by Julie Bihn
"Ugh!" Shadow put all his weight against the rope and pulled so hard it hurt his shoulder. He advanced a few inches, then paused for a moment, panting and struggling to hold his ground. He looked up and saw Oatmeal grooming herself in the corner.
"Hey, could you help me with this?" he asked.
The cat looked up and half-smiled. "What will you give me?" she purred.
Shadow sighed, although he shouldn't have expected any better from Oatmeal. After all, he had bribed her so she would keep him hidden in her owners' house, instead of eating him. "If you don't help me, I'll move out of here, so I won't have to pay you every month!" he gasped.
"Oh, all right," Oatmeal smiled at Shadow. She walked over to the rope and picked it up, then easily pulled it in, paw-over-paw. When she got to the end of the rope, there was a plastic jar tied to the other end. "Peanut butter?"
Shadow glared at Oatmeal for a moment. "Yeah. Got a problem with that?" He tipped the jar onto its side and rolled it to the side of the room--he had cut out a large hinged door which blended in with the wall.
"Not really," Oatmeal noted. Shadow silently opened his door and pushed the peanut butter inside, then closed the door behind him.
Shadow lived inside one of the house's interior walls; his space was fairly narrow, but very long. (Rather like an old dorm room.) He knew the humans didn't mind him living there; they had seen him before. They seemed to be a bit puzzled as to why their cat didn't eat him, but hadn't been angry that they had a mouse living in their walls. He had finally found a place to live, and had traded in half of his gold for cash (through a possibly fraudulent mail-order service) so he could buy food at the grocery store. He had snuck in while the store was closed that night, and had struggled to get the peanut butter jar down from the shelf. Then he hadn't had any change to pay with, so he had had to leave them a twenty-dollar bill, and a note saying how much he owed them--$3.27, counting sales tax--and that he now had a $16.73 credit at the store. (Shadow was pretty good at math, but, since rodents don't use money, and he knew nothing of engineering, he rarely got the opportunity to use his skills.) He had spent a few hours getting the jar back to the house, then used a harpoon gun of Gadget's he had borrowed (REALLY borrowed, not stolen) to get a piece of rope up through the second-story window. Then it was just a matter of tying the rope to the jar and trying to pull the whole mess up over the windowsill and into the house. But now it was finally in the room. A meal he had paid for. He knew he'd be totally sick of peanut butter by the time he had eaten it all, but he had PAID for it, so he didn't mind.
Shadow spent about twenty minutes trying to get the jar open. He finally had to tip it over and fetch some tape to secure the jar to the ground, just to unscrew the lid. Then he had to remove the foil safety seal; he eventually just poked through it with his fingers and ripped the foil off. There was some peanut butter on the foil seal; Shadow pulled his paw through the stuff, covering his hand in peanut butter. He sat down and looked at his now-golden-brown paw for a few minutes. He had betrayed someone he cared about for it, he had nearly been killed trying to get it. He had made a new friend in the end by deciding he didn't really need it, but he went through and accepted it anyway, when it was offered to him. The money to pay for a simple jar of peanut butter. He stared at his paw for a while longer, then suddenly cringed. He brought his paw closer to his face and tried to lick the goo off of his paw, but he couldn't. Every time he looked at that simple jar of peanut butter, Gadget's sad face came back to him, haunted him, as in a dream. He had made her miserable for this. His ill-gotten money. This stupid peanut butter.
Shadow suddenly laughed. He laughed so loudly and crazily Oatmeal knocked on the door and asked if he was all right. Her voice implied she hoped he wasn't, since she knew where he kept his gold--she wasn't dishonest enough to steal it or kill for it, but would eagerly take a dead mouse's estate. "I'm fine," Shadow laughed, a bit bitterly, and a bit sadly as well.
He couldn't make himself eat the peanut butter.
His hard work, his betrayals, all had been futile. He hadn't accomplished anything at all.
Back to the garbage bins.
Or maybe he could go live with Mandy or something; she could feed him.
Whatever.
"You want any peanut butter?" Shadow called to Oatmeal through the door.
The cat scowled and made a funny noise. And Shadow started laughing again, knowing that, even if he somehow did manage to swallow the stuff, it would just give him an awful stomachache.