"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese" - Unknown

    He was falling, but not far. The mid afternoon light reached down, broken by the metal bars, as if it had tried to catch him. He fell regardless, and landed with a squeak and a thud on the hard brick.

    The mouse rolled over and stared up at the light, seen in double. His vision swam. He got up on his feet, clenched his paws and with a squeak of effort; he jumped straight up.

    Too little, too far, the mouse landed back on the stone with a less-than spectacular crash.  There was no escape. At least, there was no escape the way he came. The little mouse turned and began to wander down the tunnel.

    The tunnels were low and arched; one might even call them claustrophobic.  Made of brick and blackening with age, the tunnels twisted and turned, rose and dropped, all according to some unseen plan, the architect long gone.

    He crept down the tunnel, following twists and turns. Long hours of walking later, a new tunnel appeared. 

    It sat in start contrast to the low and arched red bricks of the previous tunnel maze. This tunnel was a grand and large tunnel, made of greyish stone and flickering lights. Water dripped from the ceiling here and there, pooling in tiny puddles beneath great rails, and running down rivulets dug into the track.

    For the first time since falling, the mouse felt the wonderful and calming whisper of air, blowing down the tunnel. The underground wind twisted and twirled the trash along the tracks.
    
    Candy wrappers, spare bills, aluminum cans, plastic bags, and spare food wrapping tumbled down the track.  The little mouse began to chatter his teeth and sniff at the air.  One man's trash is another mouse's dinner.

    Climbing up into the secondary tunnel, he began to skitter along the railways, keeping far to the sides, headed against the breeze.  Now and then he stopped to raise up into the air on his hind legs and sniff.

    Ahead of him lay an entire world of curious smells.  Rubber and oil, fetid water and the low, deep musk of a human.  Above that, rose a singular, tempting, siren's song of a note:  meat.  The smell was a high and pungent symphony of spices and smoke. It was salami! 

    The little mouse chattered and scurried forward, sniffing all the while. Below the salami sat another note that gave him pause. It was something like copper and stone grit, a certain dampness that brought with it the acidic tanginess.

    He continued along the tracks. Every so often, a hop over a rail or board was made. At the end of the tunnel, it opened up into light.  He sprang into the light, and blinked. There was noise. Then, his eyes adjusted and he saw before him a cluster of humans, standing on the edge of a raised platform, above the rails.

    Despite the humans standing in silence, it was quite noisy.  Above the moving of feet and some bell accompanied by a voice, the unearthly loud shriek of metal came, jarring the tracks ahead of it.  

"Run!" the mouse heard from somewhere.

The little mouse looked around, rearing up on his hind-legs again. On the other side of the track, near a cracked hole in the wall on the bottom of the platform, perched a black rat. He was almost twice the little mouse's size.  

"What are you waiting for? Get away from there. Run over here, now!"

The mouse leapt across the vibrating tracks. The shriek reached a fever pitch, tracks quivering ahead of its approach. The mouse finished leaping across the second set of track rails, and was roughly pounced into a hole by the black rat.

Over the tracks came a great metal monster, grey and loud.  It shuddered to a stop above them. 

The little mouse's eyes were the size of bottle caps. 

The black rat said something, but it was lost in the furious hum of the monster above them, and the trampling of feet. After the feet stopped, the monster hissed. It began to shriek again, and it shuddered down the rails, eventually becoming two glowing red eyes in the tunnel, then lost to the darkness.

The black rat looked down at the mouse. "You stupid or something? That thing almost ate you too!"

The mouse tilted his head.

"What's wrong?"

The mouse squeaked.

"You can't talk, can you?" A look crossed his face as he remembered his previous comment. "Aw sh-..I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm really sorry. I just didn't want that thing to eat you."

The mouse squeaked, then looked up at the rails.

The black rat frowned. "I'll be honest. I don't understand a word you're saying, but I'll try to explain. Me? I'm Rairu. That thing up there is a monster called Tetrain. It eats the humans. They get sacrificed to it. It only picks certain ones though, see?" he pointed up.

The mouse followed his finger.  Sure enough, on the platform a few humans remained, looking rather vacant eyed.

"We have to move real careful down the tracks here. They may still be under it's spell, but they can and will kill us if they see us."

The little mouse squeaked! His ears flattened to his head.

"Exactly." He leapt up out of the hole and began to scamper quickly down the side of the track.

The little mouse followed him until they reached the end of where the tunnel opens up into the platform. Rairu turned around.

"We're going up there. Put your claws in the cracks." Rairu leapt up, finding claw-holds in the cracks, until he stood right at the edge of the platform, deftly hidden in a patch of shadow.

The little mouse looked up. A light flickered over the humans, briefly bringing patches of shadow into being before ripping them back out again.  The humans stared anywhere but down into the track, and anywhere but each other.  With a pained squeak, he leapt up onto the first claw-hold, and then the second, and third.  Pulling himself up onto the ledge, he leapt into the shadowy patch that Rairu stood in.

In silence, Rairu pointed to a quarter sized chunk of missing wood in a door. He scampered over to it and disappeared underneath. The little mouse followed him, and squeezed through. 

They found themselves inside a small office, lit screen of a computer on one corner of a desk, open bag of chips on the other.  The tanginess of salt, and whipped airy delight of a baked starch floated down to their nostrils. The little mouse sniffed. Below it, there was the scent that called to him: salami.

Rairu grinned. "Yea. you smell it too huh? Meat. Meat that keeps forever. It's in that little bin right there." He pointed. "Ours now!"

He leapt over to the bin and threw his weight against it.  It gave a wiggle. "I need to turn it over. Help out?"

The little mouse squeaked, and with a leap, landed on the rim of the trashcan. Wiggling his tail and hind legs, the can began to wiggle and sway, then fell down onto the tiled floor, spilling out it's guarded and coveted treasure.

"I should have thought of that." Rairu said. He huffed and let his shoulders slump back to their original position. Rairu scampered inside the bin and came back out, a rolled salami slice in his mouth. He dropped it on the floor in front of the little mouse, and sat. 

"I believe half of this now belongs to you, my new friend." He said. Rairu grinned.

The little mouse squeaked happily and bit into it. His tail quivered. The little mouse's stomach gave a hungry growl.

Rairu took his half and chewed it up. He reached back in and fished out another piece of salami. "We should to before the human comes back." He skittered across the tiles to the crack. 

The little mouse followed him, and squeezed through the crack right behind him, following his steps back down the claw holds and onto the tracks.  

"You know, I always wanted a friend. They're kind of hard to come by here. It'll be a lot better with someone to run with, you know? If you want to stay that is. It could be a good home down here." Rairu said as he ran along the tunnel, stopping every often to sniff at the air.  "I've been down here a long time, but most rats just seem to want to keep to themselves, or worse. I guess you're different because you're a mouse. I mean, of course you're different. Wait, I'm sorry, i meant.. hold on."

The smell of copper and grit was growing stronger.  His pace got slower and slower.

"Smell that?" Rairu said. "Wharf rat. They come from the southbound line.  Huge monsters. Not as big as Tetrain, but big enough.  Stay quiet."

Rairu and the little mouse walked like that for quite some time, until a fork in the tracks forced them to stop. 

 "Left or right? I never can remember" Rairu muttered. "Right sounds alright to me. You alright with that?"

The little mouse squeaked, close on Rairu's tail.


"I don't think Tetrain comes down here anymore.  Nothing comes down here, not even wharf rats. See? that's why the lights are going out."

Indeed, Rairu was right.  The long, arched tunnel seemed to have its lights spaced farther out and dimmer than other tunnels.  In reality, squinting in the dark, the little mouse saw that a great deal of the lights had burned out.

They walked down the line, Rairu carrying the salami in his teeth, light growing steadily dimmer until the little mouse could barely see,even with his keen eyes.

The sound of rustling behind them made Rairu jump.  A giant, dark brown shape lunged out of the dark, knocking Rairu in the ribs.  

The little mouse rushed to the side of the tracks to help him, before he could see what it was.

A giant brown rat, most than twice the size of the little mouse looked back at him, baring his fangs. The fangs were jagged and yellow, the scent of grit and copper filling the air.  

Behind the little mouse, three more hulking rats crept out of the darkness.  Rairu got up, swaying slightly, and cracked his head into the side of the wharf rat.

The little mouse ran up beside him and braced himself, before being knocked into the wall by the another rat throwing himself into Rairu. "Get the food." Rairu shouted, whipping his tail around the little mouse.

The little mouse picked it up in his mouth and looked around.

The rats were beginning to close around them in a tight knit circle, pinning them to the wall.  

The little mouse squeaked in alarm, baring his own teeth at the giants surrounding them.

Rairu reared up behind the little mouse and gave him a hearty shove, pushing him beyond the circle of rats. "Go!"

The little mouse ran.  The frantic patter of his paws echoed off the subway walls, his ears pinned back to his head.

Behind him, he heard the squeaks of Rairu, and the deeper, bass squeaks of the rats and the gnawing and gnashing of teeth. 

"Run!" Rairu's voice shouted down the tunnel, then was cut short by a wet and fading gurgle.

The little mouse ran and ran, plunging into deepest darkness, staying to the side of the tracks.  

The rails began to shake.  In the distance, a large yellow eye barreled down the tracks, shrieking.

It had found him.  Tetrain rattled down the tracks, the deafening screech and wail bouncing off the tunnel walls.

The little mouse's eyes filled with tears, and he ran straight towards Tetrain, as the world seemed to shake and fall apart around him.

Tetrain flew along the tracks, headed straight for the little mouse, bright eye screaming at him, refusing to stop.

Then, for the second time in what had become a painfully short time, the little mouse fell.  He fell and fell and fell, and landed in a deep pool of water.  

The meat the little mouse held in his paws immediately floated to the top of the water, and the little mouse followed it, and his paws whipped and grasped around in the water.  He used his tail to propel himself up and forward, and breached the water's surface, gasping for air.

His paws had slowed down and tail thrusts grew weaker. The little mouse made his way to the side of the great pool, and climbed up on the ledge.  Far above him, the screams of Tetrain faded. 

He looked around him. A open platform, much like the one Rairu had shown him sat forlorn in the dark mire, haunting green water illuminated  by a sort of glowing fungus that crept along the ceiling., and a ray of light that originated from the center of the room. 

The walls shimmered in the water's sickly light, the platform covered more than halfway by the water, bubbles occasionally rising from tunnels from both ends. It seemed to be slowly letting the accumulated pool drain into some unknown pit even farther into the unfathomable depths of the earth.  

Above it all, however, was a great circular orb, still shining outwards, minute and hour hands clinging onto the clock face with a resolute authority.

It was a clock tower. Somehow, despite the flooding, the lights remained on, and the clock worked away, filling the silence of the cavern with a quiet but constant tick.

Upon closer examination, someone had built wooden walkways from the parts of the platform, mostly holes in the upper walls, that were still accessible, to a giant floating raft, bobbing in the middle of the water that used the clock tower as a firm anchor. Above the tower a sort of pointed and circular roof had been built, with small streams of water occasionally running down its length. 

 It also appeared that someone or something had built or moved gates against the tunnels with very fine holes, so that water could flow through without sucking out the potentially valuable building material that may fall through.  The bubbles rising from the tunnels were consistently spaced, popping just above the lip of the tunnel's yawning maw.

Above all this and the clock-tower itself, sat some sort of grate through which light filtered through. Beautiful light!

The little mouse recognized this light. It was light from the sun, light from the surface. Despite all this, however, he could not bring himself to find relief.

He thought back to Rairu and the tunnel. He thought back to running towards Tetrain, too desperate to care whether he lived or died, and slumped onto the cold, wet stone.

His sobs came out as distressed squeaks, and bounced off the cavernous walls, muted by the water.

Unbidden into his mind came an odd image.  Two squiggly vertical lines, and what looked like reversed whiskers. 

		⦚⚟ ⚞⦚




-To Be Continued-