Title: Beloved Mouse (An X4's story.)
Author: Katana (rose_tat@hotmail.com)
Spoilers: None.
Rating: G
Summery: An X4 that escaped from Manticore years ago reflects.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beloved Mouse.
B=2
E=5
L=12, 1+2=3
O=15, 1+5=6
V=22, 2+2=4
E=5
D=4
M=13, 1+3=4
O=15, 1+5=6
U=21, 2+1=3
S=19, 1+9=10, 1+0=1
E=5
253-645-446-315
Sometimes I playaround with my barcode, I give the numbers corresponding letters and try to make words out of them. I've been doing it almost ever since I escaped project Manticore. I guess I was about fourteen when I came up with 'Beloved Mouse', or I should say 'when my foster sister Amy came up with it'. Beloved Mouse. It sounds so much nicer than X4-315. It even sounds better than the name the foster people gave me, Shannon. And it suits me. Beloved Mouse, Mouse, Mousie.
The reason I got out of Manticore is because I played dead. I made them all think that I died in an explosion during one of our games of 'escape and evade'. (The militant and sometimes deadly version of 'cat and mouse'.) Why did I leave? How could I have known that there was any other way, anything other than Manticore? I didn't. But I'd simply had enough. I wanted out so I got out. End of story.
They searched for me for three straight days before declaring me dead. Yet I was there all that time, quiet as a mouse, watching and listening. I wasn't going to go until they knew that they wouldn't look for me. Clever as a Church Mouse. (Or is that quiet as a Church Mouse?) There I go with the mouse analogies again.
But I am a mouse. I'm quiet and shy. I skitter out of people's way and do everything in my power to avoid attention. I'm slight of build. I have mousy-brown hair and hazel eyes. I work as a receptionist in a mousy little office for a mousy little man. At night I go back to the mousy little apartment that Amy and I share and wonder whatever happened to all of the others. But I was too mousy to get them out then and I'm too mousy to try getting them out now.
Like they'd even want to leave. They must be so brainwashed by now. Like they're even still alive. We are defective after all. They've probably all been lost to experiments by now. Either way they are lost to me.
My name is Mousie. I am a mousy little person. I have a mousy little life. And I live in a mousy little home. But it's enough. It may not be much, but it's enough. I'm alive, I'm free, and I'm relatively safe. It will do. After all, we can't all be lions.
~FIN~ (Unless you want more.)