The Tar , The Mouse and The Ants

A Story by Momoko

The clock's hand stroke 2 with an ominous sound .I put down the paperback thriller on my pillow and tip-toed to the kitchen through the darkened hallway . It was when I switched on the kitchen lights that a loud squeak made my heart stop for a moment .My eyes bolted around the corners searching for the owner of the sound.Then I spotted the creature that had sent the S.O.S a split second ago .

It was a mouse as small as my index finger squirming on a tar-covered board that my mother had laid as a trap under our kitchen sink that night .I paused for a moment trying to assess the situation .The mouse was gray , with tiny eyes that were so strikingly black that I was confused if it was naturally so or it was because it reflected the color of the tar.The little amount of light from the kitchen bulb that reached below the sink made those eyes gleam, which somehow made the mouse,despite of the dire condition it was in ,an intimidating figure .As the mouse writhed,its long,slender tail wiggled along like an earth worm, showing patches of bare skin indicating that the tail had once been pink.Panic and pity barraged in as I saw a life suffer right in front of me.

Just when the flashbacks of rat-eaten certificates and rat holes in my favorite blouse were engaging in a violent skirmish with guilt-ridden thoughts of letting a creature die without an effort to rescue it inside my conscience , my phone started ringing in the other room.Retreating to apathy , I left the mouse at its own misery to answer the call .

'Hey!! Guess what!! I passed the entrance exam . Yay!!! '

It was my cousin Hafsa , who had dedicated her entire school life to getting admitted to the best public medical school in the country . I congratulated her and hung up after a tedious and agonizing half an hour of her excited blabbering describing how all her early planning had finally given her the success she always wanted .I switched on the coffee maker and lumbered back to the mouse .

Letting out a deep sigh , I crouched down on the floor about a meter away from the mouse.My mind started to bloom memories it usually knew better than to tamper with .I had applied to 15 US colleges the year before without any proper planning, naively choosing the most competitive ones, and as if it was not enough , applying for full scholarship .I was grossly rejected by all 15 of them .I remembered , as the rich,intoxicating aroma of Sumatra Mandheling coffee filled my nostrils and probably the mouse's too, how I had checked my e-mails every day and night surviving each rejection that was a decisive blow to my hope, self-esteem and confidence despite its diplomatic tone.

The mouse's shrill,desperate squeaks pierced through my ears ; the more it twisted itself to get rid of the devious tar , the more it got covered in it .It was an unbearably oppressive scene so I got up to take an action and went looking for any useful tool .When I came back minutes later , the mouse was gone.

There lay on viscid , black tar , three drops of wine-red blood and a little grey limb silently screaming of the chivalry of the master to whom they had belonged .

The next morning,my mother pulled me of my bed to look at something that she found very amusing - it was a row of ants that had put sand over the tar plate my mother had set up as a rat trap , to reach the prize at the
end . The proud army of ants marched down the smooth path of sands that they had built on the tar plate , reached the cookie crumbs and carried the trophy gracefully down the path to their home .

I could neither hate the ants nor my cousin .We all were , after all ,only trying to survive ; just in very different ways.