A Mouse In This House
By Jim Marquez

(this piece, along with my two latest here, "Boogie" and "Blade Runner Kinda Night", are stories going into my new book "L.A. Bitch III: The Writer Strikes Back!" Due out early October. Also, this story is to be read at Artist Paul Whitehead's birthday party Oct 7th. He's the man that used to book Bukowski whenever he performed L.A. or Frisco)

I had to have been very drunk when this shit happened'�

When I walked into the kitchen in my house late at night one night I heard the scrape of plastic on the tile floor coming from the washroom near the back door.

Scrape!-Scrape!-Scrape!-Clunk! What the fuck is making that noise? Scrape!-Scrape!-Scrape!-Clunk! Something was hitting something else somewhere close by. Plastic-on-plastic violence of the highest order. This must be investigated!

But the only thing that was in the kitchen porch was the wastebasket. Something was thumping against it. Thump!-Thump!-Thump! Thump!-Thump!-Thump!

What the fuck is that? Where's my baseball bat? Where's my Japanese Kitana sword? Fuck that! Where's the can of RAID?! Maybe it's a giant roach trying to mate with the garbage can. Thump!-Thump!-Thump!

WHAT THE FUCK?!

I step into the porch area, yank the chain attached to the single bulb dangling above me, and look down. To the left of the wastebasket there is a mouse caught in a plastic mousetrap that I had set up under the sink God knows when. FOUR FEET AWAY!

That little fucker had got caught, but not all of him, and what he had left he used to drag that trap out from under the sink and march down the center of my kitchen floor, toward the back door, in what must have been a horrendous feat of strength and balls to get this far; not to mention pristine pain! Good Lord!

One of his arms/paws had been snared, and the rest of him was trying like mad to get him the fuck outta there.

Big fucking mouse too. Light brown fur, bug-eyed; he was wild, desperate. He wiggled and threw himself and the trap against the wastebasket in order to jar the trap loose. Smart little fucker. But it wouldn't go.

He used his legs to dig in and push out. But no go. He tried running in place. But, again, no go.

He stopped. He was breathing hard. I could see his little chest billowing, see his whiskers and face puffing, and odd, there was no blood considering that the trap was in the process of ripping his arm clean off in his attempts at escape. Other than that though he was fine.

Except for the eyes. You can always tell what a man or beast knows by what's in his eyes. He thrashed again, the trap bouncing off the floor and that's when he looked up at me. He left eye darted over my fat, red face, he was looking for a hand, relief, mercy, and he also seemed to be saying, I think he was saying, 'What the fuck are you looking at asshole?'�

I wondered how long it would take for him to die. How long before his petite body could not take anymore trauma before he had a mouse heart attack? Or, how long before he decided to say fuck it and let himself die right there on my washing room floor just inches from the back door, and freedom.

Maybe he knew he was dying, there was no way out, but he be damned if he was gonna kick it in this stinking human's house. No. Fuck that. If he was gonna go he wanted it to be his way, outside, in the fresh air, on the grass, in the fallen leaves, the trees. Fuck, he must've thought, I gotta get me the fuck outside, and, when he saw my dumb face towering over him he knew the game was up.

In the past I had tossed out many mice, though contrary to popular belief they are not nice. They rip into your bags of chips, leave their craps all over the sink and stove, root through your cookie jar if they're strong enough'�I've heard the death rattle of a mouse before while I've sat in the living room watching porn, and crying, and waited for them to croak it in the traps I had set for them but had never actually seen a mouse die.

And I didn't want him dropping dead on my floor tonight! Too goddamned many in my family have done just that. My Dad here, my aunt in her house, my mother nearly; Christ, enough was enough.

So I grabbed a broom, opened the back door and swept him out and away. He and the trap bounced down the steps and crashed at the bottom in one big noisy heap.

Figuring the fall would've jarred the mouse loose I rushed down the concrete steps, in the dark, but I had on the back porch light, and there he was. Still. That sonofabitch!

Still stuck, still struggling but now the trap was on its side and the mouse was laying on top of this thing; legs pin-wheeling in the open air, squeaking up a banshee's roar, and his eyes were livid, insane, accusing, pure evil, and he belched, 'WHAT-THE-FUCK-DID-YOU-JUST-DO-YOU-STUPID-COW?!'�

I prodded the trap and the mouse with my foot, pushed him a few inches across the ground, and he hollered, 'I'll fucking kill you! You hear me? If I get out of this fucking thing I'm gonna cut your fucking throat while you're fucking your mother you cocksucking child molester!'�

'Hey, whoa, whoa,'� I said, 'Watch the language, Mouse, there's Republicans in the audience tonight. We don't want to offend their way of life!'�

The fucking mouse refused to fucking die!

I said, 'Dude, tell me what it feels like, tell me how it feels to know you're dying.'�

He said, 'Fuck you!'�

'Oh come on, Mouse; be cool; what's going through your head?'�

'Get me outta this thing! This is your fault anyway!'� He spit back at me.

'Hey, Mouse, nobody invited you into my house.'�

'My arm is killing me! Help me! Don't just stand there scratching your balls! Fucking help me!'�

I picked up a rake now, raised it high, and scraped the mouse and the trap off my cement and onto a patch of dirt and grass where I keep the county trashcans.

It was a violent stroke of the rake, I was fed up.

The mouse and its trap skirted the dirt area, tumbling, kicking up tufts of grass and cart wheeled onto my driveway on the other side.

I scrambled over.

The trap was empty.

I looked back at the grassy area. Gone. Finally. The grass led to a scary-looking bush and tangled foliage.

The mouse from my house had made his escape.

I screamed, 'You better think twice now motherfucker, now you know better!'�

The mouse squeaked back from out of the darkness: 'Kiss my furry ass!'�

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