300 Days of Writing
Day 103 Mice:
The Memory Mice lived inside the minds of people. The more mice there were, the more memories. What dictated the memories from pleasant to painful was dependent on keeping the rats away.
The Recollection Rats thrived off destroying human peace. They crept in the night if the room was drafty, or if the person wasn’t wearing socks to bed, or if there wasn’t any yak’s milk left out on the hearth. These were the superstitions of the people, but they had good reason to believe. Everyone had a cousin, an auntie, a brother who had neglected a before bed task, and it was without fail that they would become inhabited with the Recollection Rats.
The rats burrowed into the body through the ear, destroying the ear drum in the process. The person infected would loose all hearing upon waking, and they always woke from nightmares. The Recollection Rats took the memories, sweet, innocent, even the dull ones and manipulated them into horrors. Embracement, shame, guilt, fear filled the infected ones’ minds until the went mad. Most committed suicide within a year.
And so it was with good reason the people left out the milk and kept on their socks. They scattered bread crumbs around their beds and sugar cubes in the fire places. These were the things the Memory Mice loved and if you kept them happy, then your mind would be kept happy too.
A happy mouse is a happy house they always said.
Until all the mice went missing.
Сайхан Бичээрэй!
H