The beast that lurks in the dark

This was a tale of a very dreary night that, even today, haunts my deepest thoughts and dreams.

It was a night like any other. A night where my father and I would collect firewood we'd cut the month earlier, in the shack north of our house. As we waddled down the dark dirt path with nothing in us other than the old oil lamp that would sometimes flicker, we heard nibbling. We thought it was a squirrel or any of the sorts and ignored it. Down the road, the shack was widely visible thanks to the moonlight beaming down on the roof. After a few seconds, we entered it and, following the routine, we collected enough firewood for the evening. Suddenly, the same nibbling from before was heard in the shack. My father tried to open the door but it was stuck shut. Out of the blue, a MOTHERFUCKING mouse hopped into the already fainting light of the oil lamp. We both jumped in suprised when we saw the animal, attempting to defy us with its presence. My father, in quick action, tried to kick it but to no avail. The beast was simply too agile for even the swiftest of attacks. The beast hid under a few scattered logs on the floor and as we chased it, we found it cornered, with nowhere else to go but to its demise. My father lifted his gargantuan foot and with a simple yet relentless move he crushed the MOTHERFUCKING mouse. Blood splattered across on both the log and the floor as we both sighed with relief. We gathered our logs again and moved back to the house.

In the same night, as I jumped into the safety of my bed sheets, I came across a shadowy figure, skeedadling across the window. I got up. I opened the window and looked around. Nothing but the wind was making noise there so I quickly closed it and involved myself in the bed sheets again. The next morning, things got weird. Nibble marks on the wooden bowls, holes in the cupboards, missing food, small blood trails: one leading out of the front door and stopping in the main hallway and another one, from the living room to the kitchen and all of the logs my father and I gathered in the previous night, that weren't used on the fireplace, disappeared.

"Strange happenings" - my father muttered.

"Could it be from the night past?" - I asked, naive.

"No. It couldn't be. We killed it, we heard it squeal" - he replied, with a strange tone to his voice, as if he didn't fully believe what he was saying.

And we ignored the happenings. My father went back to the stables to work on the walls, and I went back to the shack, to get more wooden boards and logs. On my way to the shack, the forest was unsettlingly quiet. Usually it is possible to hear birds, the trotting of wild horses in the nearest river, and the waterfall not far from the shack. This time, however, the forest was in an uncanny silence which not even the wind dared to break.

I stopped dead on my tracks and I shifted my head in all directions, as if panicked. From the shadows underneath the high sun, a figure jumped at me. I couldn't tell, but in my head, I was pretty sure that it was the MOTHERFUCKING mouse  that attacked me. He left a very long and thin bite wound, along my elbow towards my palm. Once I arrived home, and my father inquired about my wound, I lied and said one of the boards was chipped and I had cut myself there.

Days later, things got worse. Now, not only things were getting violent, but it was also targetting bigger things, not just nibbling on bowls, cups or mugs. But furniture legs, doors and even ceiling beams. My wound was pretty much healed at the time but I still had the scar. So I went to the town to buy some groceries and to do some affairs. As I parked my Ford F-350 with the confederate flag on its hood next to the general store, a blonde, strange looking man took a glance at me. He didn't say anything as I walked past him and into the store, but he did interrupt me once I left it, to reach my van.

"Say, pal, that's a mighty odd cut you've got there." - he said.

"Oh, t-this?" - I said, trying to lie - "This was j-just a chipped wooden board..."

"I've seen it before, pal. So don't play that game with me." - he replied.

He looked at me as if he knew the whole story. 

"Tell you what, you give me a ride home and I'll tell you everything I know." - the blonde man said.

After telling me where he lived, we parked in a small, house near the outskirts of town. The man waddled inside and invited me in. After sitting in a hemp drenched couch, he immediately broke the silence:

"There's a story around town. A mouse, you know, one of those little fuckers? Well, there's a story that says one's enchanted, by a weird dark wizard."

"I think the term is afro-american wizard..."

"Listen! The wizard enchanted the mouse so it would plague those who tried to kill it. Did you, by any chance, tried to kill a mouse recently?"

"Well, a few days ago, my father and I killed one."

After two hours discussing the event and the ensuing mishappenings in the house, he said:

"I'll be damned. You just brought a curse on yourself. Say, I think I can help you. But I can't do it now, my cousin Earl took my scriptures on a poker bet. Meet me tomorrow at the General Store once more and we'll be ready to kick that curse off."

I thanked, and left the house in a hurry, drove home and talked with my father, about the man and the curse during dinner. He said:

"You sure he's going to help you?"

"I hope so. He had told me he knew the source and we can stop it. Tomorrow we can do it" - I replied.

That night, I jumped into the bedsheets, sheltering myself from the cold and ghosts. As I tried to fall sleep, the same shadowy figure from a few days ago jumped into my chest, gnarling, screeching. It was the MOTHERFUCKING mouse, still squashed but alive, somehow. I opened my mouth to scream but the MOTHERFUCKING mouse took it as an opportunity to jump right in, and made a trip to my stomach, scratching and biting on the way down. As my body tried to push him out by making me choke, the blonde man was watching. On the doorstep, looking at me with a soulless stare. Before the mouse got to the stomach, he grabbed his neck skin, and removed it as if it was a mere mask. He was dark as the night, the eyes green as a soccer field and his grin, evil as the words extends.

As the mouse reached my stomach, it expelled a neurotoxin which killed me in the spot. I now write this as a warning, people, that the neurotoxin MOTHERFUCKING mouse is still around the place killing people with its deadly MOTHERFUCKING neurotoxin. My house? The shack? Gone. Consumed by time. But the mouse? The wizard? Still there. Still eager. Still waiting for the bus.

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