It’s April, and it snowed. The snow was the end to a day in which I wandered about in the rain without my raincoat, which I didn’t have because I couldn’t find it because it was hanging on the back of the bathroom door (obviously).
In the midst of wandering in the rain, I went into a used clothes store that had also been a used clothes store way back when I was in high school. It was the place where I bought my one and only piece of cool clothing when I was eighteen. I wore said piece of cool clothing all the time until it became threadbare and tired and gave up on existence altogether. This time through, I was very tempted to buy either a sailor’s uniform (why? because) or a long black overcoat. The overcoat was so long, though, and so large, that I could have used it as a tent as easily as a coat. I decided against it.
(Why, you might ask, didn’t I just look for a raincoat? Because practicality is not one of my strong points.)
After coming home wet and tired, and with a throat that had turned the corner toward sore, I discovered a drip. Kind of like the Telltale Heart, only I hadn’t planted the drip in my floorboards, or anywhere else. This drip had located itself in the ceiling. Up into the crawlspace I went, with great enthusiasm, of course. Who doesn’t love fighting the elements in tight spaces filled with insulation?
(As a side note, I managed to spell insulation as insultation, which I really, really wish was a word. I’m sorry, but you’re about due for an insultation. Let me see what we have available.)
Then, crawl space tasks accomplished, I climbed back down. (Hey, if you have a phobia of…well, I don’t even know what the correct term would be, so, if you have any phobias, skip this next bit.) Only, things weren’t quite right. My finger hurt. A lot, like I’d stuck a nail in it. Or a staple, or anything pointy and not meant to be in fingers.
I looked down. There, sticking off my finger, was a mouse skull. Yes, my finger was impaled on a bit of bone sticking out of the eye socket of a mouse skull.
Occasionally, there are times I want to scream. This may have been one of them. I’m not really bothered by bones, or mice, or even by things stuck in my finger, but…A MOUSE SKULL STABBED MY HAND! It was like Sleeping Beauty and the spindle, only I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a fairy showdown at my christening, and I definitely don’t live in a palace, and…MOUSE SKULL. Really, it was more like the urban fantasy version of Sleeping Beauty, where she gets impaled by a bone and ends up asleep in a unused subway tunnel full of thorn graffiti that comes to life whenever anyone tries to enter it.
Okay, so then it rained more, and then it snowed. That’s more or less all the news from here, aside from my raging cold.
For those of you in the market for more hard-hitting blogging, I’ve got interviews coming! Multiple ones, with writers, about sky-diving. No, not really. About writing, of course. Perhaps not as flashy as mouse skull impalement, but trust me, writing is more interesting.
With that, it’s time for more tea and nap. (For me, though I encourage everyone else to partake as well. Tea and naps have never done anyone any harm.)
April 16, 2014 at 5:40 pm
Ew! Mouse skull impalement–I’m kinda creeped out by that. But…it sounds exactly like a story that you need to write, you know? That urban version of Sleeping Beauty–very visceral, or skull-eral (which also aught to be a word since it fits here so well).
April 16, 2014 at 8:06 pm
You created a new spec fic subgenre–skulleral fiction! I’ve always wanted to get in on the ground floor of something. 🙂
Also, for the record, mouse skull impalement is fairly gross.
April 16, 2014 at 6:27 pm
Yes to the urban Sleeping Beauty!
… insultation – form of greeting used by men when they swear at each other rather than saying, ‘hello’.
Keep the mouse skull. Who knows the things that eye socket has witnessed!
April 16, 2014 at 8:08 pm
You mean aside from the inner workings of my finger? 😀
Now I’m torn. Do I write about urban Sleeping Beauty, or about the rise of insultation, first among working class men, and then among the rich kid poseurs?
April 17, 2014 at 3:50 pm
Yes!