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Chapter 5

     The Story The Authors
As mice are prone to do, as soon as the sound of Evelyn's exit faded they sauntered out and upon smelling the peanut pounced on it dragging it back to a safe place. All traces of the previous events involving self preservation which had so captivated them wiped from their consiousness by the presence of a prime morsel of food. As they worked their way across the desk Vigo glanced at the huge monolithic billboard that was the spine of a paperback book. The words "Annie Hall" emblazened in a smug cheesy font wafted across his meager frontal lobes and with the tinny snap of a peapod freezing in liquid nitrogen, it came to him. Chris
Vigo owed his entire existence to a lobster. When he was young his grandmother had told him the story of how she had met his grandfather. Next to the factory there was a small house. And in that small house there was a fridge. And behind that fridge lived Vigo's grandmother, her brother and sister, and their parents, (his great grandparents). It was a whole in the wall but it was enough for them and they had a happy humble existence. Across the way (well it was practically the other side of town as far as she was concerned), near the pantry lived another family. One of the boys in that family was extremely cute and at night she would watch him rummaging around along the baseboards of the kitchen. She would have gone out to play with the other mice and made his acquaintance but her father forbade her. For between their home behind the fridge and the playground of baseboards was a giant chasm of glue. Her father had warned her about the glue and told atrocious stories of his friends being caught in the see of sludge never to be seen alive again. Chris
During one such tail her father was brought to tears as he recounted inviting some friends over for dinner. When they didn't show up he sent his buddy Ed to look for them. Ed disappeared as well. He organized a search party to looke for his missing friends and eventually they were found stuck in a sea of glue. Some of the other macho male mice jumped in to try to pull them out but found themselves stuck as well. As the days passed and some of the stuck mice began to die he watched his friends resort to cannibalism, eating the freshly dead bodies of whatever mouse they found themselves stuck next to. It was a horrible sight, and something he would never forget. She didn't like to see her father cry. He was a good mouse, working hard to raise his family and impart good mouse values unto them. Imagine his horror when one day they woke up to find a fresh glue trap placed just outside their front door! Her father squeaked loudly, "Would it never end?!" and began to pace nervously back and forth stroking his whiskers. It was just around that time that she had begun to notice the cute boy across the way playing by the pantry. But the glue trap kept them prisoner. Her father forbade all the children from going outside. He alone would go out to forage for food. She worried that someday he go out out and not return, and they would find him stuck in the trap. Then one day, the people of the house came home and were very busy in the kitchen making lots of noise and laughing. From within their hole behind the fridge the mousy family sat and listened. There was a big pot of water boiling on the stove making a rumbling noise. Then they heard a bunch of commotion and a scream by the woman who lived in the house. The family ran to the edge of their hole and looked outside. They could see the glue trap, and just beyond that, the back corner of the refrigerator. Suddenly a huge beast, like a giant insect with prickly spiny legs and enormous voracious looking claws came into focus. It was crawling towards them. It was a very awkward looking beast with a smooth hard shell, it had whiskers but no hair, and tiny little black eyes. They were paralized in fear as it crawled towards their hole. But then the beast suddenly lifted up one of it's claws and appeared to throw itself into the glue trap that stood between the mice and the back corner of the fridge. The beast struggled and wiggled getting itself more and more stuck in the glue. A giant human hand came down form above and lifted the giant beast, glue trap and all, up and away. They could see the legs of the creature wiggling as it disappeared from view. The glue trap gone, they raced to the edge of the fridge and peeked around the corner to see one of the humans prying the glue trap off the beast and complaining loudly. "Blah blah, blah blah, haha ha haha, blah Annie Hall!" The glue trap was good and stuck to the beast's giant claw and with that last statement the human simply pulled off the beast's arm, rinsed the beast off with some water, and then lifted the lid of the pot of boiling water and threw the beast inside! The mice were horrified. From that point on the beast achieved martyr status and was refered to as Le Grande Langouste d'affranchissement (the great spiny lobster of liberation) for having thrown itself into the glue trap to give liberty to Vigo's family. Spirits were high around the back of the fridge that night and the mice celebrated with dancing and a feast of sunflower seeds that father had found by the lazy boy recliner in the living room. Vigo's grandmother was free to venture out and by and by she made the aquaintance of the the handsome young mouse who made his home by the pantry. They hit it off instantly and began to spend all their time together, frollicking and exploring. Life was good. It all came crashing down one day when while coming back from a particularly exhausting and yet invigorating day of afternoon delight she came upon a horrific sight. Where the glue trap once stood were two wooden platforms with springy looking metal wires and bars. On the platforms were the bodies of her brother and sister, (Vigo's great aunt and uncle), both dead, necks cleanly broken by the great wood and metal traps which had been baited with a tasty morsel of cheese. She ran home crying. She feared her father would become a broken man. She was right. He took the news very hard, burying his head in his paws. He rarely squeaked after that. It was the last straw in an ongoing pattern of persecution and so they decided to flee and in so doing had found the Factory. Vigo had heard the story of his family's emigration to the factory long ago but lately he'd been so wrapped up in his own life that he'd forgotten it. Chris


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