The Big Ben Caper
I have many fond childhood memories of challenging my only friend, who was as a brother to me, to battles of wit involving a chessboard. How was I to know the day would arrive when he truly would treat all his men as pawns, allowing me to capture them easily? Indeed I never dreamed he should entrap me and endanger my queen!
"You really ought to be careful around that rat!" my siblings would warn. "He's sure to stab you in the back one of these days!"
"Why should Padraic Ratigan stab me in the back when my own brother and sister are only too eager to do as much?!" I always retorted.
Had I but heeded their warnings! Yet even now, I cannot regret extending my friendship and accepting his, even though losing such a friend has profoundly grieved me.
A rat's claws are the approximate width of a mouse's body. The daggers that tear through my jacket in repeated attempts to sever my spinal cord, or perhaps disembowel me if a sideswipe should prove successful, cause more exsanguination than I care to admit. Were I weaker mouse, I should writhe in utter torment from the agony, but I am Basil of Baker Street, representative of justice and personification of wit. I am forced to admit I feel slight discomfort, but nothing more. However, if my back is torn even half as badly as my jacket, I fear I shall have a few contusions tomorrow. If I were given to fits of panic, I should believe recovery to be no simple task, if I were ever to regain my health at all.
It hardly matters. Ratigan may do as he will. I am quite certain that before the tintinnabulation of Big Ben announces the changing of the hour, we shall both have met our demise. If plummeting from such a great height is inevitable, I care not a whit whether any of my arteries are ripped asunder. My adversary has no wounds whatsoever, and he shall perish as rapidly as I when the precipitation causes us to slip from the hands of the clock face. If my neck and skull do not fracture instantly as I strike the pavement at the base of the tower, my battered remains shall no doubt experience a most excruciating death.
I am grateful for my inner strength. A more cowardly mouse would cry out as the rat's claws struck his already throbbing back yet again. He would give his opponent a pleading look, silently begging for mercy, and he would begin to welcome thoughts of the grave, for then he would no longer be aware of the merciless flaying. This wretched creature would be unable to conceal the fear in his eyes, and his mind would wander to the careers of recent acquaintances, such as pondering whether or not a military surgeon would be able to save his life if the buffeting were to cease that very instant.
Perhaps certain events of his life should cross his memory.
