The Rockin' Rodents

Smells like Mouse Spirit

It was getting dark when Jerry returned. He knew his parents would be worried. It was Thursday, so his mother was making leftovers for dinner. Of course, they were mice so technically every day there were leftovers for dinner. They scavenged the food the humans left. Today, it was from the back of the kebab shop, so the greasy oil of the chips being re-fried wafted through the mouse house.

"Jerry! Where have you been? We've been worried sick," his mother said as he came through the flap in the back door, into the kitchen.

"Err, I got lost in the dump, Sorry," Jerry said, aware that he wasn't exactly lying, just making a very careful selection of the truth.

"You poor thing," she said ruffling his ears in that way Jerry hated because it made him feel like he was still a child. Which he was, but he was old enough to wish he wasn't.

"Why don't you set the table," she said to him, as his father came into the room looking sheepish. He felt a little guilty for making Jerry throw away his guitar.

"It's done then son," he said in a grave tone.

"Eh, yeah dad, now that you mention it, maybe I could join an after-school activity, you know, now I'm not playing the guitar, like a new hobby."

Jerry floated the idea to his father carefully. He needed an excuse to practice at the dump. He needed a different place to be.

"Like what?" asked his father.

"Oh, I don't know gardening, karate, chess, conversational Spanish..."

"How about cheese making?" suggested his father, who like many fathers was guilty of burdening their children with what they thought their dreams should be, instead of encouraging their own.

"Eh, sure dad," he said, not certain what he was getting himself into.

"You could sign up tomorrow, I happen to know a very good instructor from the old days," his father said. He had been thinking about the idea for a while now.

"Great!" Jerry said. He scarfed down his kebab and re-fried cheesy fries and rushed upstairs to his room. Jerry put on his headphones. His parents might be able to stop him from playing his guitar at home, but they couldn't stop the music.

Jerry's headphones were his lifeline, the cable that ran into his Walkman (something you young whippersnappers might call an MP3 player or an I-pod or some kind of streaming cloud "thingy") was his escape route from the world. It let him leave the sewers and fly skyward to somewhere else. It gave him a little beauty to get him through the day, down in the dank dark underground, and we all need a little beauty, don't we?

"Hey! That's how I feel about my "Walkman" Ger said, holding up his phone and headphones like he was showing fire to a chimp. At that moment, the phone pulsed, and Arian's name flashed up on the screen. Ger ignored the call and decided that letting Ariana stew in her worry for him might be a nice taste of Karmic revenge.

"Yeah, I know kid that's how all musicians feel when they hear a little of the divine? Now let me continue."

Jerry thought he recognized who Jimmy Halloumi was. As he listened to his music, he pulled the issues of Ker bang! Magazine from out under his bed (his dad hadn't insisted that he get rid of all evidence of rock from the house, well not yet anyway!)

He scanned through the pictures, he saw punk mice with Mohawks bigger than they were, metalheads with hair down to their knees, old rockers, new rockers, big hair metal bands trapped in poses of endless guitar solos, bands so serious they had turned the photo black and white, and bands dressed as brightly colored clowns.

Then he found Jimmy playing on stage at Cafe Waugh! There was a Volkswagen beetle symbol that some human had lost on the wall. Strange green smoked incense burned in the background. Everyone was dressed in pastels and vibrant colors and wore bandannas and hooped earrings. An eerie pair of cat eyes watched the proceedings from the darkness of backstage, one green, another yellow.

Jimmy looked a lot younger and slimmer, but it was him alright. He was even playing the same sunburst-colored guitar and was making the same face as at the end of the solo in the dump, his back arched, guitar pointed skywards, tail on the whammy bar.

Jerry skimmed through the article. Jimmy had been a member of the group "Rock Can Save the World" and after getting their first album produced by famous producer and star-making machine David Meowie, a fat cat in the music scene, their album "Peace in a Pizza Box" went to No.1.

The article went on to talk about how Jimmy later accused David Meowie of tricking him out of the copyright for his songs. He gave up music and disappeared, never to be seen again.

"Poor Jimmy," thought Jerry.

Jerry wondered if there was a way he could get Jimmy to start making music again. As he went to sleep that night with Enlightenment's "Smells Like Mouse Spirit" blazing in his ears, he dreamed of forming a band with Jimmy and playing on stage with a thousand voices singing a song. His song! He looked out as the crowd pogoed up and down with the rhythm, like a wave lapping at the shore.