A sample from THE GREAT MOUSE ESCAPE

Work is underway on the book, which I hope to be shorter than the two Chumpty Dumpty sequels ended up being. I’m shooting for something around the length of the first Chumpty book, which means cutting to the chase a bit more with the content of each chapter.

Already the prologue and first chapter are done, but I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the characters at the heart of the story. Here’s a snippet from the first chapter, which gives us a little glimpse into the life of the mice caged at the Woodbury Laboratory, the little “community” they have there, and the struggles they hope one day to be freed from.

I’m just including the latter half of the first chapter, so bear that in mind; some of the character introductions have already been given…

“Hey Phillip.” Sebastian responded, his tone dull and restrained. Sebastian’s moods often swung between two extremes; some days he was chipper and energetic to the point of manic, running around pitching ideas to the others in their community. Other days, though, were rougher, days when he thought of his family, the goodbye he couldn’t share with them, and the closure he never had. Yesterday had been a good day; everyone enjoyed a picnic by the big wheel, and Clara pulled out a dried-up grape she’d kept hidden for the past few days. They ate it together, like always, with great delight. Today, however, was not a good day. “What’s the latest?” he asked

“Oh, you saw?” Phillip asked, pushing his little red glasses back up his face, a tick he did whenever he was embarrassed. Apparently, Phillip didn’t think anyone had noticed him staring, forelorning, out the window earlier that morning.

“It’s fine. What did Archie say?”

“Well that’s not why we came to talk to you, actually. We, uh…well we’re just checking on you, Sebastian. You’ve been kinda blue today.”

“You know how it goes.” Sebastian replied. That was the phrase around the lab. It started with the lab workers; they’d say it whenever something bad had happened and they had to break the news to the others. Eventually the mice picked up on it and it became almost an inside-joke, only there was nothing funny about it; they’d say it whenever they were feeling particularly down that day, a problem one of the five dealt with at least once a week. It’s tough being in a cage, knowing your only expectation for getting out was just to get a needle stuck in you, only to be tossed back inside a few hours later.

The five of them had an unspoken agreement to keep an eye out for signs whenever someone in the group was getting down. After all the months they’d been together, they knew they needed to look out for each other; it made the blue days a little more manageable.

“Well, if you need to talk about it, we can have another picnic tonight.” Phillip said, with a gentle tone. “I’m sure Clara wouldn’t mind telling us another story or two. I could ask—”

“No, don’t bother her.” Sebastian said quickly. “She’s tired. I can tell.”

“Okay…” Phillip replied, letting his head droop a bit. Clara was the oldest of the bunch, though none of them knew how old she was. She was old enough that she lacked the vigor of the younger mice, so they tried to keep her resting and out of sight whenever the lab workers came to collect one of them for another test. Fortunately for them, no one had been tested-on for a few weeks.

Phillip turned to leave, with little Donnie sticking close to his side. Sebastian’s voice stopped him, though. “Hey, you never told me what Archie said.”

“Oh…uh…” Phillip’s eyes darted down to his kid brother. “We can talk about it later.”

“It’s a new trial.” Sebastian replied. It wasn’t a question. “That’s it, right?”

“Wait, what?” Donnie said with his tiny, feeble voice. He sounded scared, and his eyes matched his tone.

“Come on, Sebastian, you knew I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kid.”

“I’m not a kid!” Donnie replied, just the way a kid would.

“He’s gotta grow up sometime.”

“No I don’t because I’m already grown up!”

“Then how come you’re trembling?” Sebastian replied, a bit too callously for Phillip, who stepped forward to put his body between his friend and his brother.

“Look, I’m sorry today is a bad one for you, but leave him out of it.” Phillip said.

“Alright. What did Archie say exactly?”

There was no need to beat around the bush now. Donnie was leaning in, listening carefully. Phillip slid his glasses back up his nose and sighed. “He said he heard from Kelly and Stacy—”

“Stacy? Can’t be. The window’s open.”

“This was yesterday. He couldn’t tell us then because Stacy was in the office yesterday. Anyway, they were talking about a new trial they want to test.”

“When?” Sebastian asked impatiently. He could have guessed everything he’d heard thus far. The important detail was the when; that would clue him in on whether or not there was time to act.

Phillip seemed to hesitate before speaking, seemingly reading Sebastian’s mind. “Apparently they are going to test one of us when Peter gets back.”

“Three days…” Sebastian muttered to himself.”

“No, two.” Phillip corrected him. “Only two. Not enough time—”

“It’s more than enough time.” Sebastian said, sitting up. A little spark of life seemed to ignite in his gut. His dour mood was already giving way. Meanwhile, Donnie was wringing his hands.

“Not again. Not again.” the young mouse said, trembling. Phillip dropped to a knee to console him.

“Hey, listen. Listen. It won’t be you this time. Okay? It was you last time. They don’t like to test us twice in a row.”

“They can’t tell us apart.” Sebastian said casually. His mind was too focused on what he was planning to realize how little Donnie needed to hear that at the moment.

“Yes they can, don’t listen to him Donnie. They won’t take you again. They’ll probably take me or Gunter. It’s been a while since they took either of us.”

“I don’t want them to take any of us!” Donnie wailed as tears began to rise in his eyes. He fell forward into his brother’s arms and let the tears flow. It felt good to cry, to let out days and weeks and months of frustrations and fears. “I’m going to be short and stunted forever!”

Donnie had been recently taken and tested for a new kind of drug, meant to reverse hearing loss in humans. Results are still pending, but the effects on mice were immediately apparent within their little caged community. Donnie was sick for days and suffered horrible dreams about being short and small forever. He was  just starting to come back out of his shell, but now they’re going to start back at square one with him.

“Donnie.” Sebastian said with a serious and focused tone of voice.

“Yeah…”

Standing next to Donnie, Phillip could see in his friend’s eyes that whatever he was thinking about had finally come together. He wanted to speak up, to tell Sebastian “Not again. Not this time.” but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, especially not since he knew what Donnie was about to hear would at least calm him down.

Sebastian stood up and leaned over the young mouse, staring intensly into his eyes. “Listen to me, kid. We’re gonna get out of this cage.”

“We are?”

Still so naïve… Phillip thought.

“We are.” Sebastian said, certain of it this time. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Here it comes…

“I’ve got a plan.”

It’s too early to say how the book is going, but there’s a lot about the idea and the outline that I like. Hopefully it comes through on the page by the time it’s done. As I said before, I hope to have the book finished by Thanksgiving.

Until then.