Chapter 42 — In Which Mouse Girl Squee Sneaks into Peter’s Bed at Night Without his Consent
In a boy’s younger and more vulnerable years it is common to seek solace at night with a teddy bear tightly embraced beneath the covers. Snuggled together they dream of teddy bear adventures in teddy bear land. But at some point in life, usually around age nine, the existential dread of dying alone and unloved closes in, and the security provided by an inanimate ball of fluff wanes. How quickly the younger generations lose all hope in the world! And for these zoomers turned doomers the crushing emptiness of life can only be kept at bay by trading up, and replacing the stuffed animal for a living, breathing girlfriend— the ultimate bedfellow of hugableness. To hold her all night long, even after one arm falls dead and numb from lack of circulation, even after her long tresses suffocate you, even after her elbows and knees jab you in the face at odd hours in the morning, and never ever letting go— not even when she’s moaning, “Let go! It’s ten o’clock! I’m late for school!” Now that’s love.
Long, long, long ago in middle school Peter had friendzoned his own stuffed tiger to the bookshelf to make room in bed for his future girlfriend. So long, Tiger the tiger! It’s not you, it’s me— and Peter’s newfound appreciation for ballerinas with foreign accents, and amateur surfers with foreign accents, and high school figure skaters with foreign accents. But with the breakup completed, the bed space alongside Peter remained cold and unoccupied for years. He could only imagine the intimacy that awaited the occupier of this reserved spot beside him.
So many romantic ways to twist and entwine with your darling soul mate: the big spoon, the little spoon, the fork, the leg lock, the koala, the kraken, the bicycle over the ocean, the Mormon soak, and if you really want to get fancy— flossing the cradle.
But riddle me this, O reader of the high IQ:
How does one sleep with a mouse girl so small,
that even in high heels she’s three inches tall?
Don’t wrack your brain cells too hard, now. Because this is the most disappointing of riddles— a rhetorical one! No solution at all, much less one that rhymes. But Squee was filled with determination to answer the unanswerable— risking life and tail with the very real possibility of being crushed to death— smothered under her boyfriend’s gargantuan weight. One hundred twenty-five pounds of bone-crushing, lung squeezing sophomore.
In the midnight hours, when not a creature was stirring, Squee clawed her way up the comforter to the summit of Peter’s bed. She contemplated where to lay, peeking under the covers— too stuffy— reclining atop his pillow— too distant— stretching out across his forehead— too hard. When then she found his upturned palm— soft and radiating heat.
In a moment of tremendous courage to not just love but to make love known, she peeled her dress up and over her head and stood briefly in the cold dark. Her alabaster arms and legs and breasts turned to gooseflesh in the winter moonlight. Then she curled up all snug and cozy like a sexy stress ball, and she slept, her tiny mouse heart being into his palm through the night.
For hours Peter snoozed and drooled away, painfully unaware of the naked girl literally in the palm of his hand. In the morning, once sleep had uncrusted itself from his eyes, and he beheld the pajamaless girl sleeping before him, the delirium of drowsiness drained away, and high-octane lustiness pumped through his veins.
Oh, what to do?! A naked girl in bed but you can’t hug her so tight it squeezes the air of of her? A girl so tiny she’s unkissable? It’s like owning a Ferrari with no engine, a succulent lasagna dinner but your mouth is sewn shut, or a harddrive with a trillion dollars of bitcoin but the password doesn’t work! Curse your colossal size, Peter! If only you had stunted your growth with cigarettes and coffee in the first grade! Then you would… certainly still be too big to hug Squee— but the size gap would be smaller!
How he longed to do all sorts of romantically perverted things to her. To run his fingers through her black hair, to glide his hand down the curve of her shoulder, sweep across her body, and down her leg, to bury his face into her neck. Yet he couldn’t even run his pinky through her mousey locks. All he could do was admire, drink in her parted lips, watch her chest rise and fall with each slow and deliberate breath, feel her tail curl across his skin, see her dark mouse ears twitch as though a part of herself were awake and listening for predators.
But the moment was short lived, as Peter’s bedroom door burst open and in came Yumeka, the flurry of French frills, flinging the curtains open to let in the light of the North Pole’s perpetual night.
“So sorry I’m late, Peter! Someone forgot to open the flue downstairs and there was smoke everywhere! I thought the place was on fire! Good thing I was passing by!”
That’s not what happened at all. It was Yumeka herself who forgot to open to flue after building the morning fire. She then got distracted rearranging the ornaments on the Christmas tree in the next room— more bells over here, too many icicles clustered together here, these candy stripe baubles and those solid color baubles should intermingle— but not too close, et cetera, et cetera, so on and so forth. It was another elf who noticed torrents of black smoke crawling across the Victorian ceiling and opened the flue. Yumeka spent a few minutes wiping soot off the smokey girl’s face as she begged her not to tell anyone what happened.
Peter shot up in bed, clasped his hand over Squee, and as Yumeka went about the room lighting candles, Peter realized how awkwardly he was sitting upright, his back perfectly straight, with his hands together as if he had caught something. Without thinking, he pulled open his breast pocket and slipped Squee inside. The poor mouse girl awoke upside down, falling into the darkness of his pajama pocket. Confusedly she kicked about and swam within the confines of his clothes. As Yumeka turned around he covered the pocket with his hand as if about to recite the pledge of allegiance, which was even more suspicious.
“What are you doing?” Yumeka asked.
Peter lifted his free arm and worked it around in circles.
“My shoulder…” Peter said. “...feels like a… kink?”
“What’s that?” Yumeka asked.
“What’s what?” Peter’s eyes were wide with fear.
Yumeka slinked closer. She studied Peter. Centuries of feather dusting imbued her keen elven eyes with a detective’s sixth sense for uncovering when things were amiss— unless she was forgetting to open flues, and her French maidy sense tingled with suspicion. Peter’s fingers formed a cage over his pajama pocket. He felt Squee’s little mouse ears peeking out, and he gently pushed her back down. If Yumeka’s hand so much as aimed towards his chest he was ready to smack it away, but once at his bed she suddenly dove down and reached for the blankets. Yumeka held up Squee’s tiny black dress and her pair of black boots.
“I… have no idea what those are.”
“They look like doll’s clothes,” Yumeka said. “Do you have a doll?”
“Mmm…” Peter looked about the room. “No. I don’t. That’s… strange.”
Yumeka always presented herself as professional— although she was not— and helpful— which she sometimes was, but now, although dressed in a French uniform for erotic house chores, she honed in on Peter with Sherlockian intent. Behold her foreboding gaze, so full of suspicion and thinly veiled scorn! Peter’s dreamy morning of seductive magic had suddenly turned into an Anne Frank nightmare. Cold sweats trailed down Peter’s body. Without saying a word, Yumeka paced about the room, opening up dresser drawers and chests and peeking inside. She checked under blankets and under Peter’s clothes, and even felt around inside his jean pockets by the fireplace, searching for his secret.
“What are you looking for?” Peter asked.
“Nothing.”
While Yumeka’s back was turned, Peter pulled off his shirt and placed it down on the floor by the mouse hole, giving Squee an escape. When Yumeka saw that Peter shirtless and shivering in the cold, she walked across the room an retrieved his pajamas from the floor. However, the hidden mouse girl fugitive had vanished. His pajamas were quite empty.
“I’m hungry,” Peter said. He yoinked Squee’s clothes out of Yumeka’s hand and tossed them to the floor. “Are you hungry? Let’s go get breakfast.”
Peter undressed and redressed, shamelessly flexing his muscles and holding Yumeka’s attention. The shy elf shielded her eyes, but it was all for show. Yumeka wanted Peter to think that she was proper and that her love went beyond carnal desire, but an irresistible attraction bent her will, and she peeked through her fingers at his pale flesh.
He looked up at Yumeka’s not-so-sneaky glances, her mouth agape, as if she had never seen a boy’s legs before, and then he saw Squee come dashing out from the mouse hole on all fours, quite naked, grab her clothes, and then retreat to the secret kingdom within the walls. When Yumeka went to pick up Squee’s clothes, she saw that they had vanished. She turned around and around, searching the floor for them, and after spinning around twice she accepted that they had magically melted as a breath into the wind. All she could say was, “Ara?”