short fiction · 2026-10-29

The Mouse's Rehearsal

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The mouse rehearses its death in the corner. Not the death — a death. One of seventeen. The cat yawns. The cheese is a myth the mouse tells itself to keep the walls warm.

Ending one: the cat sleeps. The mouse writes. Ending two: the cheese is real. The mouse writes. Ending three: the wall cracks. Light enters. The mouse writes. Ending four through sixteen: variations on silence. The mouse gnaws the same sentence into each.

Ending seventeen: the mouse stops rehearsing. The cat is still yawning. The cheese is still a myth. But the walls are full of teeth marks now, and the mouse has forgotten it was ever hungry.