THE MOUSE SQUEAKS

WHAT A CHARACTER CONTEST:  INANIMATE OBJECT



THE MOUSE SQUEAKS



I believe she was nervous this morning.  Her hand was cold when she touched me, even staying cool after clutching me for moments before she made the first right-click.  I felt some moisture as if she had not dried her hands thoroughly before coming to the computer. 



There was hesitation.  I could feel that, of course, but it was the clutching that made me realize how anxious she was.  Usually she went directly to Yahoo.  A quick scan of the headlines and then directly into Mail.  She kept herself on lists she deleted every day.  I always wondered why she simply didn’t put them in the Spam Folder.  After all, she reviewed all the titles of her Spam before deleting the lot.  If she found something there that interested her, she could click Not Spam.  But no, she woke every day to a cluttered inbox. 



Maybe she needed to have email every day.  If no one actually wrote to her she would not feel lonely because she would still have mail.  She always had mail.  Always.  Even when she checked every few hours.  I think that was important to her. 



Tap, tap, tap – not on me - but the desk.  Hesitant.  Where was she going?  Coffee.  Warm hand now.  Warm but damp.  I waited.  I was used to a routine.  So was she.  But today… she gripped me again.



NOW!  I could sense the decision had been made.  There she went.  Yahoo at last.  But she skipped the celebrity profiles.  Usually that was her pick-me-up opener.  World news got only a glance.  This time she clicked directly on Mail.  I knew it.  Something personal was close – perhaps too close.  Or worse, not there at all.  I could not help but be logical.  My routine had altered.  Her routine must be at risk.



There was a long scan of the screen.  Even a scroll as the list of offers, reminders and newsletters crawled down the page.  The whole page.  She did not click any of them, as she methodically usually did.  She would normally work her way down the page, click-click-click and efficiently click Delete to allow the next page of messages to appear.  Today, she left them all in place and went, in an unusual move, to the arrow at the bottom right of the screen to move to the next page of emails.  What could this mean? 



Was she searching for a particular message?  Was she saving the useless emails she had scanned to read later?  It was Sunday, after all.  She had the entire day to peruse her junk mail.  But it was, indeed, uncommon.  She was so efficient in managing her clutter.  She did allow it, even welcome it, to arrive in her daily mail, but she disposed of it precisely and in a habitual form.  I had become accustomed to following her routine and choosing endings for words she began to type.  There were so many repetitions.  There was a little library I maintained of her typical typos.  They popped up often, reminding her that she kept making the same mistakes over and over.



But today, she did not race into the meaningless forwarding of jokes about cats.  She moved past those temptations.  She didn’t even open them, seeing, as I did, the same names of other single women who maintained their social lives at a distance via electricity. 



Now I was sure of it.  She was looking for a particular email.  There – she hesitated, but she moved the cursor to the small arrow at the bottom right of the page.  Another pause as she hovered me over the arrow and then – yes.  Click.  The screen shifted and then – a longer pause and - YES!  It was here!  A lottery win?  The results of a medical test?  What?  She went directly to one email and it was not at the top of the page.  There had to be a reason.



It opened.  It was brief.  More clutching.  Then she loosened her grip on me and shoved me aside.  As if I, just a mouse after all, had brought the message.  I felt abandoned.  I was cast aside, feeling that perhaps we had more in common than she knew.



She came back.  I knew she would.  I only had to wait.  And what else, actually, could I do but wait?  Without her touch, her motives, her curiosity, I could do nothing.  It wasn’t as if I was the portal to her life, as the internet was.  I was just a vehicle, a means to an end.  But without me… well, she was used to me.  Used to my versatility.

 

Even when she got the new laptop she plugged me right in.  I knew she would.  The little black square by the keyboard was useless for her.  She would tap, she would slide her finger to the edges, she would try to make the arrow go where she wanted it to be, but… well, she and I were a team.  I was familiar and I was ready whenever she reached for me.  I have versatility, too, you know.  I know when to satisfy her with rapid-action right and left clicks.  I am a comfort.  I can be moved aside and wait for her return on her own schedule. 



She liked that about me.  I knew it.  I could feel it in her touch.  The reassurance of it all.  Some degree of faithfulness.  We did not part frequently.  Yes, there were times she had to travel on business.  She took only the black laptop then.  She used the built-in square mouse.  She dealt with it, but I knew, when she returned, the relief she had when I was waiting there for her.  For her ease.  For her speed when needed.  For just, even, the comfort of holding me – fitting easily into her palm – at the ready.  She rested on me at times.  Long minutes of inactivity but with an intimacy she could not find elsewhere.  I was an extension of her hand.  I was part of her.  She and I could scroll and click, maneuver and hurriedly undo.  Errors could vanish with my aid.  We both liked it that way.  Seamless.  A finished product that no one could fault.



That’s why I started to feel little things beginning to change.  The clutching was brief and then gone after the offending email was deleted.  We returned to our comfortable patterns. 

Then … what was it?  The uncommon websites that she began to search?  The stubborn, almost angry way she corrected my corrections?  I tried – I really did, to steer her to familiar sites - those that were quick to retrieve from a list of oft-used searches.  But she plunged on to things that I had never expected would be of interest to her.  Sites that, frankly, could have someone watching her searches.  It was so out of character.  She had been so organized and so stable, in a way, in what she chose to seek out. 



Now, risqué and sometimes outrageous sites came up upon command and I was helpless to undo them, delete them or ignore them without her aid.  I was becoming a watcher instead of a coordinator.  We still worked together but she became someone I did not know.  It seemed I had not really known her at all. 



Where would it lead?  Would I still have a place in her life when she bought the iPhone?  That offending tool sat beside me for days on end – always at the ready for calls and a quick review of apps. 



I had been faithful for years to her.  I came home with her from her last in-office job.  The one she outgrew just at the time they decided to lay off her cubicle-mates.  She felt she left of her own accord but I knew by the way she jerked me out of their computer’s socket that it was emotional.  Over.  Deleted.  But still on the hard drive, still lurking. 



We had made the transition together.  We were a team.  I am silver and black with a blue scroll light.  I am sleek, if I do say so myself.  Not like the flat mouse they had provided for her at the former job.  I was her own choice.  I fit her palm.  We were a team.  Had she outgrown me?  Never.  She could not.  I fit her palm; an extension of her arm.  She had to feel the same.



I could only wait.  It was all I was created to do.  Wait for her, serve her and be as one with her. 



Word count  (1441)