#a mouse in the basement

[reborrowing]

a mouse in the basement - part 1/?

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sorry for starting 546 stories instead of finishing things. kind of. this isn't as writery for me to work on. chapters linked in my pinned

David has been imprisoned. He's not sure where, he's not sure why, but he has no chance of freeing himself. Except now he's not quite alone. Kikitok links are here, if you want to try and puzzle out what the borrower character is saying throughout (more relevant later, honestly) word count: ~800 content: kidnapping & captivity, blood/injury, restraints, ~language barrier~ kind of a disclaimer note that arguably this should go on my whump blog instead of here, thematically speaking. But the point is more to flex my conlang (even if that's not yet obvious in this piece) and this blog is where I've been putting Kíkítok. I'm not really including particularly graphic violence or torture etc anyway

The only things to do in the basement were sleep and wonder why he’d been brought here. David was tired of both. The first few days, he had wrestled with the chain around his ankles and the ties around his wrist. He’d resigned himself to the aches of having his arms pinned behind his back for hours. He’d waddled around the perimeter in search of an escape. He hadn’t found one. He hadn’t even found a reason why he was here.

He didn’t think he was important enough to warrant a ransom and whoever was holding him down here only bothered to acknowledge him for about forty-five minutes per day. That was only to keep him fed. He imagined all kinds of horrible scenarios about being sold and enslaved or killed off for his organs, but he’d been down here for weeks. He didn’t have dignity but he wasn't really being humiliated either. Nothing happened, he was just locked in this crushing, monotonous isolation.

David slipped back into consciousness and stared up at the thin window on the far wall. It was still dark out. He hummed to himself, imagining words he couldn’t form through the duct tape over his mouth.

Something fell past the window.

It was such a brief flash that in any other context, if there was anything else happening, David wouldn’t have even noticed it. Something small and metal plinked across the floor. After several days of pretending to watch paint dry for entertainment, it may as well have been a fireworks show.

He didn’t waste the energy to stand and shuffled across the basement on his knees, chains clattering behind him. On the floor, almost glittering in the moonlight, was a thumbtack that hadn’t been there before. David hobbled forward towards it, trying to imagine something he could do with it. It was the only sharp thing he’d found down here and he really wanted it to be useful in some way, but it was too short to pick his cuffs or the locks around his ankles, even if he had the dexterity to try. He left it where it lay.

Another flash of movement drew his eyes to a small shadow along the wall.

Mouse, he thought at first, then, what the hell?!

The creature there was mouse-sized, as they hunched against the wall it was clear they had a perfectly humanoid shape, even covered up in a tiny gray dress. It was just that they couldn’t be more than a few inches tall. Tiny black eyes glittered up from underneath a miniature hood.

Is this real? Did the man upstairs do this to you? Is this what I’m here for?

They stared at each other for several seconds, both looking terrified. The creature—person?—took several steps to the right to start looking for an escape. David wished she would find one, but knew there was no way out but up, even for a mouse.

“Ah-I’m sorry. Pease, don’t hurt me,” the tiny thing gasped.

David shook his head no, eyes wide. He automatically started to protest that he would ever do such a thing but the duct tape over his mouth caught the words before they could get out. All he could do was stare at the poor thing.

Whatever she was, her situation was at least as bad as David’s, probably worse. Her skirt and her coat, which was fastened with a single button nearly the size of her head, were both dripping wet. She clutched at her side as if in pain and her already tiny steps were slowed by a severe limp.

David sat down and tried to look as harmless as possible (he felt most of this had already been done for him, what with the restraints). He wished he could do more to try and calm the woman's nerves. Communication was next to impossible with both hands and tongue held back. He nodded his head towards himself in a “come here” gesture that was much vaguer than he’d like.

The little woman shook her head and continued her hobbling retreat.

David leaned forward and tried again. You’re freezing, he thought as he watched her squeeze himself behind a table leg and hunker down. The cement floors would only make the cold worse. He mimed shivering as best as he could with his arms behind his back and nodded towards her, then stopped as he nodded back toward himself. Let me help you.

“I’m sorry, piyískasara wun. I’m sorry.”

David furrowed his brow as he tried to parse what the woman said before registering it as another language. He leaned back and sighed.

He refused to let the little stranger die. If he couldn’t help directly, he could still share. The shitty camping cot he’d been allowed had come with an equally shitty fleece blanket, the sort you leave in the closet for decades. Slowly and awkwardly, he kicked it across the room. It was thin and hardly any comfort to David, but it would be more than excessive for the mouse-woman on the other side of the room, presuming she was real.

[thestalkerbunny]

Don't hate her just because she knows which direction West is. (It's the left of whichever way you're facing at the given time.)

[briarpatch-kids]

Pumpkin is not allowed to sit in Mouse's chair because that's Mouse's territory. So she does everything she can to skirt that rule

[st4rstudent]

Invasive species

[ruvviks]

some sketches i did with my mouse of thaddeus and sun :^) new friends for heavenly

[hollyhomburg]

i was gonna write today but then my washing machine AND my dishwasher broke within THREE HOURS OF EACH OTHER last night so it's looking like instead of writing about bily yoongi i will have to be a bily yoongi today.

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

UM

[brosif40]

Sooooo i was finally able to start doing the modded stuff in eclipse and I have to say piantissimo is sooo broken its awesome

[synthshenanigans]

okay but i was looking through the the unseen v shrikhand tags to feel something i guess and one of the tags was 'reblog to kill "chonny jash" faster' I CAN'T GET OVER THE SCARE QUOTES AS IF HE ISN'T REAL LIKE KJDSNFJKASNFKJL

I mean has anyone ever even seen Chonny before? Maybe he's australias new legend or cryptid

[ailendolin]

Silly Plague Ghosts headcanon: they have a pet ghost rat called Mrs Scruffypaws.

(Mick named her - he's been banned from naming things ever since).

[reborrowing]

the worst moment of her life so far

writing is still slow but scribbling is fun

[catzgam3rz]

I’ve been hearing like clicking noises in my walls for a little while and I figured it was just my A/C unit turning on whenever I heard it yknow?

But I was thinking today “huh wouldn’t it be interesting if I come home and my cat has left me a mouse or something?”

You’ll never guess what I just found on my carpet

[briarpatch-kids]

My husband saw Mouse twitching and making noise in her sleep like she was having a nightmare and moved her to bed with me. I think she was dreaming that Pumpkin was sitting in her chair.

[myspineisthebassline]

[dangerouscommiesubversive]

Vanilla Bean has I think the highest prey drive of any cat I've ever had, which means that it's a weird relief sometimes when a moth or something gets into the house and she gets to go nuts on it. Like, I have nothing against moths, I'm quite fond of them, but the flipside of the Sacred Covenant of the Indoor Cat, wherein I keep her off the streets and thus she doesn't decimate the local wildlife, is that if the local wildlife decides to come indoors too then it's on sight. Keeps her from getting too pent-up.

[spinkt]

Poor girl (gender neutral) housekeeping/cleaning tip:

Get yourself a couple of the little plastic buckets that places like Walmart sell for Easter baskets. They'll be super cheap after the holiday (pretty cheap before hand, too), and they are very very handy. They're a good size for containing a useful-but-not-too-heavy amount of water/cleaning solution, they're small enough to fit under most plumbing you'll be likely to have to address yourself (like toilet tank shutoffs and bathroom sink u-bends), they work well for holding the bits from small appliance disassembly so your screws don't roll everywhere and everything stays together if you have to walk away from your project.

They're cheap enough that if you have to use them for something unforgivably gross you can recycle them without feeling bad.

And! Often they have dinosaurs on them, and that's a benefit that no big official cleaning bucket has.