greener grass II
“water…”
I could barely get the word out. It wheezed and whistled its way through a swollen throat and over a tongue in desperate need of a shit, shower, and most importantly a shave. Although, when your vocal cords feel like they’ve gotten the business end of a 3000-watt hair dryer, I suppose speaking is the least of your troubles.
I realized one eye had been open ever so slightly for some time now. How long I couldn’t say - and not because of my current speech impediment – it’s was just one of those things. Like when you realize you’ve been staring at the spot on the wallpaper again, and you have no idea how much time has passed. You just know that afternoon has become evening, that the urine has evaporated, and she’s still never coming back. Through that eyelid crack I realized I was seeing the mouse. I guess I didn’t understand it at first because half of my view was being pulled and bent. What I thought were vestigial traces of last night’s psychotropic dabblings still being weakly pumped through my bloodstream turned out to be, upon closer examination, a glass bottle lying in front of me, perverting my perceptions. But that’s to be expected when you hang your hat on the kitchen floor.
But I digress.
The mouse. Inclined against his doorway opening, resting one shoulder against the wall, one leg bent around the other in the shape of a distorted “4”. He leaned there, reading his morning paper, the yellow plastic bag it came in tucked under one arm.
“water…?”
It came out like a question this time.
The mouse raised a mouse eyebrow as he peered over the edge of his periodical, one side of his whiskers twitching ever so slightly as he regarded the empty, discarded shell of a life sprawled out in front of him. With another whisker twitch he dismissed me and went back to his daily.
“That little shit” I thought to myself. “That selfish little prick…”
But I couldn’t really blame him. We had danced this dance before. And we both knew it would play out the same way. We could roll these dice a hundred times and they’d always come up boxcars. He’d come out with a cup of water. I’d scream at him in a high-pitched, spittle-coated voice that “he knew goddamn-well that that cup wasn’t going to do jack-shit.” What was a mouse-sized cup of water going to do for me? Abso-fucking-nothing, that’s what. He may as well have brought me a bag of play sand. Or a mouse-sized pistol to help with a graceful exit…
Yeah. I could see that whole bit play out again in his eyes. I knew he was reliving that bit. Right between that first twitch of whisker and the last.
Right on cue, the mouse shot me another look of disappointment (or was that pity? was that fucking pity?!? god so help me if I could get up off this floor…) and headed into his hole. Were there any fluids left in my body, tears would be flowing. Were my voice still open for business, sobs would be working the cash register. After contemplating moving, only to dismiss that notion as sheer lunacy, I realized that my vantage point on the floor afforded me a direct line of sight from my one open eye to that spot on the wallpaper in the adjoining room. I took comfort in the old familiar spot, and as I relaxed my bladder, I felt the comforting warmth quickly spread.
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