Regular exposure to insecticide has caused me to break out in hives.
I'm losing weight. I cannot wait till Saturday...
cuz on Saturday, my tax deductions make me function like a blue collar...
white collar...? ...I don't know-- so I gotta hollar
"Oh! Oh Goddamnit! I think I've lost it!
Oh God! Goddamnit, I think I've lost you!
                         -- Hot Hot Heat, "Oh Goddammit"

IT WAS cold in that other city,  Winter had hit it hard.
        Also, part of the reason the city felt so cold is that the mouse, being sick, was very sensitive to the cold.
        Nonetheless, he still went outside because being trapped in Mikey's apartment was driving him crazy.  And besides, he came to this place to get away from all the crap-- real or otherwise-- that had been destroying his mind, and do he waned to drown his sorrows in capitalism.
        So he bought cds and books and comic books and dvds.  He would've had a great time if the pain in his throat and lungs hadn't so severe, and the agony in his mind so strong.
        But another part of him secretly enjoyed the way he felt.  This was because since he always felt like he was dying, either that or on the brink of suicide, every moment had an apocalyptic edge.  He felt like he was teetering on the edge of sanity, looking into the void, and that at any moment the fabric of reality would collapse, and then implode, and then all that'd be left would be the little white mouse, cackling and screaming and howling as he was sucked into the hideous maw of infinity.
        If looked at from the right perspective, oblivion can be fun.
 

THE SKY was gray and dead, the day Mikey took the little white mouse to see the empty neighborhood.  The air in the car was very cold and every time the little white mouse breathed in he felt needles of ice slashing into his little mouse lungs.  The air outside the car was even colder.
        "You'll like this," Mikey said.
        The little white mouse coughed, and secretly hoped the coldness he felt would increase, that everything would get colder and colder and colder until the entire universe simply ground to a frozen halt.
        "What is it?" the mouse rasped.  His voice was somewhere between a whisper and Tom Waits.
        "You'll see."
        Eventually, Mikey's car started, and they drove off.
        As they drove, the little white mouse felt his throat beginning to burn.
        "Water," he croaked.  "Need water."
        Mikey pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore, and the mouse went in and bought a two litre bottle of water.  The water was cold and hurt going down, but the pain of drinking was much less than the searing agony he felt when his throat dried out.
        They drove on.  Mikey did most of the talking, and the little white mouse simply coughed up milky ropes of phlegm.
        "This is really interesting," Mikey said.  "I don 't want to tell you what it is, but I found out it was here when I was doing stories on landmarks on the far edge of town.  It's not really on the far edge of town, but it's near the industrial area."
        The mouse looked at the sky.
        Maybe the world would grind to a halt.
        It would just get so cold, everything would stop.
        Pure entropy.
        That would be bliss.
        And he could feel himself slowing down, too, with the world, as everything slowed.  But would he actually feel the slowing if he slowed with the pace of everything?  No.  Because his perceptions would also slow.  Therefore it would seem as if nothing was changing.  And even if everything slowed to a halt, he wouldn't even know.  And, if there was no way for anything to ever stop, if there was infinite energy, and so everything just got slower and slower and slower in an infinite regression, then nothing would ever stop, and no one would be able to tell anything was slowing, and life would go on as usual, and nothing would ever end.
        The little white mouse felt like killing himself.
        "And then when I went out here I thought holy crap!  Mouse would like this.  You gotta see this, Mouse.  It's amazing."
        And the little white mouse, his nose twitched.  And then he sneezed.  And then he began coughing again.  And he coughed so much he vomited a little bit into a Kleenex.
 

THEY DROVE for a while longer, and then Mikey pulled the car around to a residential district.
        "This place," Mikey said, "is very special.  Notice anything weird?"
        They drove for a while, before the mouse noticed:
        "There are no cars."
        "That's right," Mikey said.  "No cars.  No people."
        As they drove, the mouse looked into the windows of the houses.  All the houses, he now realized, were empty.  And most of them didn't have curtains on their windows.
        "What is this place?"
        "It's like a ghost town inside the city.  A while ago there was a chemical plant near here.  This was a good neighborhood.  But then it came out that the contents of the plant had leaked into the soil.  And I mean all the soil.  This entire neighborhood is contaminated.  And it has been for years.  The people who lived here found out a few years ago that the toxin levels in the dirt was way in the red.  Then they all evacuated.  Now, even though the place isn't fenced off, it's uninhabited.  And uninhabitable."
        "Wow," the little white mouse said.
        "Even the grass-- all the plants and everything that grows out of this soil, it's all contaminated.  It's not even safe for kids to play in that playground over there."
        They drove past a playground.
        "And all the flowers, and everything," Mikey said.  "It's all poisoned.  But it still grows.  It's just extremely toxic."
        As they drove, the little white mouse began to see how enormous this neighborhood really was.  Thousands of abandoned homes.
        "They patrol this place at night," Mikey said.  "To make sure nobody's living in the houses.  To make sure that no bums are squatting.  This place is way too toxic for that.  For squatters to live here and not get cancer."
        And the little white mouse looked up at the gray sky.  It seemed as if the sky had come closer, was pressing down a little more, suffocating him a little more, now.
        "It's totally and completely desolated," Mikey said.  "No one can ever live in this this neighborhood again, at all."
        And the little white mouse looked at all the empty houses and smiled.
        It was beautiful.
        And he started laughing.
        And he laughed so much he coughed, and then he coughed so much he threw up.  Again.
 

NIGHTS, THE little white mouse dreamed about what it had been like when he'd first started working at Charlie's.  In his dreams, his job at Charlie's-- in the early days at least-- was achingly beautiful.  It was achingly beautiful because the time it portrayed wasn't now.  And then he would dream about how much fun it had been in the Kingdom Of the Eagle all those years ago.  And, again, the dreams were achingly beautiful.  And, again, they were achingly beautiful because the times they portrayed weren't now.  And the little white mouse would start to cry, sad and angry because he couldn't go back in time-- because he was getting older and it felt like his life was slipping away.  And he would wake up, coughing and sputtering, sobbing in despair and choking because of his ruined throat.  And he would cough, and cough, and gag, and weakly spit up long, thick ropes of gray phlegm that would sit, cooling on his cheeks.
 

ONE DAY, while walking in that other city, he heard a noise.
        And when he turned around to see what was making that noise, he discovered he was back home.
        And then he turned around again, and he found himself back in the Kingdom Of The Eagle.  He was in a line.  He gave a woman behind a counter at the head of the line his name and some identification numbers.  Then he signed a form.  And then the woman behind the counter smiled at him and she looked very briefly birdlike and she said:
        "Welcome back."
        And then he turned around again, and it was Christmas and he was sitting on his bed, shivering and sweating, and hugging his knees, rocking back and forth and screaming.
        And then it was dark.
        And somehow he knew he was somewhere with his mother and his father, and his mother said: "What's wrong?  My God, what's happening, what's wrong?"
        And the world crumbled underneath the little white mouse and he felt like he was sliding down a red hot slide and he was screaming and he was going faster and faster and faster and faster and--
        And he opened his eyes and it was December 31, 1999.  And he was at a party with some friends.
        They were all watching movies and waiting-- secretly hoping-- for the world to end.  And Nevil was there and he set up the movie Strange Days so when it turned midnight in the movie it turned midnight in the "real" world.  And the mouse was having fun even though he felt like the air itself was shearing off his fur and his skin, and sometimes he felt so happy he felt like crying.  And then in the movie it was midnight and then in the "real" world it was midnight and then it was January 1, 2000 and the world hadn't ended and when the party was over the little white mouse went outside and everything seemed like it was glowing and even though the world hadn't ended the little mouse felt happy, either that or he wanted to kill himself.  And he started laughing but then he started to cough.
 

AND SO, because he'd signed a form, the little white mouse went back to the Kingdom Of The Eagle.  He took two classes there and he got really really good marks.  He needed to prove to the Eagle that he was good enough to get into something called Grad School, which was like a higher level to the Kingdom Of The Eagle.  He also had to take these two classes because when he left the Kingdom, his ranking in the Kingdom's Hierarchy Of Achievements was actually pretty low.  So he had to show everybody that he really was better than they thought he was.  And then maybe he could get into Grad School.
        The mouse's reasons for doing this were actually quite simple:
        He'd discovered that life in the "real" world was complete and utter garbage.  The "real" world was, in fact, infinitely worse than being in the Kingdom Of the Eagle.  It contained more disappointments and much more loneliness than he could have ever imagined.
        All along, the little white mouse had felt trapped in the Kingdom of The Eagle-- and he was, don't get me wrong-- but when he got free of the Eagle, he ended up even more trapped by the "real" world.  At least, in the Kingdom Of The Eagle, even if he was surrounded by poseurs, bullshit artists, and the insane, he stood a slim chance of actually learning something interesting.  Whereas in the "real" world he was only surrounded by poseurs, bullshit artists, and the insane.  And the only thing he had ended up really and truly learning there was to hate and distrust people even more than he initially had hated and distrusted them.  Oh yeah, and he also learned that "real" life was even more hollow and pointless and unfathomably empty than he could have ever previously conceived.
        And so, since he saw himself positioned smack dab in the middle between two nightmares, he chose the lesser nightmare.  And believe you me, dear reader, it came as an enormous shock to the little white mouse that the Kingdom Of The Eagle turned out to be a lesser nightmare.
        And so, he was back.

Next:  Enossification....
 

Epilogue 51.
Epilogue 49.
INDEX.
HOME.