24 October - 44 & a killer

w/o giving it away ... it was a mouse. It was shocking if not that bloody and perhaps slightly traumatic. Have sublimated it into a tiny bit of prose, hope it's amusing.

At 44 he had never killed before. Marginally younger than him, she had.

Seven hours after his latest birthday was officially over, Toph felt good; the delicious cicchetti starters, tasty mains and sublime red wine ingested at Cecconi’s, (his latest foodie discovery), had generated enough energy for eventful and debauched antics. These were enjoyed, first last night, by the suffused light of the king size candles that his thoughtful friends had bought him, and again half an hour or so earlier in the grey morning light seeping through the makeshift curtain in his bedroom. Whilst incessant rain lashed the window and heralded Autumn, he enjoyed some extra heat before the radio alarm fully woke him up with Radio Four bulletins.
Now Toph was standing in his kitchen wearing only his so called comedy underpants (no, no silly cartoon characters, just a rainbow of 70’s retro coloured stripes) and presiding over a boiling kettle and Sasha, his already suited but not made up girlfriend, who was spooning some honey on toast.

He had a difficult decision to make: how to kill a mouse. Well, at the time he thought he was dealing with only one specimen, when in fact there was no knowing if he was facing a tribe or a solitary commando. The mouse’s presence was an established fact. It had been seen sporadically, but this time he was within reach, hiding behind the toaster. The day had not started well… actually it had, Sasha loved extracting some more of his passion before scooting off to get dressed, but the milk in the fridge had gone sour. This didn’t impact on Sasha as she could easily drink black coffee, but he liked his tea.

As the mouse was cowering in a corner of the kitchen top, behind a giant wooden chopping board and making no sound, Sasha was eating the rest of the toast which she now realised had popped out of the toaster that had served as larder for the mouse, as evidenced by the copious droppings they found when they lifted the appliance and moved it across to the sink. She carried on regardless, she was that kind of person. Always thinking that one day, when the famines would hit the Western world, it was best to have gotten used to not being too delicate about food. ‘We’ll eat anything then’ she predicted, ‘and be grateful’.
‘Aww, he’s only tiny’ she exclaimed now, raising on tiptoe to see the brown little ball shape that the mouse had assumed to camouflage itself. ‘He’s a mouse’ said Toph sternly, ‘they’re dirty!’.
Well, technically no, she thought, they hoover up any food and only leave these minuscule droppings but yes, they’re not supposed to live with us.

The decision was taken unanimously, but Toph implemented it. He was the man, this was his kitchen. Without warning, a mere second after she suggested the chopping board as a weapon, he slammed it hard into the corner.
A small splash of blood splurted upwards on the white tiles. That’s when it hit him that he’d have to clean up and touch the crushed mouse As he stood there motionless after the sudden attack, Sasha turned to him and hugged him. ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. Sasha answered that her tears were purely a reaction, because the mouse was so tiny and therefore must be young, a mouse kid ‘And it, like anyone else in the world, must have a family who will miss him’ she whimpered into Toph’s shoulder. Plus, she remembered the previous winter, whilst browsing in an antique shop one Saturday, the owner had proffered his pet mouse and she’d touched it and felt its pulse and soft, velvety skin. There was intelligence in his alert features.

As they pondered what to do next, suddenly the mouse’s brother (or friend or mother or father, or girlfriend or landlord – who knows these things), appeared from behind a bottle of olive oil and clearly stunned and panicking tried to run here and there across the cooker. Emboldened by the previous kill, Toph grabbed the largest frying pan and was waiting for this new intruder to stand still on a flat surface so he could be sure that one lunge and one forceful smash would be sufficient to end its life. What they never expected was for this slightly larger mouse to take a giant leap off the counter, launching itself toward them still rooted on the spot by the kitchen door. Toph, naked and shoeless, stepped quickly aside. Sasha levering up one hand on the sink edge and one on the door frame (the kitchen is that narrow) just gathered her legs up in one svelte move. There was no point trying to stamp on the mouse with her boots, it was too fast for her reflexes. Once, in a temple in India, where they worship rats and let them roam freely, she’d walked barefoot but hadn’t the guts to let the mice crawl across her feet as was recommended in order to gain a year (or was it a lifetime?) of good luck., So she’d played a game of sidestepping them and realised then how supernaturally swiftly they run.
This speedy gonzales was now safely ensconced behind the large fridge and they decided to drop the pursuit as they both had to be out of the house oh… ten minutes ago already.

Their gaze turned back to the splash of blood. ‘Perhaps we should leave it there as a warning to others? There must be others for sure’, said Sasha, thinking of guerrilla warfare and no Geneva conventions. But their instinct for re-establishing order prevailed and the natural division of roles followed its path: man kills, woman cleans up. Toph was unsure how to pick up the tiny carcass but Sasha’s previous experience of killing a mouse had been a solitary one. The little bugger in her flat had been eventually caught in one of those inhumane decapitating traps, which were at least better than the glue ones. She had then struggled on how to pick it up not wanting to feel the squishy warmth of the body – she imagined a tumescent penis and didn’t like the picture conjured - and the obvious way was eventually, of course, the tail.
Toph too picked up the corpse the tail and dangled it into a plastic bag. . His new black i-pod Nano (Sasha’s perfect first important gift) weighed approximately the same as the lifeless critter he’d lifted. Sasha, meanwhile grabbed kitchen towels and bleach and removed swiftly all traces of the tragic event occurred the morning after Toph’s birthday The blood struck Sasha as being a much brighter hue than the Nero D’Avola wine imbibed at Cecconi’s and of a similar fluidity to her own. The expensive chopping board only had blood traces on the ‘weapon of mouse destruction’ side and she deemed it a keeper after a good scrub with bleach. ‘When’s the last time you’ve been tenderising meat on this?’ she said, reading Toph’s mind about the hygienic implications, ‘It’ll be alright’.

As Toph went to put the bag/coffin in the bin, Sasha said ‘Darling I absolutely have to go! Drive safely up to Manchester, it’s going to be very wet on the roads today’.
She had to rush to work, having already used imaginative excuse for her lateness on the previous two days and anxious not to establish a negative pattern in the eyes of deskbound colleagues who turned up routinely (in her opinion) too early. Such was the hurry that, quite unlike her, she summarily kissed Toph goodbye and was out of the door in a flash. That was a shame as she would now not feel the warmth of his body spooning hers and the depth of his kissing for three long consecutive nights.

Half an hour later, showered and dressed, Toph was in his car listening to his friend Marie’s compilation CD (another thoughtful birthday present), driving at his usual 90mph and weaving in and out of lanes. He was going to the hospital in Salford, to visit his dying grandfather, a man who had fought in the war and most likely had felt the weight of dead comrades on him. That must have been much harder than killing a mouse, thought Toph. But his granddad never talked about the war and never seemed bitter. Yet, he’d lost his hearing by being a gunner, but that may be not as bad as losing your life and his granddad was thankful for that. Or maybe the shock of what he’d seen had never diminished and talking would have just re-opened the floodgates of his pain and horror.

A similar thirty minutes later Sasha was taking part in a training session at her firm about responding to crisis and tragic events (ok no one wanted to mention bombs and fires and terrorist threats by their names). The course leader mentioned mutilated bodies within the first fifteen minutes – she had trained as a nurse in Northern Ireland and hopefully ‘Everyone had heard of that?’ despite the average twenty something age of most participants. Thankfully no pictures were shown and she explained how these days psychological support was deemed essential and was on offer. But were there any help-lines for guilt associated with killing small rodents? I bet there weren’t, thought Sasha. But it wasn’t guilt she felt, more likely the mouse drama would turn out to be a small bonding experience, like when Toph comforted her after her bag was snatched from a restaurant or when they endured ten consecutive days of rain and five concurrent days of sickness on their first holiday abroad.

For the time being, all thoughts of mouse number two were forgotten, but they hoped they’d never have to kill again.