Thoughtful Nights and Old Chairs

Time for a little something different. I wrote this short story a little while ago and wanted to share it with you all.

I hope you enjoy,

Martyn

Thoughtful Nights and Old Chairs

It was one of those thoughtful nights. Peering out through the frosty lace that adorned the window across from me, I could see a clear twinkling sky, inlaid with a moon so bright that it cast shadows like still-life paintings across the wintered fields. A rugged stillness breathed itself over the landscape, echoing the deep, time-heavied sighs of men who have known life far longer than most.

I was sitting in my favorite chair – quite an old chair really, with an agedness emphasized by the dappled varnish on its oaken seat. It was of average size, constructed simply, not special and yet still special at the same time.

I used to muse about the wisdom that must have soaked into its wearied wood over the years. You see, it had been my grandfather’s chair, and his grandfather’s before him, both men of great experience and knowledge.

No doubt they would have rebuked me for my foolish notions of “wisdom-soaked” chairs, an idea probably a little more than repulsive to their earthy and sensible ways. Nevertheless, it was my favorite chair and I sat in it often, preferring its understated solidness to the plush comfort of the couch or my mother’s armchair.

I don’t really remember why I chose to sit there that night, and I remember less why I chose to sit there for so long without stirring. I do remember that it had been one of those days – one of those days when your body gets so beaten and tired that when time finally comes to relax and sit down, the only activity you can muster is to ponder and to think, idly fixating first on this and then on that as you wander the quiet corridors of your mind.

No doubt my grandfather, and his grandfather before him, both farmers, had sat in that chair locked in much the same state as I did that night.

It was a flicker of shadow first, just beyond the periphery of my eye, that drew my stare towards the stone tile of the fireplace – what’s called the hearth, I suppose. At least, that’s what my father had always called it – other people have different names for it, I’m sure.

Our particular hearth was a landing that jutted out from the fireplace about three feet and up from the ground about six inches. It was covered over with stone tiles, each quite large, and each the same rough tone of grey slate. Placed beside the hearth, to the right of the fireplace, was a wicker basket filled with crocheted blankets, kept there for use throughout the winter. Though my mother usually kept them folded and neatly placed, my brothers and sisters had tossed the blankets haphazardly into the basket earlier that night, so that the whole mess of them draped out and onto the hearth.

Since I couldn’t tell where the shadow had come from, my eyes roamed over to the logs in the fireplace, which were burning quite strongly still, though it had been a long time since they had first been placed there. For a moment, my gaze was caught by the always mesmeric dance of fire. But the shadow appeared again, just on the edge of my vision.

However, this time the shadow gave himself away with the scratchy pitter-patter of his tiny feet.

He was a mouse.

I guess I don’t really know if it was a he, but he looked like it to me, so that is how I thought of him in that moment. He was large, but he seemed like a fairly young mouse. I do not remember exactly why I thought that; maybe it was his movements, which were cautious or even afraid, and yet eager all at once. Whatever his exact age, he gave the impression of youth.

He must not have seen me, or if he did, he must not have cared I was there.

Skittering forward in furtive dart by furtive dart, he was making his way to the trap my father had set on the hearth. It was a typical trap, with cheese as bait and a strong coiled spring that would bring a metal bar snapping down on the spine of the mouse that triggered it. For a moment, I considered scaring the mouse away. Of course, that would merely postpone the inevitable, and I didn’t much care for mice.

I decided instead to watch.

In a sense it was all very surreal; Life and Death struggled for dominance on the hearth of that fireplace. If Life won, her trophy was the cheese. If Death won, his trophy was the mangled body of a dead mouse. Just think of the gravity of that and you’ll see what I mean – high, high stakes if you’re a mouse.

In fact, I found myself wondering at what his journey to our hearth must have been like. Weeks of surviving and growing, perhaps in our very home, dodging around our clumsy feet, and sneaking about for food. Who knows how many miles altogether those four little feet had run? Who knows what dangers he had confronted, how many cats, coyotes, and traps he had faced down to get to this point in his life?

It all narrowed in on this moment.

By now, the mouse had seized his opportunity, climbing the blankets to scale the hearth, where he rested, crouching, his life hanging in the balance.

He crept forward again, little feet carrying him with surprising speed and abruptness. A twelve inch charge here, a five inch burst there, and he was suddenly only half a foot from the trap.

I thought he would have taken more time to think out the details of his little attack.

Maybe a preemptive swish of the tail, to test the sensitivity of the spring.

Perhaps a sniff around the wooden block upon which the trap was mounted, to derive the origins of this strange machine.

Maybe even an analytic investigation to determine just how this thing worked, peering here and there with those beady eyes of his to divine the trap’s true purpose.

But he was a mouse – whatever danger he sensed was lost beneath a more powerful urge. Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was sheer hunger. Perhaps it was greed, for what looked like a meal beyond compare. Who can really say?

He darted forward and lunged for his prize, eerily human-like hands reaching up to manipulate it into his mouth as he rose into a squat on his haunches. My eyebrow lifted as I considered the possibility that he had pulled off the impossible heist.

A split-second later his body was broken.

The metal bar snapped down with such strength that it broke his spine neatly; gleaming dully in the flickering firelight, it was all but buried in his tawny pelt.

His arms scrabbled weakly. His mouth opened in anguish. He died, his final breath snuffling quietly out from a muzzle that rested bare millimeters away from the bait he had fallen for.

I leaned back in my chair, gazing once again out the window in the wall across from me. Folding my arms, I cocked my head to the side and sat, lost once again in idle thought.

The grandfather clock in the corner tolled once, twice, three times.

I rose from my chair. It was time for bed.

Crouching down by the hearth, I picked up the mousetrap, careful to keep my fingers on the wooden block, and tossed it into the fire.