I killed the mouse. I watched it die.

-

When I first saw the mouse, it was being chased by my cats. At that moment, they weren’t my beloved pets, but powerful, bestial hunters. It was cornered, trapped by monsters faster and stronger than it, with no cracks or crevices to hide in. They stared at it, waiting. They took pleasure in how the mouse trembled in fear. I took pity in it. I put it in a box with food, away from my cats, denying them victory. The mouse was cute. So I pet it. And the mouse bit me.

There was no one home but me.

I saved its life and the mouse made me bleed. So I threw it to the wolves. Or cats, in this case. They chased it and hit it and bit it some more. And that is what the mouse deserved, for hurting me. It gave me some kind of sick pleasure to hear it squeak in fear and pain.

The mouse exists solely to amuse me.

And then I got bored. And disgusted. This filthy animal was in my house. It bit me, and I still sheltered it from the cold. The mouse deserved no amount of comfort.

So, wearing my dad’s work gloves, I took the mouse and threw it outside. But that wasn’t enough. The mouse would crawl back like all vermin did. I wanted to teach it a lesson, to punish it.

I trapped the mouse in the snow. It was difficult, of course. The creature was small and agile. The second I let go, it would crawl around my fingers, escaping the hole I made. But I was patient. I was fast. It took a dozen tries, but eventually I slammed down the piece of ice faster than the mouse could run. And the mouse was trapped.

The mouse continued to amuse me.

This was fun. I liked doing this. So I unsealed the hole and let the mouse escape. It was a fun little game that I played on repeat. Me, crouching in the snow with my jacket unzipped and no sweater, playing with the poor little mouse. And the mouse fought me, but it didn’t stand a chance. It only escaped the freezing snow when I allowed it to.

I was a god.

But not even a god can bring back life. Or maybe one can, but I can’t. Maybe I’m not a god, after all. As I played my fun little game, the mouse slowed down. It didn’t resist so strongly, didn’t move as quickly. And eventually, it stopped moving altogether. It was just shivering, like when I found it with my cats. Poking and prodding got no reaction. The mouse was dying.

The mouse had ceased to amuse me.

The mouse was a feral, disease-ridden rodent. Nothing more. It didn’t deserve my attention. So I threw it against my maple tree, watched as its broken body crashed against the unyielding surface.

I walked back to my home and pet my cats. They’re good, clean creatures. They deserve my love and affection. They return it in full. They only bite me in pretend. I sat down and pushed the memory of what happened out of my mind. But try as I might, I couldn’t forget:

I killed the mouse.