DANGERMOUSE:

LIKE SMOKE

WRITTEN BY ZARIUS


Sqawklog. Entry 55.

Picture this.

There's a woman walking down the street. Plain jane, not too tall, not for these streets certainly. She wears trainers when she has to go in to big meetings.

That'll be important later.

She walks into the meeting, she tries her best not to make a squeaking sound on the floor.

Trainers do that.

She takes a deep breath, and she gags.

It's a ghastly stench that overtakes her.

And it's not long before she walks out again.

She can't help it you see, it's the smoke.

The smoke gets everywhere.

It chokes the potential out of her.

Potential.

The potential to speak, the potential to pitch, the potential to make or break into the business of choice.

It's another choice that cuts her out of the deal.

Not hers though.

Theirs.

Their choice to be who they are. To take the mild cigar.

To indulge in their own brand of happiness.

That's why they do it, you know.

To be happy.

It's happiness.

A slow burn from the lighter.

A slow and slurred inhaling.

And then to steadily breath the toxin out, scattering the smoke in all directions.

The lass can't stand it.

So she locks herself up in here.

This dinky clean and clear lab.

She'll sometimes walk out. Try to get a word in.

Always puts her trainers on before a big opportunity.

And in every instance, she tries to avoid squeaking in them.

She does not want to make herself out to be a mouse.

As she sits in the office and waits for the overbearing board of directors to finish lighting up, she realizes being viewed as a timorous little beastie by her peers is not what concerns her anymore.

She's a chicken.

Look at her, opting not to use her experiences, her skills, to suggest alternate means of recreation, worried that it would make her look a fool, for not knowing her place in a world of arrogant men participating in arrogant pastimes.

This wasn't a tree house.

Girls are allowed.

But the mice? The mice get stepped on if they sit around too much.

So she's glad she wore trainers.

Because it's easier to run out.

Scurry back to her lab.

Her hole.

Her wee little hidey hole.

And resume work.

Leave the big meetings to the mice amongst the men.

The ones who scurry in the direction of danger.

Be a chicken. Any day. Everyday.

And witness firsthand the miracle of invention.

Watch them be utilized.

Sometimes they are used in the field.

And sometimes they, too, blow away.

Like smoke.

Maybe that's why the lass walks into those meetings.

In an ironic way, everything she experiences in there is so much like what she experiences in her wee hole.

People made of smoke.

They discuss the danger. Their actions are the danger.

Her inventions made of steel.

She discusses the dangers about them. Sometimes they become the danger.

Neither are destined to last long doing what they are doing.

Dangerous pastimes.

Dangerous ends.

All eventually blow away.

Blow away like smoke.

'Tis quick to be a mouse.

Harder still to be a chicken.

When you continue bear a brave soul.

But that's the part of you that convinces you to hang on in spite of the one cruel reality.

No matter what you light up.

Or what you create.

You are as finite as all that persist in the danger.

We will all blow away.

Like smoke.