Squeaky's Pencil

Tugging on his black bowtie, Squeaky looked around as if he were part Egyptian and part C-3PO.  There was no smoothness to his movements.  Instead, he would turn his head as if it were ratcheted, click-click-click, and pivot it up and down in similar fashion.  The Tin Man flowed by comparison.

His skinny black cat had disappeared to his dismay.

The cat had been purring as Squeaky tied his tie, moving back and forth, brushing against Squeaky’s gabardines, although Squeaky almost didn’t notice.  Pencil was so thin, he didn’t cast a shadow; light was simply insulted.  But he gained Squeaky’s attention all right, much like a dryer sheet might do stowed away in a bed sheet.

“He must have thin skin,” Squeaky mused, “and bones without marrow--arteries so small that corpuscles can only go through one at a time, and sideways at that.  Maybe they’re squeezed so tight they rumba.  O cat, my cat!”

Pencil had vanished like a mote in the wind.  Undaunted, Squeaky looked high and low, beneath the bed and under the couch.  In doing so, he even caught his bowtie on a staple that was sticking out of the fraying couch flap, disrupting the finery of its knot. 

“I must get a new couch,” Squeaky thought, as he retied his tie. 

Finally, Squeaky looked in the bedroom closet, and voila, there was Pencil, hunkered in back of Squeaky’s alligator cowboy boots.  He was only visible, however, because Squeaky had grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, and, shining it smartly, caught the reflection of Pencil’s eyes, two tiny viridian orbs closely spaced, looking back like some Outer Limits’ alien between the rise of alligator leather.

Squeaky set the flashlight lens down on the dresser and checked his appearance in the mirror.  “What say, Pencil, what are you doing by those boots?”

Both Squeaky’s expression and mood dropped a bit as he remembered the day he got those boots.  They were a birthday present from his co-workers in the accounting office at Rigid United, a company specializing in I-beam flanges and angle iron.

Squeaky recalled, with some mental discomfort, the kidding, the teasing, the unabashed ribbing--the mild mockery and the not-so-subtle urging of Rigid’s employees for him to “loosen up,” and have some fun.  Was this a gag gift, he wondered, or were they really serious?  Squeaky began muttering to himself:

“C’mon, Squeaky, loosen up, old bean, relax and cut loose.  Don’t be such a stick in the mud!”

He ratcheted his head to look at Pencil, who had come out from in back of the boots and was now a thin pose of black looking at Squeaky as if waiting for an answer yesterday.

“Go eat your treats,” Squeaky commanded, “I have to go to my book club now.”

He picked at his bowtie once again and pushed his glasses a few millimeters up the bridge of his nose.  Pencil disappeared once again, having no truck for light’s indignation.

Squeaky grabbed the book of the month, and headed through the living room toward the door.  Pencil had taken residence atop the plush back of a Lazy Boy, giving Squeaky the eye as cats most often do.

“Hold down the fort, Pencil,” Squeaky piped, “I’ll be back if a few hours.”  Pencil’s thin face had the aura of a slight right.

Squeaky hadn’t gotten too far down the flight of stairs when he began to think about what his co-workers had told him and had urged him to do.  He cogitated seriously, fingering his pate with one hand and holding The Fountainhead with the other.

“Maybe it is time I loosen up a little,” he mused.

He decided to do it!  “From this day on, Squeaky will be different!” he vowed assuredly. “Today is the birth of a new me!”

Mrs. Chesterfield, who lived on the first floor, had her apartment door open a crack, but Squeaky didn’t notice.

Resolute, Squeaky turned his head smoothly and headed back up the steps.  He yanked off the black bowtie, and again, chatting to himself said, “Cowboy boots, tonight we will step out!”

He made a beeline to the back closet and grabbed the boots.  They were slightly heavier than he had remembered them to be. Curious, he thought.  And when he looked inside of one, he saw two green eyes staring up at him.

735 Words

Writer's Cramp Winner
3-10-13