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mouser - excerpt...
I woke in the alley with zero points, eight lives, a baseball bat and everyday clothing. I immediately thought of the rats. I turned to the trashcans. One was lidless and stuffed with oily gray rags. The rags were moving, and from deep down in the trashcan, I could hear the clink of beer bottles, the rustle of paper.
I tapped the can with my bat. The rags went still and the rustling stopped, just for a moment; then, it continued. I tapped again, hard this time, and up jumped those rags. A hobo was huddled inside them, and he had an armful of refundable bottles. He looked like a rat, with beady eyes and a pointed nose. His pores were black, and years of desperation had carved lines into his face. His eyes flicked from me to my bat; his lip twitched. He dropped the bottles and tried to run, but I knocked him upside the head. He went down with a squeak.
He held up his arm, and I batted it away. It snapped like a dry stick. I hammered his face into unrecognizable pulp; I beat him until bloody bones jutted from the rags, until a scarlet nimbus crept around him. Instead of a measly ten or twenty points, a whole one hundred drifted into the point counter, earning me another life. Back up to nine, baby, just like the cat, like the mouser I'd become.
snell speaks......
"'Mouser' was like playing Grand Theft Auto on crack while someone jabs needles into your brain"--Michael De Kler, Horrorfind Forums.
Yeah, that about sums up the story. In fact, I modeled "Mouser" after popular video games such as Grand Theft Auto. You know: mindless violence earns points and extra lives? I love that type of game, especially because you can ignore the missions and shoot down pedestrians and police officers. (Who hasn't dreamt of going on a shooting spree?) Nevertheless, I eventually grow tired of this type of game. I realize the inanity of the pastime, and I start to consider my own existence.
See, on good days, I feel that life is pointless, just like a video game. We all scuffle after that ultimate cheese only to be snapped in the steel jaw of some proverbial mousetrap. Call it nihilism, call it existentialism, call it a glass half empty. But what if by killing other beings we could amass life credit and obtain immortality? Would life gain more purpose? Would such a holy grail fulfill our desires? Enter "Mouser."
In this story, the first-person narrator wakes up for the first time in an alley. He has a bat. He hears rats in the trashcan. And when he smashes the rodents, he earns points for each tiny death. At one hundred points, he earns a life. Then he sees the golden arrow, an element from contemporary video games. The arrow directs the narrator to key locations and objects, such as a gun shop and a machine gun. He believes that only he can see the arrow and its divine direction, that the businessmen populating the city are ignorant, absorbed in their cell phones and their daily shuffle, the daily struggle for cheese.
Soon, the businessmen begin to resemble well-dressed rats, each worth one hundred points. And the golden arrow keeps leading the narrator deeper and deeper into the maze of the city, closer and closer to the ultimate answer: Will immortality endow our lives with purpose?
Heh. Smash some rats and find out.
snell bio...
D.L. Snell is an average Joe whose conformist fiction appears in two zombie anthologies: The Undead from Permuted Press, and Hellbound Books' Cold Flesh. In January 2006, Snell's first terrorist attack, "Mouser," will debut in Chimericana Books' Chimeraworld #3.
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back to Chimeraworld #3 editorial page
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Hellbound Books, Spring 2006
Plus six other short novels (approx 40,000 words each) that I'm looking to publish in a special 6-pack.
