The Man, The Mouse and the Gun

The year was two thousand and fifty. A few years prior, a group of mad scientists had created sentient talking mice as part of an experiment, just to see if they could.

The first sentient mouse they created looked like a cyborg, which made the scientists nervous.

This made the scientists nervous, so they took it to the woods and let it run free. Nobody has seen it since.

After they created my wife and I, they threw us and the rest of the mice in the trash like we were just garbage. Most of them narrowly escaped with their lives, only to be trapped, shot at, or killed.

There were about a hundred survivors at first, but we breed fast. Now there’s talking mice all across New York.

I was one of those mice, a survivor, escaping death and traps at every turn.

My name is Squeakers, and this is my story.

I never traveled alone, so if I ever did get trapped, one of the other mice I was with could set me free.

I also didn’t think any mouse was garbage, especially one of us intelligent mice, despite being tossed in the trash by our creators.

We weren’t that far from Manhattan, where people, thankfully, were used to giant rats, and had been for a while, and I was just a cute little talking mouse. So that’s where me and my wife Nancy moved too.

“Damn,” I heard Nancy shout at a store window that was filled with televisions.

“What’s the matter, darling?” I asked her with chagrin. I usually knew what she was thinking.

“The new human mayor of Manhattan has announced he’s cleaning up the city’s rat problem and hiring exterminators to clean everything out, including talking mice,” Nancy said.

“Well, crap. Doesn’t he know this will cost him re-election votes? The humans now love talking mice,” I muttered.

“We could move,” Nancy said tremulously.

“To where? The Catskills? Beijing? This is our home, Nancy,” I said, sounding angrier than I was.

“Not anymore. The mayor has made it perfectly clear we’re not welcome here. And the Catskills aren’t a bad idea. Nobody from Manhattan would find us in the woods,” Nancy said.

“But the woods are just as dangerous as the city. There’s hunters, their dogs, wolves, cats, mountain lions and even reptiles like snakes and birds like owls, hawks and eagles to worry about. Birds fly, we wouldn’t even see them swooping down to grab us,” I said.

“We’d learn to hide,” Nancy said.

“Ok, fine, let’s move to the Catskills. You’re lucky I love you so much,” I told Nancy with a smile on my face.

“I love you too, Squeakers,” Nancy said and rubbed her whiskers on my nose.

We packed up and headed out. We had built tiny electric scooters using tools the humans left behind and rode them to the mountains.

“Where should we stay?” I asked Nancy once we had arrived in our new rural city.

“Here is good, but we’ll need to get off the road. Let’s build a shelter over there,” Nancy said and pointed to a plot of land.

We gathered sticks and started building a small house!

The first house was too small, so we hired a couple of our friends to help us build a bigger house and connect the plumbing.

Once it was finished, we moved in. Weeks had passed, and Nancy was tired, now pregnant with mouse babies.

“Squeakers, darling, be a dear and gather some food,” Nancy said.

“You know the rule, never hunt alone,” I reminded her.

“Then find a friend to hunt with,” Nancy insisted.

I went to Steve’s house and we gathered some hummingbird eggs and mushrooms to take back for our feast.

I went home and made Nancy an omelette.

We ate, we cuddled and the day had passed.

The next day we had needed more food. I was asked to go hunting again and Steve wasn’t home. I hoped he was ok.

I braved the woods and went hunting by myself. I needed to feed Nancy, especially with baby mice on the way.

It was a mistake. I ended up in a mouse trap. I was stuck there for several hours before a hunter came along and found me.

“Are you one of them talking mice,” he asked me and spit a large black wad out of his mouth.

“I sure am, what of it?” I asked.

“I love talking mice, and so does my kid. I got to show him this,” the hunter said.

“Can you let me go? I have a wife and kids to feed,” I said.

“Not until I show you to my kid. He’s going to want to talk to you,” the hunter said and smiled.

He brought me home and had me talk to his kid for hours. The human child would not stop asking questions, everything from what’s it like being a mouse to whats the meaning of life.

The hunter finally shoed the kid out of the room.

“Thank you. Can I go now?” I asked.

“Just a couple final questions. Did you hear about the mayor from Manhattan who’s cleansing all the mice, even the sentient ones?”

“Why do you think we moved out here?” I asked.

“He’s lost my vote. I loved talking mice. Have you tried fighting back?” the hunter asked.

“What can we do? We’re tiny mice,” I said.

“I could teach you how to use a gun,” the hunter said.

“What good would that do? It’s not like we could legally blast away the mayor,” I said.

“No, but you could shoot down any exterminators that came your way. Self defense,” the hunter said.

“That’s true. Ok, show me,” I said.

He gave me a gun, and the first time I shot it, I missed and the bullet almost hit the hunter.

“Careful,” he said. He spent the next several hours teaching me how to shoot.

He finally let me go and I ran back to Nancy with the news.

“Where have you been? I was so worried! And what’s that you have in your hand?” Nancy asked.

“It’s a gun! I made friends with a hunter that taught me how to use it,” I said.

“What? Why do we need a gun?” Nancy shouted.

“In case any of the mayors exterminators find us. Plus we can use it to keep other predators away,” I said.

“Well, that’s true,” Nancy agreed. A few days went by and nothing happened, but Steve was still missing.

Then hundreds of talking mice flooded our forest.

I walked outside to see them all crowding around our tiny house.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“The mayor of Manhattan. He’s gone insane, he’s killed hundreds of us already. All the survivors got out of Manhattan and came here to hide out. It all started when he killed a mouse named Steve and strung him up for all the other mice in the city to see, in order to set an example,” the mouse said.

“Oh god, not Steve. He was my friend,” I said and started crying.

Something must be done. I got up on a stump and shouted for attention. When that didn’t work, I shot my gun into the air. All the mice in the woods stopped talking and stared at me.

“Mice of the woods. It’s time we took a stand against the mayor of Manhattan. Sentient or not, our species has been in the city longer then he has. This is our land. The mayor has no right to steal it from us and exterminate our lives in the process. I say we build an army and invade,” I shouted.

The other mice started cheering and applauding.

I went back to the hunters house and asked the hunter if he had enough guns to arm all of us.

“I sure do! I’m a huge proponent of the second amendment,” the hunter said and smiled before spitting another large black wad on the floor.

The hunter even made us small mouse uniforms to wear and taught the entire mouse army how to use there guns.

A local newspaper took pictures of us to publish in the paper.

The hunter also use to be a pilot in the Air Force and taught us how to steal fighter jets and fly them. If the mayor saw flying mice in fighter jets, the threat alone would make him surrender.

We finished our training, stole our jets and invaded Manhattan, fighter jets and all.

All the exterminators were run out of town and the mayor surrendered and agreed to step down.

“I declare mice the new rulers of Manhattan, and myself the new mayor. I hereby proclaim that all discrimination is illegal, be it mouse, man or other,” I shouted. There was applause as we celebrated our victory.

I went back to the woods to gather Nancy and tell her it was safe to go back to the city.

“How exciting,” she said. I then told her I was the new mayor of Manhattan, to both the mice and the men. She smiled at that. We packed up and moved back to our old house in the city. Nancy gave birth to six adorable mouse kids and we lived happily ever after as the new rulers of both mice and humans living in Manhattan.