Angela was startled awake later that night by something furry touching her hand. She looked at her hand and saw two very small and very beady eyes staring back at her. Any girl would have been startled by the presence of a little brown mouse but not Angela, she was a farm girl, and there were tons of mice on a farm.
Sometimes her bedroom would be crawling with them and whereas her mother had always considered them to be filthy animals, Angela thought they were cute. Angela carefully sat up and the mouse positioned itself in her palm. She chuckled as the mouse's furry little face tickled her hand.
"Hey there, little cutey" she whispered "Whatcha up to?"
The mouse chittered softly and Angela chuckled again. She kept quiet when she heard a chair moving in the office down the mile and tensed. When no footsteps were forthcoming, she relaxed again and looked at the little mouse again.
"I don't have any food for you I'm afraid" she whispered.
The mouse tilted his head slightly and rubbed its front legs over its face. Angela watched fascinated as the mouse cleaned himself completely.
"Angela?" Brutal's voice came "Are you okay?"
The mouse was startled and he jumped off her hand onto the bed and from the bed onto the floor and shot off down the mile.
"Yes" Angela said softly "I'm fine, you scared my mouse though"
"Your mouse?" Brutal questioned.
Angela nodded and got off her cot to walk to the bars. Once there she looked across the mile and searched for her furry little friend. She smiled when she saw him and pointed at him. Brutal turned and looked, smiling when he saw the tiny mouse.
He chuckled softly trying hard not to wake the other cons in their cells by laughing too loud. Paul Edgecomb and Dean Stanton entered at that minute and looked at Brutal like he was crazy.
"I guess the legislature loosened those purse-strings enough to hire on a new guard" Brutal said to them softly.
Edgecomb and Stanton apparently still didn't see anything because they still looked at Brutal as though he were crazy and Angela giggled softly.
"Look again" Brutal said "He's right there"
Edgecomb and Stanton looked again and this time they saw it. The mouse was coming up the mile, trotting a short distance and peering right and left before making another forward spurt.
"He's doing a cell check" Edgecomb whispered.
Now all three of the guard were trying not to laugh. The mouse drew even closer and Stanton looked on worriedly.
"It aint normal for a mouse to come up on people that way" Stanton said "Maybe it's rabid"
"It's not" Angela said softly "It's just curious"
"The big mouse expert" Brutal said, referring to Stanton "The Mouse Man. You see it foaming at the mouth, Mouse Man?"
"I don't see its mouth at all" Stanton said.
Angela burst out laughing at that and her laughter proved to be infectious. They all laughed as the mouse stopped before them and peered up at them, curling its tail around its paws. The guards and Angela fell silent as Arlen Bitterbuck stirred in his cell, sitting up to watch.
"Maybe it's hungry" Angela said "I told it I didn't have anything to eat"
Brutal nodded and tore off a piece of his half-eaten corned beef sandwich, holding it delicately out with two fingers. The mouse rose up, appraising the morsel with shiny black eyes.
"Go on" Angela whispered "He wont hurt you"
The mouse looked at Angela for a moment before approaching a little bit more and grabbing the piece of sandwich. After eating the scrap of bread the mouse turned and scurried up the mile, vanishing under the restraint room door at the far end.
"He's in the damn restraint room" Stanton said "You know he's gonna be chewing the padding out of walls and making himself a nice little nest"
"All right" Edgecomb sighed "Let's get the damn mouse"
"Don't hurt him" Angela whispered after them and Edgecomb couldn't help but be touched by the simplicity of her request.
"We wont hurt the mouse" Edgecomb muttered as he, Brutal and Stanton strode down the mile to the restraint room door "But we aint leaving it there neither"
"Saw me a mouse go by" Coffey, who was now awake, said softly.
"It was a dream" Edgecomb said "Go back to sleep"
"Weren't no dream" Coffey insisted "It was a mouse all right"
"Can't put anything over on you" Edgecomb sighed as he unlocked the door.
From where she was standing Angela could see that the room was filled with cleaning supplies, buckets of paint, mops and ladders.
Brutal shrugged off his jacket and Angela couldn't help but marvel at his strong build before turning away slightly with a blush on her cheeks. Edgecomb grabbed a mop from a steel bucket and handed it to Stanton.
"Dean, watch the door. He tries to get past you…" Edgecomb said, trailing off when he noticed Angela watching him with big blue eyes.
He knew that if they killed the mouse she would never forgive them.
"If he tries to get past me, what?" Stanton asked.
"Just try to stop him somehow" Edgecomb said.
"How?" Stanton asked.
"I don't know" Edgecomb said exasperatedly.
Brutal and Edgecomb started doing the heavy lifting, muscling an unused filing cabinet out the door, after much hard work they finally relayed the last few heavy buckets of paint onto the Mile. Edgecomb and Brutal were catching their breath, scanning the empty restraint room. Their eyes went glaringly to Stanton.
"You let him get past you" Edgecomb accused.
"No I didn't" Stanton protested "I was here all the time"
"Then where the hell is he?" Brutal asked.
They moved slowly into the room, peering into every nook and cranny, utterly mystified. Brutal shook his head.
"Three grown men" he sighed "Outsmarted by a mouse"
"Well, bright side is, all this commotion probably scared him off for good" Stanton said.
"Yeah, that's right. That's the last we'll see of him…" Edgecomb said.
Angela surpressed a giggle as she sat on her cot, holding the mouse in her hands. She wasn't so sure about that.