The Giant Mouse of Love

/Voiceworks, #63, Summer 2005/

I don’t have a final memory of the outside. I only remember waking up, completely naked, with his firm and slimy tongue wriggling across my eyes. Looking up into his hairy, pinched face, I screamed. My scream echoed along the hallways, bouncing across the towering white walls, still ringing out long after the Giant Mouse of Love silenced me with a leg-claw across my mouth. He looked slightly startled; his whiskers spun anxiously. The Giant Mouse of Love dumped a pile of clothing at my feet.

‘I believe these are for you,’ he said.

I began to scream again, but this time he raised the leg-claw to his own mouth and breathed, ‘Shhh.’ I obeyed.

I dressed in the little outfit that had been left for me: A white shirt, white, breezy pants, white shoes and a matching white cap.

When I had gathered my faculties I was able to stammer out a few questions. What was going on? Where was I? And so on. The Giant Mouse of Love explained that we were in a maze, that the object was to find the little deposits of cheese scattered throughout and that he had been doing this for his entire life. At the end he added, in his very humble and dignified way, ‘And you may join me.’

Finding cheese wasn’t so hard, theoretically. The Giant Mouse of Love had a near-to-total understanding of the system which governed its placement. We had to look out for a little red mark on the ground which would indicate that a feeding room was around the next corner. These rooms consisted of little more than a metal bracket upon which, if you were fortunate, there would be mounted a slice or two of cheese and a dish of water beside. If you were to find the cheese you were to eat it and then leave, otherwise the feeding room would never be renewed. But on every occasion except one the feeding rooms were empty, with only a scattering of crumbs to taunt us.

In the maze there is no way of marking time, no darkness to cleave the endless fluorescent hum into day and night, so I have no way of knowing how long I have been here. Why didn’t we try to escape? I put that very question to the Giant Mouse of Love many, many moments ago. He squinted his eyes, and his whiskers drew circles in the air; this was always a sign of his deep thought.

‘I have always been in the maze,’ he said eventually. ‘The maze feeds me, it is my daily recreation. I live here, I breathe its air, it regulates my bodily movements and dominates my thoughts. I am as much a part of it as it is a part of me.’ He halted his trot and the outline of his white coat against the pristine whiteness became almost invisible. ‘Who can really say where the mouse leaves off and the maze begins?’

Trying to rouse a thirst for liberty within him, I asked, ‘Don’t you want to know what it’s like outside?’ I told him all about the rest of the world, and my former role in it. I told him of running water and breezes and meadows, of aeroplanes and glass, of huge cold cities and how we fought our way through them.

‘I haven’t seen this world,’ The Giant Mouse of Love answered haltingly. ‘Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. The maze is my world. The only impulse here is cheese. This impulse determines everything. All I think about is how to get the cheese – and if you’re clever, you will too.’

On one long and particularly fruitless jaunt we stopped despairingly for a few moment’s rest. I lay on my stomach for a while trying to null the aching void of hunger, but the ground was hard and offered no relief, so I rolled onto my back. I dozed fitfully, quilted by the fluorescent hum, and woke with a worrying thought half-formed in my mind. The Giant Mouse of Love was cleaning his whiskers slowly, with dignity.

‘How is it,’ I asked him ‘that you can talk?’

His leg-claw stopped halfway along the length of one of his whiskers.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, well, how is it that you can think. You’re a mouse.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow.’

‘Well I had always assumed humans to be the most advanced species on the planet.’

He stamped his leg-claw and put an end to this disagreement.

‘Who is leading whom?’ He asked.

He was right. And you must understand, he was my rock in there. He was my father, grandfather, mentor, protector and friend, all rolled into one. When we settled for a rest after a long stretch of wandering, I would draw myself close to his warm fur and shut my eyes tight and try to imagine myself out of this maze.

I began to sense that we weren’t alone. A few things tweaked my suspicions: the occasional cold dropping here and there, a blurry figure I thought I caught in the distance. Once I’d woken and stared into a wholly unfamiliar set of black eyes – not soft like the Giant Mouse of Love’s, but icy, even hostile. I buried my face into warm fur and shut my eyes tight. When I peeked out a few moments later whatever it was had gone.

I shook the Giant Mouse of Love awake and told him what I saw.

‘You must have been dreaming.’

‘No, I saw something, I promise.’

He looked unsettled.

‘Just, stay close to me, okay?’

Life in the maze took on a new, sinister glaze. Threats loomed around every corner, menace oozed from the wall, and I did my best to become invisible against the Giant Mouse of Love’s sleek form.
It must have been a few days or more or weeks before I set sight of the She-Mouse again. When she came mincing towards us down a passageway, The Giant Mouse of Love’s big, black eyes bugged out, and his little whiskers drew circles in the air. She stopped in front of us, so close that I could feel the quick beat of her pulse. The Giant Mouse of Love said nothing. In all the days I had spent wandering the maze I’d never seen him so silent.

She skittered over, paused in front of me, and sniffed me up and down with her pointy muzzle. Then she turned away from me to face the Giant Mouse of Love, sticking her overgrown mouse-arse in the vicinity of my face.

‘You’ve got a little pet do you?’

‘Him? He’s just …’

The She-Mouse and I stared at him. He didn’t finish the sentence.

‘I hope you know that while you and the little freak have been plodding around in here, I’ve been chowing down on the cheese. Four times this week, I might add. Just thought you’d like to know.’
She left some stinking droppings at my feet and pranced away. I was furious.

‘What the fuck was that all about?’

‘I’d rather we not talk about it,’ he said quietly. I glared at him, waiting for an explanation. The Giant Mouse of Love looked into the distance and puffed out his chest.

‘I yearn, all right? I yearn for her. From when I wake until I lay down on my haunches to sleep, I think only of her. In every water dish, I see her face. With every gust of foetid air, I feel her warm embrace. This is hell,’ he spat, ‘a sterile, recirculated, blinding white hell – so often I burn with hatred for the aching monotony of these wretched white corridors!’ His eyes softened. ‘But then I think – I have an inkling in the very back of my mind that she is here, with me, and that we might be together once more, and this hell becomes a heaven.’

It was a shock to hear him talk in such a way.

‘But you said that everything could be explained by that one impulse in here,’ I said. ‘To find the cheese.’

The Giant Mouse of Love stopped, and drew his head into his body. He spoke softly, with deep pauses separating each utterance.

‘Love is one of those things which can’t be explained. Love is the unknown variable in this otherwise entirely ordered system which keeps us sane. It is beyond explanation and explication. I don’t know why I yearn for her. Maybe there’s no reason. But tell me this: have you ever seen so fine a coat, such a well-formed array of teats?’

I admitted that I hadn’t.

Things were never quite the same after that outburst. We made an unspoken pact to pretend that things were like they were, but circumstances conspired against us. We could find no cheese for what seemed like days after that incident. We searched every square inch but it was as though the feeding rooms had been swallowed into the maze. Our supply had been cut and I had the feeling that we were being tested. And it was testing. My shittiness about the She-Mouse incident grew in silence, and with no food in my belly, I became positively seething with frustration.

I began to bait the Giant Mouse of Love. ‘You’ve been here for a long time. Can’t you just remember the way to the feeding rooms?’

‘Well, I have a vague idea. It’s hard, you know that. It’s a very large maze after all.’

‘You know that this is the test, right? That’s why you’re here. They’re trying to see how you respond to the maze, if you’ve the capacity to learn the way. And you don’t. You’re a failed experiment.’
He snorted. ‘That’s preposterous. If anybody wants to know about my intelligence they can just ask me.’

‘Ah, but that’s just the thing. You pretend like you know it all, but you’re absolutely useless. You might as well hang yourself by that limp rope you drag around.’

‘It’s called a tail.’

‘I wasn’t talking about your tail.’

The hairs stood up across his back. His eyes centred on me and he rested on his haunches, towering over me.

‘If that’s the way you feel, you can just fuck off.’

And so I began the next lonely phase of my life. Days spent wandering the hallways alone, thoroughly morose. I sniffed out for cheese and found none. At least with the Giant Mouse of Love I’d had company. A very sweaty desperation began to creep up as the days past unfed. I’d ignored his most important lesson: that love made life worth living. I’d missed it, and possibly missed out on my last chance for happiness.

After a few hours or days, I collapsed – as much from heartache as hunger. I lay staring up into the white abyss, doing nothing, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. It was then that I made the uncomfortable discovery that I wanted, needed, the company of the Giant Mouse of Love.
In the distance I heard a noise. It was a sort of wet smacking sound, with little gratified snorts thrown in. It must have been the Giant Mouse of Love – with cheese. He’d found it! And I fancied that, surely, we would feast together. With food in our bellies, all would be repaired.

I could barely contain my excitement. I looked carefully, methodically down the passageway and noticed I an annex my eye had neglected before. I rounded another bend and found, finally, the Giant Mouse of Love. He wasn’t alone. The Giant Mouse of Love was standing over the She-Mouse, eyes closed, his head bobbing up and down, a sated smile creeping larger and larger across his pink flap of a mouth.

I was sick – cheesy bile all over my feet; all over the, crisp whiteness of the winding prison. And when there was nothing left I gagged and heaved until my sides ached.

The She-Mouse moved only with the force of the Giant Mouse of Love’s engorgement, staring at the ceiling, her eyes grey. The Giant Mouse of Love took another bite from the deep gnaws in her torso and snapped back his neck to tear the flesh from the unsheathed white cage. His brilliant white coat was matted with little globs of the She-Mouse’s blood; bloodied veins hung from his nose. I executed a sort of staggered turn on one leg to leave, but the Giant Mouse of Love became aware of my presence and began to speak. He looked at me with a gaze imploring my understanding.

‘I’m – so – hungry,’ the Giant Mouse of Love stuttered.