Good morning. It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

We are under attack.

I am not normally prone to insomnia and when I don’t get enough sleep I turn into the king of all bastards. My inexplicable inability to fall asleep last night (guilt? remorse? regret?) was bookended by the odd noises that started outside my bedroom window at 7AM.

I can recognise the scritchy-scratch of a mouse running around inside the walls of the house. But what is this other sound? Thump thump thump. Did someone give the mouse a small rubber mallet?

I get up, stumble across the room, throw open my window. The sound stops. I close the window and return to bed.

Thump thump thump.

Scritchy scritchy scratch.

Jesus. I’ve got the covers pulled up over my head. I can’t get to sleep and I’m too tired to reach for the flamethrower.

The rodents multiply. Ultra-light helicopters swoop down and unleash rodent reinforcements. They’re armed with AK-47s and little rubber “test the reflexes of your knee” hammers.

thump thump thump thump thump

In my delirium, the cops have shown up as well. The house is surrounded. They’re yelling at me through a megaphone.

“Where’s your bike helmet! Lemme see some ID, punk!” (A cop called me a “punk” when I got stopped during the stupid Halifax martial-law snowstorm curfew.)

There’s a little mouse SWAT team out there. They’re talking back and forth on rodent walkie-talkies. A mouse in a bulletproof vest is gesturing with his little mousy claws. His tail stands up and points towards the north wall of the house. Two mouse agents make a break for it.

Scritchy-scratch.

I’ll never make it out of here alive. How can I make it out of here alive. I’ve gotta think, dammit! Get up, man! Move, Trinity! I slap myself in the face to wake myself up.

thump, scritchy

That god damn thumping again. What is that? I feel like pulling a Billy Milano, going up to the window stark naked and yelling “What the fuck is that fucking noise?”

They’re in the eavestroughing. Is that it? Or that place where the board blew off during the hurricane. They’re breaking in through there, one at a time. Mouse Invasion 2004. There’s snow on the ground up to your tits and the mice have nowhere to go. Poor little mice. I hate them. Fuckers.

Time to break out some heavy artillery. Vickers the Cat! My roommate Faith isn’t home, I sneak into her room where Vickers is asleep on the duvet. Vickers my �lite rodent death machine! I love you and your multiple claws and your fangs of bloody doom! C’mere, big guy!

I open Faith’s window and push Vickers out onto the little rooftop area. I expect he will home right in on the rain gutter. Rodent body parts will erupt everywhere in a rain of bloody shrapnel!

Vickers looks over his shoulder, squints into the morning sun, and taps on the window to be let back in.

tap tap tap

Go get ’em! Predator! The Verminator! Rambo!

tap tap tap

C’mon man… we’re counting on you to save the world from plague and pestilence!

tap tap. tap tap tap

Vickers… what’s the matter. Do I need to slip some Viagra into your Special Dinner?

tap tap tap. *mew*

Christ on a bike. I open the window and let the cat back in. He jumps back up on Faith’s bed, yawns and smacks his lips. He looks at me as if to say, “What?”

I’m going insane. I’ll have to get a mousetrap and put it in the eavestroughing.

I hear they’re making “cruelty-free” mousetraps now. Bullshit! Never heard of it. I’m going into Canadian Tire to demand the cruelest, most elaborate medieval-torture-chamber of a mousetrap that has ever been invented.

“Snap!” I laugh at your pain, rodent. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I want to put a mouse head on a pole and leave it as a warning for all the other mice.

Behold the Mouse!

Where is your god now!

I laugh at your pain! I laugh at your suffering! I laugh at sick children! I laugh at people with cancer! I laugh at gut-shot policemen! I laugh at the dying Pope!

Can’t you see that I am a servant of the Dark Lord Satan!

I am your worst nightmare. I am Death. I am the claimer of souls. I am the Grim Reaper. I am a light sleeper. I can’t take it anymore, I am going back to bed, God damn you all.

Good-bye, cruel Wednesday.