorcery to awaken, and rise me from the selfish sleep of uninterrupted routine. Prior to this day, I would have never related to the torment and shame across the nations, but in a snip of a night, like lightning I was struck with incendiary insight, and armed with the power of responsibility. If every man, woman, and child were given this knowledge, there would be no more famine or melancholy.
The ways of the mice were divisive and radical, yet eminent to the necessities of a desperately ailed planet. I was healthy and unscathed, the only payment for my enlightenment was a moment of my time. Moussan, though repulsive, and arrogantly surfaced, was a dedicated advocate of empathy, who's consummate philanthropy surpassed conventional technique and integrity. It was by no coincidence that he needed me, I knew that I had to help more in some way.
It sent shivers down my spine. If I could give news to even one friend or neighbor, they would follow my example, and educate their own peers. Evil and anguish would be relayed into extinction..
The Flagfilder abandoned me, and took with it it's weather. It was silent in the forest, and I was alone. I supposed that I walked free from Mouse Mountain in the midsts of smitten ponderance, and wandered a length without seeing outside of myself. All was well, a far away arch of twin twisted trees beaconed like a lamp at the finish of a labyrinth, leading to luminous grass with no canopy. Once I've exited through the forest, I could start my way home, and share with anyone I crossed the effortlessness of uniting for a cause..
Gunfire cracked, jolting me aback and unconscious.
Olive was snugly crammed in a gap between tricycles during my capture in the mountain, and encounter with the Flagfilder's artisan tongues. She shimmied and wheezed as she witness my transition from peach to a masterpiece spectrum of heaven.
She heaved, and flopped out of the vice grip of trikes as I was staggering from the garbage mound in a stupor of self delight. She scrambled to gain her footing, and idled to the side, crashing into the brace of the cage where The Pope dangled her life. The cage teetered one way, then toppled the other, disassembling upon impact with the ground of the mouse lair. Olive excused herself, and offered apologies for her clumsiness, beginning with The Pope, and then the terrorists. The Pope wasn't sorry, she dove into a soup of ping-pongs with heartbeats that had to be slewed. She bit, and tossed, and paddled them with her paws. Olive gave them a try, but they were all raw.
I was oblivious to the commotion while I was droning over a low section of ten-speeds in the mouse city's perimeter wall.
The Pope slashed, and gashed, and disemboweled any foul pest with hesitant incentive to seek shelter. Olive's weak rumbling stomach could hardly bear it. As the massacre sprayed and sprinkled around her, she fantasized mounds of nibbles pouring into her bowl at home. If only she had those nibbles and bowl, and the manual skills to combine them both. She frantically scanned the parameter, realizing that I was now absent.
So, she consorted with her sister, who was poking at a twitcher like a boring stick of squealing asparagus. They agreed that the mice had exhausted of fun, and with a nudge to Olive's jiffy puffed bum, they returned to the woods, and strategically split up.
An annoying sensation hoisted me from a place of vague strangeness, and I woke laying thoughtless on the forest floor.
"Are you ok, mommy?", Olive asked as she sanded my face with laps. "Am I shot?", I slurred, unsure of the blurry recollections stirring in the slushes of the night. Olive assured, "You were shot at, but not shot. They missed you, thank gosh."
"Why would anyone do such a thing??", I checked all my pockets for loss.
Olive lapped the last speck of paint from my mask, and gagged before explaining how I should be dead. "A hunter came into the forest from there", she referred to the arch trees that I intended to exit. "Then, you attacked him, going, 'bladuh glabba bla bla', so he shot at you, and you collapsed on a rock."
I felt the back of my head, it was lumped and it throbbed. I had no memory of a hunter or spouting gibberish. I would never try to hurt a fellow citizen. Would I? No. No, I remembered I was going to help people. That's right. I'd already begun saving the world with my.. love?? No, I was really doing something, I was changing everything, I was.. I was..
The cat-lapped clarity was embarrassingly lame. I'd done absolutely nothing, and the world was exactly the same. I didn't plant any seeds, or remedy sadness, or cradle an orphan, or battle for peace, or make anything happen, or anything cease. What made me believe I'd accomplished such feats?
"The Flagfilder..", I whispered in sad disbelief.
"Flagfawhat?", Olive answered, smoothing her chops with her hooves.
I sat up to clue her in, as my dizziness subdued. "The monster who's saliva you just ate from my face, who licked me at the mountain for Moussan Moussein."
She frowned with confusion, and mooed the story as she knew it. "I didn't see any monster, mommy. You were talking to two mice, and then you said you were flying. Next thing, you were fingering moldy fruit gravy out of a pile of garbage, smearing it from your chin to your forehead, and it sounded like it made you happy. It tasted awful expired, but I felt faint waiting for you to wake up. You're so silly."
How could that be? The Flagfilder, when I was with it, was the most physically potent encounter I've ever permitted. Were the tentacles, and tongues, and liquids all visions?..
My delicate princess!! Did I leave her imprisoned?? "The Pope! Is she with us?", I sprung like a cricket.
"Oh, she went on home so you don't have to worry about finding her anymore. It was smart plan. She seemed pretty sorry. You should probably feed us extra. Can we go now, mommy?", spoke Olive fondly.
"Not yet, Bessy" , I regretted to decide. "I'm going to the hospital for an MRI, and notifying the authorities to exterminate these mice."
At last, we left the forest through the passage of moonlight, hastening to warn of abduction, and ask if my lump could be shrunken. We followed an unpaved road for kilometers, while Olive complained for her blood sugar monitor. My clothes were a muddy and fermented offense, but my nose and cheeks were purrfectly softened. We treaded and kept one another from dozing. My bedtime was less than an hour approaching. The village ahead was that of our home, where there were plenty of medics and sworn constables.
We arrived to find no one. The outskirts were sleeping. So, we pressed on to the main street where officers frequented. The village we entered was not as I hoped. Buildings and busses were pillaged and smoking. "When had I last left the house?", I self scolded.
"The last time you left me was a fortnight or so. You should get out more. Fresh air important", my companion gladly disclosed my performance.
"Thanks for the advice, Olive. You're a real poet."
The town appeared evacuated. No law men were patrolling. What devastation had taken place was days or weeks unfolded. The hospital was looted, and closed for much repair. No one heard my agony, my lump was a matter of prayer. There was nothing to achieve by touring the disaster further. I was needed at home to let The Pope in, and serve her.
Olive and I reluctantly filed through the aftermath of the unknown violence. Then, as we treaded and perplexed, like an answer from above, the silhouette of a woman advanced from the rubble. She waved her hands, and I called to her aid. Then she came at me faster, and I saw her face. She was flagged, and she babbled, and grabbed for my flesh. Olive tossed me a shrapnel, and it found her chest. The woman dropped dead, and I pled for repentance. She wasn't as blessed as I'd been with the hunter. The Flagfilder's mask was a villainous wonder.
The Visionary's nonsensical speech repeated in my mind with affluent meaning. A plague took my neighbors, and painted them mutant. I was the only remaining plain human. It tore at my soul, but what could be fixed? The Pope was still waiting in the cold, safe, I wish. It was best that I tend to my own, while they lasted. The rest can't be prevented, it already happened.
Olive and I snuck on more slyly after that. Peeking around corners, covering our tracks, like fugitives hounded by viral detectives, until we were soundly inside our address.
The Pope was there, holding her location as promised. Olive hoorayed as I buttered her omelet.
The night lifted like vapor as I slept a firm ton, and by the next day, I had fresher diversions. For wherever there is suffering, contagions disperse, and I have no training in saving the world.
From then on, I loved The Pope ever greater, and never opened my door to a stranger. The village was reborn from the bricks of new fashion, and citizens returned with their children, and hashtags. But little did they learn from the lessons that brought them, and many were lost to infection quite often.
..But my kitties and I grew immune to those faces. We played, grinned, and groomed, and died of old ages.
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