The Mouse and the Typewriter -- A Very Short Story

 

“What are these?” asked the mouse, small and gray and round, of a typewriter he’d scurried across in the space above the ceiling.

“Keys,” the typewriter replied, dust scattering all directions. “For typing.”

The mouse nodded, weakly.

“People write all sorts of things using me. Stories, poems, letters, even suicide notes.”

The mouse’s face lit up, and the typewriter dinged. “What are those?”

“These?” he said, pointing at his whiskers, long and white.

“Yes, those.”

“Whiskers. For feeling your way.”

The typewriter dinged. “Think you could press these keys? If I told you which ones?”

The mouse scooted closer, and depressed the B key with tiny, nail-tipped hands.

Click.

“Good!” the typewriter said. “Over there. The paper. Put a piece in the roller on top.”

The mouse inserted a clean, blank, sheet of off-white paper.

“Try again. Press.”

Click. The B key.

“Now, look up top, on the paper, to the left.”

The mouse did, and the mouse saw a lower-cased b, right where the typewriter indicated.

“Yes, it’s there,” he squeaked.

“That’s a ‘B’ and it’s in some human words.”

Before long, he’d taught the mouse the alphabet. After that, the mouse learned to read. Before too long, they were off and running, the mouse tap-tap-tapping away while the typewriter told the mouse what to type. It was a slow and cumbersome way to write a novel, but the duo succeeded and, several months and two-hundred-and-fifty-four sheets of off-white paper later, they had, finally, typed out THE END.

“Now, we edit,” the typewriter said. “Go to the beginning, and read me everything, including the title.”

“You got it!” replied the mouse, excited.

He cleared his throat.

He held the paper close, straightened the corners nervously.

“Forgotten in the Attic,” by Jeff the Typewriter.