Requiem for a Mouse (17 page)

SASHA

Sasha listened to the gentle snoring of her family. She could tell them apart by only the sound of their sleep. Maverick snored deep, Prince’s sleep brought a slight whistling noise, Bolt would constantly shift in place, and Flower would murmur to herself.

Looking at the silver dots in the sky, she felt so small. With her fist clenched and trembling, her eyes swelled with tears. If there was ever a time she was allowed to feel weak, it was now. Her family depended on her to be strong, to be invincible. As long as they looked to her for strength, she wasn’t allowed this luxury.

But I’m only human.

The thought made her laugh. If Prince or even Bolt had said those words, she would’ve reprimanded them as harshly as she could. “Being human is enough to take the world,” she whispered to herself. The words sounded false. Because they were.

Sasha leaned her head back against the wall, allowing her tears to fall down her cheeks. Every time Bolt shifted in place, or Flower murmured a bit too loud, she would shut off her tears, quickly wiping them away.

Though she didn’t want to admit it, her kiss with Prince was more based on necessity than anything else. She loved him, but it wasn’t why she kissed him. It felt like she was falling into a bottomless abyss. She was just scrambling for something to grab onto.

Her throat closed. She got up and in a few quick steps, was outside. Just the distance away from her family brought her some relief, but also guilt. Distance should not feel good.

In the middle of the street, beneath the starry sky, she fell to her knees and sobbed. After all she promised them, in the end, she had failed. No matter what she told them, everything they had risked their lives had burned to ash. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt in years. Powerlessness.

It’s not fair!

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t summon her anger. She felt like she was little girl again, alone and scared. So she just cried.

She must have been crying for a while because when she stopped, her knees were sore and her arms ached for being held to her face for so long. Wiping away her tears, she pushed herself up. Her family didn’t need a little girl, they needed the invincible Sasha.

“You done?”

Sasha jumped up, twisting herself to peer into the darkness. Maverick stepped out from the shadows of their alley.

“You followed me?” Sasha asked defensively.

Maverick didn’t entertain her annoyance. “You didn’t go very far.”

And it was true, by simply stepping out of their home he had found her. Still, Sasha still felt the need to at least feign anger. “It’s not nice to spy on people.”

“If this was the other way around, you’d see no fault in yourself.”

This was also true. In fact, just this morning, she had done so with Prince. But now, the more pressing issue became what Maverick did with the information. “Look Mav –”

“I know, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks.” Her response was meek, unfitting for the Sasha they expected her to be. “I’m just tired. Don’t worry about me.”

Maverick stared at her as if seeing straight through her. His dark eyes missed nothing. “You might lie better than I do.”

“That’s because you only learned from the best. But I am the best.”

Maverick refused to give her even the façade of humor. “The best liar is a poor title to have. Do you want to know what I don’t like about you?”

“It’s fine, I don’t like how I snore either.”

Maverick shook his head, his lips curled in a sneer. “It’s what you did at Hawk’s Lair. It’s how you always expect us to be fine with you shouldering everything for our sake. You think that as long as you’re the only one that gets hurt, everything’s alright.”

The words may have sounded sweet at some other time, but not now, not when she had to be at her strongest. “I take the blows nobody else can,” she snapped back. “That’s how I saved you all.”

“But who will be there to save you?”

Sasha flicked her hair behind her. “You won’t have to worry about that. I’m invincible.” The words stung as she said them.

Maverick shook his head and turned to leave. “Don’t worry, I’ll save you. No matter what.” His voice grew deep, deeper than she had ever heard before. It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t remember from where. And then he was gone.

MAVERICK

Where am I?

The world was crimson, the color of fresh blood still pouring from the body. Maverick looked down at the pitch black street underneath him. He was knelt down. He had no recollection of getting here. Under him was a shadow without features, just a lump of black in the shape of a boy.

“I have a talent for this.” For the first time, Maverick realized that he didn’t have control over his body. It was him on top of the boy, but he was also the one watching. He watched himself spear his hand into the boy’s stomach, tearing apart the shadow like paper.

He flung up shreds of the shadow. He dismantled the boy, piece by piece. Though he wasn’t in control, he could feel the warm blood between his fingers, sticking underneath his nails. It pained him to claw through the boy’s flesh, ripping through muscle and organs. Even bones would be torn out and thrown into the air. But they all just became shreds of shadows evaporating into the red sky.

The boy’s muscles were tough. Each time he shoved his hand inside, his nails would break or come apart. It felt like a million needles jamming itself into his fingers, but he couldn’t stop himself. The expression on his body was unmistakable; his smile seemed to stretch off his face. Happiness.

The more he saw that happy face, the less strange the situation became. The red world, how he couldn’t control his body, and even the corpse turning to shadows right before his eyes, none of it mattered when he saw how happy he was.

“Why does this feel so good?” His body hugged itself, trembling as it threw its head back to guffaw. But from its eyes, tears were falling to the ground.

I don’t want to be a monster.

“I had forgotten how great this felt. Why did I forget?” Maverick looked into his own grief-stricken eyes and realized that he was the one being asked. He was being asked by his own body.

Because I’m human.
Maverick’s response came out in the form of an echo that surrounded this bloody world. He wasn’t even sure if anyone could actually hear him.

“We were more human when we enjoyed ourselves.” His body responded and approached him, covered in blood. Each step brought a new splash of gore.

We were disgusting.

“And now what are we?” It was strange, though his body was talking, his mouth never moved. It held its smile steady, its teeth so white it was almost blinding. “We feel nothing; we want nothing; we are nothing. We were more human as a monster.”

But this is ugly.

“We were never born to be beautiful.”

The red night evaporated away, replaced by the building he was raised in. It was the same cracked cement walls that he had once clawed his fingers bloody, trying to escape. Then there was the crowd he was so used to, shouting at him from all directions. They demanded blood.

On the ground with him was a boy. He found himself smashing the boy’s head against the cement with both hands. Every lunge brought with it the sickening sound of cracking bones. The boy had long ago lost the will to fight. All he had left was his screams, filling the room with its sharp dissonance. But it didn’t matter. The crowd wanted blood.

Stop.

“I can’t.” Maverick’s body said as he continued slamming the boy into the ground. Blood spilled out from the boy’s ear like someone pouring out a drink. “This is what he deserves!”

Please stop.

“You think I want this?” His body screamed at him. His arms moved mechanically, faster and faster until the boy’s head began collapsing inside itself. “But what choice do I have? He would’ve done the same to me. This is fair isn’t it? Isn’t this justice?”

Please!

“Tell me, what can we do? How can we be saved?”

Maverick had no answer to give. He just watched until the boy’s head cracked open to reveal the jumbled mess inside. It drained out of his head like porridge, splattering against the floor. The boy gave off one last wail before a gurgle bubbled out of his throat. Around him, the crowd cheered in a maddening frenzy.

“I did it.” Maverick watched his body chuckling to itself. It grabbed its head, a sick smile spread across its lips and it laughed.

“Yes!” His body screamed, its bloody fist in the air.

In a blink of an eye, the world changed once again. The concrete walls disappeared so that only the red lighting remained. The crowd morphed into shadows, their form slowly drifting away into the sky, as if they were being sucked into a vacuum. Maverick turned to face himself, tears of happiness falling from his chin.

God never meant for us to be human.

He had never seen himself so happy before. “So stop pretending.”

Maverick awoke in a cold sweat. He looked up at the sun peeking through the alley. It took only a single breath to calm him down. He pushed himself up, his face betraying nothing.

BOLT

Bolt had awoken up with a headache. He had gone to Flower for help who thought it as a perfect opportunity to send him on an errand. So after swallowing a gelatin pill, he took some money and headed to the market to buy everyone’s lunch. He found himself veering away from his path.

It’s just a detour.
He repeated the lie to himself, hoping that the more he voiced it, the truer it became. It wasn’t long before he found himself in front of a small run-down shack, its wooden door barely on its hinges. This was where the Mouse he had saved crawled to.

He hovered his hand over the door, ready to knock. At times like this, he wished he was as decisive as Sasha, or as cool as Maverick, or at the very least, as hardheaded as Prince. Instead, all he had was his own uncertainties, sinking into his stomach into a very real nausea.

Why am I back here?

The more he thought about it, the less appealing knocking on the door became. Yet, his hand remained over the door in a fist. He knew nothing about this girl, not even her name. But when he closed his eyes at night, or found any moment of peace, his mind always wandered back to her. She was resilient, stronger than anyone he had ever met with pride that might even trump Sasha’s.

Before Bolt could decide what to do, the door opened. The green-eyed Mouse stood on the other side of the door. Bolt stared at her with nothing to say.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Stupid Bolt, why didn’t you think of anything to say?

Bolt stood still. Though his mouth was open, he remained silent. Her blonde hair was no longer tangled, but fell down in a slick line over her shoulders. There wasn’t a trace of dirt or grime on her anymore and she smelled like flowers.

“You’ve been standing in front of my door for a while now. I could see you through our windows. Did you have something you wanted?” Her words came out nonchalantly, as if Bolt was just another acquaintance of hers.
“I just wanted to check up on you.” Bolt finally found the words he had wanted to say. But now that he had said them, they sounded awkward.

“I’m fine.”

Bolt scrambled for more words to say. “That’s good.”

The silence between them was suffocating. Bolt stared at his feet. He noticed the dirt underneath his toenails and at the same time realized the stench he had been dragging along with him. His hand clenched into a fist.

Stupid Bolt.

“Gunther, I’m going out!” The girl shouted.

Bolt jumped at her sudden shout. His eyes shot up, trying to see if the Mouse had seen his moment of fright. Luckily for him, her back was to him.

She turned around with a slight frown on her face. “I’m going to the market; you can come along if you like.”

Bolt gave her a slight nod, probably too slight for her to notice. She gave him no indication she had seen it and instead started walking. Bolt followed along, reminded of just the other day. The difference was that this time, her walk was straight and she did so with her head held high. Still, Bolt couldn’t help but notice a stiffness in her step.

“I actually needed to go to the market too.” Bolt said with a nervous smile.

“I guess it all worked out then.” Her tone displayed her disinterest.

Though Bolt was going with her, he could hardly call it walking with her. He kept a sizable gap between them, simply walking in her footsteps. The closer they got to the market, the more crowded the streets became.

The marketplace wasn’t like the rest of the streets with vendors on the sides. It was a giant open space filled with wooden stands of goods and produce. The only lanes were the ones between shops and in a particularly crowded area, traffic from both directions would push against each other in a fight for space. Bolt closed the gap between himself and the Mouse, just so he wouldn’t lose her.

When they reached the market entrance, the Mouse paused. “Why are you here?” she asked, turning to face Bolt.

“I just wanted to check up on you,” Bolt repeated.

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore. I won’t be doing another drop. I’m not a Mouse, I never was one.” The green-eyed girl turned to walk away. With her back to Bolt, she stopped to say, “But Bolt, thanks.” And with that, she disappeared into the crowd.

Bolt just stood in disbelief. With a small sigh, he went into the market to buy bread.