I wish I didn't see that

A classic cat and mouse story with a twist

Alyssa O’Connor

 

I Wish I Hadn’t Seen That

 

    A timid, bashful mouse scuttled soundlessly into her room, the evening twilight spilling out eerily from beneath the crack in her door. It found her at once, sprawled out listlessly on top of the covers on her bed, her eyes, narrowed into slits, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. The figure had a concealed insidious nature that was always undetected by the mouse, until it had already become trapped.

     When her narrowed bloodshot eyes caught a glimpse of the lone, vulnerable mouse, quaking at her bedside, she slowly transformed into something more sinister. With a bone-chilling look in her beady eyes, her lips pressed together in a sly scowl, she shot to her feet with the speed and agility of a blood-thirsty feline. The razor sharp claws of her vile articulation sank deep into the mouse, where only she could, past the elements flesh and bone and blood. The mouse knew from many subsequent encounters with the cat-creature that squealing for pity to her would only prolong the experience, and so the mouse remained meek and pliable for her.

   Cats only know to hunt mice, it is their purpose; and mice only know how to be hunted.

With each savage, callous swipe of the creature, the mouse felt its skin peel back to reveal its innards being minced to a pulp and its blood boiling with the urge to act in self-preservation. Even still, it remained fixed for the cats’ pleasure.

 When the cat was satisfied with her verbal debauchery of the mouse, she yawned, as if to toss the mouse aside in disinterest, leapt back onto the bed, and curled into a tight ball; seemingly ignorant to the malicious acts she had just performed.

    The mouse had, once again, served its lone function to the cat and it could now vacate her room, so the mouse glided warily towards the door. It had almost left when it glanced up to see its reflection in the frame of a grimy wall mirror, causing it to halt abruptly. The mouse had never classically regretted many things, but soon after that night, it came to yearn for the moments before it had seen its pitiful reflection on the wall. If the mouse hadn’t taken the moment to peer beyond its spiteful scarlet eyes, and the shadow of the cat creature that loomed over its tear-streaked face, then it never would’ve seen the same feline look in its own eyes. It never would’ve some to grasp that one day it too would become a cat. The mouse suddenly possessed the terrifying wisdom that it would possess great power over a different mouse, just as the cat-creature had once been a mouse enduring similar misconstrued ideas of normalcy from a creature of its own. Just before the mouse managed to tear itself away from the mirror, it was struck with a single perception that it wished, with every fiber in its body, it could simply just neglect. The mouse was already a cat; “a mouse” had just never had the misfortune of meeting it. To further that resolution, the mouse was also grimly aware that there was absolutely nothing it could do to change its fate; cats only know to hunt mice, mice only know how to be hunted, and the mouse was still alive.