Mouse and Elephant belongs to a series of as-yet-unsold short stories about a vicious little boy growing up all alone in an uncaring, cruel, futuristic world. The first story was called Anthem, after the protagonist; Mouse and Elephant is its prequel.

Since NONE of them have sold yet I’m allowed to write prequels without being a hack.

I got into Scott Card’s literary boot camp with an Anthem story; it’s an unfinished bit called Iceburg. The foundations of Iceburg, and what I learned from Scott Card during that week churned themselves into Mouse and Elephant. I’ll probably still go back someday and revisit Iceburg, but not until I’ve got the franchise (shudder) safely established.

There are two things that are unique about my Anthem stories– one, they’re really dark, even for me. Two, they’re told in a heavily dialectical, third-person limited omniscient, deep POV, narration. (Whew! Try saying that 3x fast…)

Here’s a snippet for your…er…enjoyment:

            The pikes kept him in a cell all his own, dressed in naught but what he’d been shoved into the skip with—just his skivvies, mainly.  After four hours, they brought him some of his clothes.  They stunk of that woman’s vomit.  When he was dressed, two men in suits came into his cell, gave him some coffee and some chocolate, and asked him more questions.

            Anthem knowed to keep his mouth shut.  The coffee smelled fine, better than fine, it was…everything.  But he let it sit there, steaming, filling up his nostrils with its fine-ness.  Don’t even look at it, and don’t look at them men none at all, eyes down.  Just like in his shanty.  Eyes away.

            They asked him ‘bout his momma, Monique.  They asked him ‘bout her pimp, Theo.  They asked him how he killed them two in the shanty, and then they switched it all ‘round, and said as it was really Monique and Theo dead in that shanty, and he didn’t recognize them none at all, ‘cause it’d been a while since he’d saw them either one, and he’d killed them.  Or maybe they’d come to jig him out, and there’d been a fight, and someone else had killed them, and speak up, mouse!

            But Anthem just tucked hisself into hisself.  He knowed to keep his mouth shut. 

            One of the pikes slapped him.  Then the other one was hauling the pike who’d smacked him out of the cell, as Anthem found hisself on the floor, and the coffee spilled all over him, and that wasn’t the only thing, ‘cause it’d been hours, days, years, since he’d gone to the bathroom and when he got hit, he couldn’t keep it in him no more, and he couldn’t stop it once it started.  So he smelled of puke and piss, and cold coffee, and what was worse, he could feel his chest start to hitch, feel the scratchiness of his own fear crawling in his throat, and if he cried, if he let it poke even a little out of his throat, that’d be the end of him.  The pikes would set on him then, they’d drag it all out, and he’d be dead by morning.

            But he didn’t cry.  And when the pikes knowed that he wasn’t going to, they closed up the door to the cell and left him lonely.

I’d love to hear what you think!  Leave a comment!  Humiliate me!  Validate me!