Mousetrap

“I don’t wanna go either.”

Rubber soles dragging across gravel is the only sound that fills the gaps in their equally dry conversation. Even in the middle of summer, the humming of cicadas just can’t drown out the ringing silence.

“When is she planning to go?”

Does it matter? The girl thinks bitterly. Either way I’m losing everything I have.

“She’s thinking July.”

A slow nod comes from her friend, contemplative, afraid of saying the wrong thing, of uncovering a wound she doesn’t care to see.

“And you can’t convince her otherwise?”

A shake of the head. “No.” The crisp white uniform shirt scraps across her damp skin like sandpaper.

“Well, we can visit each other often.”

“I wish he didn’t reach out. Would’ve been better if he really was dead.”

Gently, a hand lands on her arm but the girl is too far away from her own body to feel any trace of the plastic warmth.

“You don’t mean that.”

***

Lily enters the same house she has lived in for the majority of her life, with white paint chipping away at the frame and the sticky, cold smell of mould shamelessly inhabiting every inch of the building. Boxes pile high atop of one another like jenga blocks, reaching their way to the ceiling.

Lily’s childhood and adolescence is to be packaged up into cardboard boxes and shipped to a new country which she doesn’t care much for, only for her to follow afterwards. She absentmindedly steps past the small traps set up around the place.

We could finally move. Lily recalls her mother saying.

She was visibly taken aback. Move? Where? Finally? Lily hadn’t realised that this was a plan that had been brewing behind closed doors. But if it’s something her mother wants, then it's something that precedes Lily’s needs and wellbeing.

With that amount of money I can finally stop struggling so much. Lily hadn’t realised that moving to another country could mean the ceasing of everyday struggles.

This new, conveniently gained cash came from Lily’s absent father. Absent since she was perhaps two years of age although she can’t remember a single thing about the man.

He’s dead. Her mother would tell her, her shrill voice filled with venom.

If anyone asks, just tell them he’s dead. She had laughed and Lily wasn’t old enough to comprehend why she had wanted to look away.

He showed up again recently, now Lily is fourteen, he decides to send a large sum of money to compensate for… a lot of things that Lily could spend the rest of her years listing without coming to an end.

For a non-existent childhood, for her cheap clothes, for that unwanted wave of nausea when boys brush past her too closely.

And now his money is going to take her away from her close friends, from the quiet, short path that she walks everyday to and from school, from her minuscule sense of familiarity in a thumbnail sized city.

“You need to pack all of your summer clothes today.”

Lily whips around to see her mother standing in her room, sorting out books and documents without looking her way.

“Yeah.”

She gives her a once over, “Are you selling your uniform?”

Lily follows her line of sight, landing on her collared shirt, “why?”

“Well you don’t need it anymore do you? Might as well save some shipping money and get rid of it now.”

Lily looks at her mother, packing away binders of documents and books bought years ago that she knows she will never have the patience to read.

“I’ll give it to a classmate,” she says and turns to walk to her room.

***

Her jungle of cardboard boxes don’t seem don’t bring her as much claustrophobia or anxiety as she thought it might. Although Lily isn’t naive enough to think the pain and self pity won’t hit later when she’s in that new country and her childhood friends forget how to use a phone to stay in touch.

For the past few weeks Lily finds her mind drifting to thoughts of her father. Thoughts, because she physically cannot conjure up any memories of the man. She daydreams about how he looks, the way he speaks, the tone of his voice. All she knows is that he’s a somewhat tall man with an air of intelligence, she suspects, because he was once a university professor.

During the night she has dreams about the man. Very vague dreams, usually with her doing some mundane act like having brunch or waiting for a bus but he always appears at the end. Some of the more intense ones play out like a film, with the majority of it just gaining momentum, dragging out the suspense surrounding this mysterious figure, before ending with a cliffhanger. Sometimes he’s waiting for her, other times he’s calling her. One time he’s the size of a skyscraper, and the wad of cash in his hand falls, crushing the air from Lily’s lungs and sandwiching her against the concrete, bones breaking one by one.

The big reveal never comes, though. His face is never seen. Always covered in a patch of shadowy darkness or the dream ends before Lily can turn to face him. It’s pretty miserable, Lily thinks, but it only makes sense, you still need the right material in your subconscious to be able to dream them up.

***

On this particular night, Lily doesn’t get to dream before she hears a scream come from the living room

She bolts out of bed and runs to see her mother with all of her hair standing on end, knuckles stark white from gripping at her nightgown. Eyes lit up and teeth clenched as if shocked with electricity, forehead shining with a thin veil of sweat.

“Get rid of it!” she screeches.

Lily moves purely with the strength of her heart pounding in her throat and ears.

And there she sees it, the tiny grey thing struggling on all fours atop of the mousetrap.

Their house has been infested with them recently and Lily’s mother spent almost a hundred dollars on all kinds of rat traps and poisons. It made her turn feral, seething with unadulterated hate, saying that the vermin haunted her teenage years whilst flatting with other struggling students.

This mouse wasn’t caught on one of those wooden traps seen in cartoons that kill them in an instant. The poor thing managed to get stuck in the trap that uses glue. Holds it down like quicksand while it’s still alive to struggle for whatever sick, twisted reason. Giving the illusion of a safe path when really it has no intention of letting anything go.

“Here, use this to squish it!” Her mother’s voice pierces through the ringing in her ears.

She shoves a small object towards Lily, “what? This is-”

Realisation dawns on her and she feels bile rise up in her throat

“Just hurry up and do it! Now!”

Lily flinches, grabs the book from her hands and pushes it onto the squirming creature, all the while feeling a weight crush her own ribs, her lungs collapsing.

She can feel it through the book. The small pulsations and twitches from the animal pushes through the bound pages and into her palms. She clenches her teeth and looks away, breathing through her nose.

For a disgustingly long second she sees herself as a palm sized creature, her fingers breaking and the skin on her limbs tearing and peeling off her body, revealing pink and red flesh and she screams wildly. Saliva, snot and tears trickle from her orifices, pupils bleeding into her sclera as she twists in all directions to pull away from-

“Put it in here and get rid of it!”

Lily’s mind checks out and she moves on auto pilot, picking up the morbid sandwich of rat glue, a creature and a small book and places it into a tin box her mother has laid open; a coffin of sorts. Hands shaking with nausea pumping through her veins, she barely recalls closing the lid and tying the box with wire while her mother dishes out commands beside her ear. She walks outside into the cold air and throws the whole thing in the garbage bin.

She isn’t sure how long she stands outside with the concrete digging into her bare feet, breathing hard and swelling around nothing, trying to patch up the places in her consciousness that are very quickly collapsing. When the quiet numbness finally starts seeping into every inch of her limbs, the girl climbs back into bed and pulls the covers over her head, praying for a dreamless sleep.

***

Waking up brings needles in her eyes and a knocking in her skull before sitting up to get ready for school.

Aching limbs move fluidly through the house to wash up and get dressed. She listens to the sounds of her mother moving in the kitchen, with a kettle boiling and utensils clanging against plates.

With her hair tied and uniform straightened she starts packing her bag with textbooks and files before remembering to bring her sketchbook with her. It’s a little black book, she’s been thoroughly using it for months, filling in every tight blank space there is, writing down reminders and notes and doodling when she’s bored in class. She read somewhere that writing down goals and wishes can help manifest them into reality, whether or not that’s true, it has been therapeutic writing down whatever comes to mind.

Living room, Lily remembers and walks there to look for it on the coffee table. Her eyes trail towards the corner of the room, landing on the pebbles of rat poison scattered on the floor before her vision blurs and the room tilts.

Visceral images flash behind her eyelids, stunning her as she recalls the events of last night. The yelling, the box, the wire, a small grey creature, her limbs tearing from their sockets. Lily covers her mouth in an attempt to stop gagging.

Her mother had shoved her sketchbook into her hands, forcing her to end that creature’s life with something that’s filled with her thoughts, emotions, her mindful intentions.

It had been easy for her. For that woman to step over Lily, to take something that she holds so dearly, and use it as a cheap shield, as she always did. Her palms fill with cold sweat as she feels the ghost of squirming and twitching and twisting through a small black book.

In a trance, Lily walks to the kitchen where her mother is preparing breakfast, spreading honey on toast. Not a single trace of a disturbed rest, of restless thoughts. She stares at her in silence, once again feeling her mind tear at the seams.

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

Her mother pauses, looking up at her with wide eyes for a moment before giving her a soft smile.

Pitying.

All knowing.

She turns her attention back to the toast.

“You don’t mean that.”