Free TheVampireandtheMouse by Robin Stark

Chapter One
     
    I think office mouse is the phrase.
    Yes, that’s it. I suppose that’s what I am. An office mouse.
It’s a curious phrase, I think. Certainly, I am mouse-like. Though I don’t
squeak, and cheese is by far not my favorite snack. But I am quiet, and I do
move quickly, and I hate attention. I work in the complaints department for a
car-insurance company, and I go home, where I live alone with two cats, and
then go back to work. It’s not a great job, a career , but it pays the
bills and that’s okay. I have coworkers, and I have a little fun by giving them
nicknames, but they don’t know about this, and if they did I think I’d go into
some sort of fit of embarrassment. There’s Jack Langdale (Goggles), Michael
Smith (Bin Breath), Andrea Gould (Legs), Simone Winter (Panda Eyes), and Fiona
Barham (The Princess). There are others, but these are the only ones lucky
enough to be gifted with nicknames from yours truly.
    But I digress.
    Mouse, hmm.
    It is a curious phrase. Some people are lion-like,
brave and strong and ferocious. But lions aren’t all that brave. They’re at the
top of the food chain. How much bravery does that really require? No, I think
mice are much braver. They spend their whole lives scuttling from one place to
another, always prey to other animals’ rumbling stomachs.
    But I’ve digressed, again.
    It was July when it all started, a beautiful English July
with healthy interpolations of summer rain and the occasional heat wave. I was
twenty-six and he was, well, he was older. I had worked at that company since I
was eighteen and not once had I been promoted, but I didn’t care. The job was a
job, that’s all. I had no goals in life except a roof over my head and food on
my plate. My job has nothing to do with this story, but, oddly, it is where it all started.
    I was working a late shift. When I got out it was dark. The
stars shone down like little diamonds from the clear sky, and a few drunk
people stumbled down the road, laughing, shouting, touching, and the crescent
moon winked its shy light down at me. I don’t live in the best area. Rough is the word.
    I was walking beneath the underpass when they came, two
guys, tough-looking. I was wearing a skirt and a shirt and glasses and my hair
was in a bob. I’m not the most attractive girl in the world. (I’m short with
blonde hair and small, pert breasts and ghost-white skin and blue eyes with
specks of brown.) But men do sometimes show interest. That’s what these men
clearly thought they were doing, at first: showing interest . One was two
heads taller than me with a big, sweaty belly that almost exploded from his
tracksuit. The other was short, with ratty hair and a sharp, pointed nose that
jutted from a gaunt face.
    “All right, darlin’,” Rat said.
    “Fine, thank you,” I said, walking a bit faster.
    “Whoa, whoa, where you goin’ all fuck you? Come back an’ say
hello.”
    I ignored this and kept walking. I was on the left side,
almost hugging the wall, and they were on the other side, smoking cigarettes.
The clop-clop-clop of my heels was loud against the pavement, like a
signal-call, beckoning them. Rat was the first to move, Fat hanging back.
    He jogged up in line with me on his side of the path.
“Darlin’, darlin’! Come an’ say hello. You’re a good-lookin’ gal, I’ll give you
that.”
    “Nice ass,” Fat said with a laugh from behind.
    “Yeah, wouldn’t mind havin’ that from behind!”
    Fat laughed loudly and Rat laughed with him. I was almost at
the end of the underpass now. My heart was going drum-drum-DRUM in my
chest, in my ears, in my palms, screaming at me to get out of there. Sweat
trickled down my back and between my buttocks and down my legs, and my knees
felt wobbly. You hear those stories all the time, don’t you? Woman beaten to
death by two strangers. Woman raped in underpass. Woman raped and then beaten
to death in underpass by two strangers.
    I could already see my picture in