Paul wondered if this was a trap, the kind that killed Jim.
He was smart and generally stayed out of trouble. He ate sensibly – only fresh scraps. He once ate some delicious green pellets off a plastic tray that made him so sick he thought he’d die and almost wanted to. He surely would have except he came upon the tray after eating a hard chunk of Colby Jack. (Who throws cheese away??) So he was already full when he came upon the green stuff and only had a taste. Somehow he knew it was the pellets that made him sick. They were good but there was a funny taste to them. From then on, he only ate food that the big ones ate.
And it wasn’t enough to stick to real food. Paul had a friend named Jim who got his head crushed going for good cheese in a trap. What was in it for the big people who set up tricks like that? What kind of sickness could cause such cruelty? Paul had only heard about Jim. He didn’t see for himself and was glad of it. But he had involuntarily constructed a mental picture. Someone was kind enough to let him know that one of Jim’s eyes had popped out. Paul shuddered for his poor friend and at the thought that he’d been through the same spot only two days before.
So Paul had got his smarts the way most do – from experience that didn’t kill him. This idea provoked a conversation among several of the mice.
An old one said, “The best lessons kill you.” Others nodded. “The greatest insights come in those final moments, surely.”
“Surely,” said another. “But of what use are they then?”
“No use.”
“No.” And there was more solemn nodding. “Good food in a dead mouth.”
“Better to be dumb for a lifetime than wise for an instant. Right?”
“That’s what most of us choose anyway,” said one with a chuckle.
“Well we all get the final moment eventually. Why rush it?”
“Not if you sleep through it.”
“I’ll take my chances of that. I’ll count myself lucky to avoid wisdom as long as possible.”
The others cleared out after the Jim incident. Paul thought of going, but he liked it there. He knew his way around. He was getting on in months and was reluctant to change his ways. The others pleaded with him to join them, but the thought of learning a whole new place made him feel tired. He decided to stay put a while and keep his eyes open. The way the others told it, Jim fell for a trap that was pretty obvious. It wasn’t as if a cat had moved in. A sentient roving enemy would be too much stress to live with. But just to watch out for a stationary contraption – Paul felt up to that.
But the days alone went slowly. Paul missed the group. He couldn’t join them now because he had no idea where they went. They were gone. As gone as Jim. Paul felt stupid for choosing the familiarity of place over the familiarity of people. The house seemed vast and empty now. Of course the big ones were still there, and they seemed bigger too.
Sure enough, one night Paul came upon what might be a trap. At first he only noticed the cheese. He smelled it a long way off and was moving to it eagerly when something made him slow down. Just a sense of dread that he felt before he consciously perceived the trap around the cheese. When he did, he examined it, taking fairly wide circles and very gingerly shrinking them. He couldn’t figure how it worked, but he sensed its coiled up energy, its desire to be in another state – closed, at rest.
If this was the kind of thing that took out Jim, Paul could understand both how Jim fell for it and how the others could see the trap as obvious after the fact. It was big, but if he hadn’t been looking for it, he might have ignored whatever doubts cropped up until it was too late. Yes, this seemed very likely the device that got his friend.
Paul’s appetite argued against that. His appetite told him he was imagining things. His appetite pointed out how good the cheese smelled and how good it would taste and how well it would serve to fill the emptiness scratching a bigger and bigger space inside him.
Paul sat there frozen in this internal disagreement. It was as if he housed two sides of two different debates. One spoke only of the trap and one spoke only of the hunger and each said nothing to address the other. Both spoke to self preservation. Caution’s strength was the severity of the danger if it was right: total annihilation (and possibly great pain on the way). Hunger’s strength was in the certainty of both its pain and cure. He was hungry and that was cheese. The rest was conjecture. Paul felt pretty sure Caution was right, that the right answer was to leave, but the cheese smelled so good, and he allowed his thinking to become muddled to the point that he didn’t know which part of himself to listen to.
Then the two sides, having exhausted their strengths, took to trying to undercut the other. Caution reminded Paul that the green pellets also smelled good. Hunger countered that the green pellets had an artificial smell that the cheese lacked. The cheese was cheese, it seemed certain.
Hunger then took an audacious tack. It said, What difference does it make? Maybe there’s a tiny chance it is a trap, but you’re all alone now. The others have all left. What are your prospects now? Be bold. We all go some time. You’ll have relief one way or another – either from hunger or loneliness.
The idea captivated Paul. And then there was a third, certain relief eating the cheese offered: relief from the dilemma. The decision would be made and the stress of this internal battle would be ended. Paul turned it over, flirted with the idea. Paul himself also felt a coiled up energy and the desire to be at rest. He took in a breath and let it out. The soft scent of the cheese and the thought of peace mingled behind his closed eyes. Suicide. Paul admitted to himself what he was considering. And even then he didn’t dismiss it.
He actually felt a little … lighter to realize he had that option. It made him feel that his life was less something thrust upon him. Living was his choice. And seeing that made him feel a bit less small. And just like that, the fight was over. Hunger knew it had made a tactical error and had lost.
“Well, it said, then we better get out of here and find something else to eat.”
Caution threw it this crumb: “We can always come back later and think on this some more.”
But all sides knew they would not be back any time soon.
