Write-off
Mice ate Steve’s words. Shredding his manuscript into lettered litter they nested in hard-won phrases, and copulated in the ruins.
Lauren, sick of rustling and scampering, and cruel with sleep-deprivation, set traps in the attic.
In the morning, they climbed the loft ladder together. Eight furry bodies, fattened on his self-diagnosed-genius, lay limp in snapped traps, snarling a bloody-toothed snarl. Lauren dug a hole in the garden.
As the mice and the manuscript rotted, Steve’s head filled with sentences. During the day they murmured in his ears; at night he tossed and muttered as they scrolled across the screen of his dreaming. Lauren receded; the sentences advanced.
Sick of his broken-backed sanity, and cruel with sleep-deprivation, Lauren let them win. He didn’t notice her leaving. He was trying to capture the cold-war-whispering in a notebook, stabbing words into paper with a razor sharpened pencil.
Lesley Mace is the winner of the 2015 CWA, Margery Allingham Short Story prize. Published in Writers’ Forum, Bewildering Stories and The Boston Literary Magazine. She is an Escalator Award winner, and has received Arts Council funding for her writing.