Ironic Costumes

Wendell, the next door neighbor, was raking his lawn as I approached my rental property. He waved as I walked to the front door and gave me a thumbs up. All of the neighbors were thrilled that the previous tenants had mysteriously disappeared. I smiled and waved back.

“It’s nice that I can be out in my yard again!” said Wendell. He was in his 60s and had lived a quiet life until four brawny men in their 20s moved in next door. “Thanks to you giving those jerks the old heave-ho!”

I glanced up at the apartment. It had been empty for two weeks but I was still cleaning out the mess my tenants had left behind. “Oh, I didn’t evict them!” I clarified. “They just up and left. Took off in the middle of the night. No one knows where they went.”

“How long until someone new moves in?” Wendell asked. He winced, probably imagining what fresh misery new tenants could bring. “Hopefully you’ll be a more discriminating this time.”

I shook my head. “Those men pulled a fast one on me,” I said, thinking back to the day that Zac, the charismatic leader of the four brutes, had sweet-talked me into renting to him and his three buddies. He had described them as, “just quiet guys with a strict routine--early the bed, early to the gym, y’know?” I still couldn’t believe I fell for that line.

“I’m still cleaning up their mess,” I said, thumbing back at the empty building. “Got a little vermin problem I need to take care of before I can rent it out again. And I’m screening for quiet, well-mannered tenants only.”

“Vermin problem? I’ve got some rat poison I can lend you. It’ll kill ‘em all quick,” Wendell said. “Plus about a dozen snap-traps. We used to have rats years ago but I offed every last one of them!”

“I’m trying a more humane approach,” I said. Out of the trunk of my car I pulled a Have-A-Heart trap and held it up. Wendell smiled back and continued raking. As I approached the house, I carefully watched each step and kept scanning the ground for movement. I didn’t want to accidentally squash anything.

*

I’d warned them with a neon orange notice on the door two weeks before Halloween: “PARTIES are a violation of our lease agreement! Please don’t let me regret giving you an extension on your rent!” I’m sure they laughed at it. I bet it was Bart, the thick-bodied ox of the crew, who ripped the sign down with one meaty hand. 

“I swear!” Zac had claimed over the phone. “We’re planning on heading into town, and to be perfectly honest, we’re all planning on heading home with some ladies that night so the place will be pretty much empty all night. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

I hadn’t believed him, of course, but when I drove up to the house that night, the lights were on but the apartment was silent. As I watched from the street I saw a few ladies in costume arrive, knock on the door, and then leave when nobody answered. I couldn’t believe it: they really hadn’t had a party.

When I entered the house two days after Halloween had passed, the whole place was fully decorated with cottony cobwebs stretched along each doorframe, fake corpses hung from nooses and paper bats and jack-o-lantern’s slapped haphazardly on every wall. There was a plastic pool in the front room with a keg in it. The ice had melted but the keg was tapped and full. The kitchen counter had a dozen liquor bottles arranged next to two-liters of soda. Clearly these man had planned a get-together, despite their over-the-phone denials in the days leading up to Halloween. But for some reason all four of them were missing.

As I reached to pick a discarded cell phone from the floor I heard a soft squeaking sound. “Sonuvabitch,” I had said out loud. “Don’t tell me they’ve got rats in here.”

*

I set the Have-A-Heart trap in the basement. If anything had crawled down here, I figured, they probably would have a hard time getting back up those stairs. I put a fat piece of cheese on the pressure plate as I latched the door open. After so long alone in this big house, my little vermin were no doubt starved.

I was overjoyed to find the trap in the kitchen had been sprung. The frantic rattling and loud squeaking went wild as I came into the room. I wondered if I was seen as a threat or a savior. “Okay,” I said as I gently lifted the metal cage from the ground. “Let’s see who we have here.”

At first glance one would think that the tiny creature inside was indeed a mouse: round white ears, a long tail, whiskers… That’s what I thought when I found the first one. Further inspection revealed it was, in fact, a little three-inch tall man in a mouse costume.

This one was Derrick, the bodybuilder. His white mouse costume fit so tightly I could see his chiseled abdominal muscles through it. He held the bars of the cage with two paws. Poor little guy was shivering. I could see by the frustration on his face that he was struggling to form words. Every overdeveloped muscle in his bulky little body flexed as he opened his mouth, trying to communicate, but all that came out were pathetic little squeaks.

“Hello Derrick!” I said in a sing-songy voice, gently poking a finger at the cage. He fled from it. “Look at you, two weeks eating crumbs off the ground and you’ve still got those big round muscles. They look ridiculous in a mouse costume though! That was the point, I bet, wasn’t it? Big guys like you all, dressing up like a mouse in costumes that showed off every bit of your bulk…”

Derrick was clearly listening, but since he could only squeak in response, I had no idea what he thought about what I was saying. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me though.

“I bet it killed you, didn’t it,” I said as I headed to the door with my catch. “Having to eat a big block of cheese. I bet that’s not on your bodybuilding diet!” At full size, he had stood just under six feet tall with broad shoulders, an insanely narrow waist, and big lumpy muscles that flexed with every movement and stretched the limits of every piece of clothing he wore.

“Oh, that weight bench you had in the yard? The one I begged you to move inside or get rid of?” I taunted as I walked with the cage back to the front door. “I sold it to a teenager down the street for $10. 16 year old guy, football player. If he sticks to it he’ll get big, I bet. Big as you used to be!” He winced at that and looked away. I poked through the cage, nudging the hard globe of his ass through his soft white costume. He jerked like he’d been burned with a cigarette. “Don’t get spooked little fella. I know it must be scary to have the whole world suddenly all big and scary like this, but I promise I won’t let anything hurt you.”

The sound of a cat screeching from upstairs echoed through the otherwise silent house. “Damnit, now cats?” I wondered if it was another costume mishap--maybe one of the ladies from the party had gotten more than she had bargained with her sexy kitten costume?

I saw the door to one of the upstairs bedrooms slightly ajar and, inside, the window wide open. One of the neighbor’s cats was huddled over something in the corner. It hissed, its hackles raised, as it prepared to pounce. “Oh, no you don’t,” I said, grabbing the cat by the scruff of the neck. It howled and clawed at me unsuccessfully. It was Wendell’s cat Styx, an black monster I often saw feasting on recently slaughtered squirrels. This time its prey would get away, though. It bared its teeth at me, arching its back and flaring its tail, until I swiped my foot at it, sending it fleeing out the window and back into Wendell’s yard. I slammed the window shut.

“Let’s see who Styx found up here…” I said, squatting down and peering into the corner. Shaking and pressed up against the wall was Scott, a tattooed MMA fighter who stood about 6’10” tall--or used to, at least. Now he was a 4-inch man in a white mouse costume, shaking violently and letting out staccato squeaks between gasps for air. “Aw, poor little guy. I bet you thought you were going to get eaten! What a humbling experience.” As my hand went for him he fled but I caught him by the tail. He hung upside down, his lean muscular body flexing as he tried to wiggle free. I held him in front of his face, exploring his little body as he spun around.

“Toughest guy you’ll ever meet,” Zac had aid to me when I first met Scott, staring up at the towering man as I shook his huge hand. “This guy can one-hit KO anybody--not like he ever has to. Guys got fists like wrecking balls and most people know better than to make him use them.” Scott’s intimidating aura was all gone now though. At best he was adorable, at worst pathetic, but gone were the days of getting his way with a sneer and a flexed fist.

“So you’re probably wondering what’s happened to you,” I said to him calmly as he flailed ineffectually. “One minute you’re a bunch of big jocks dressed in ironic Halloween costumes, and the next you’re just a tiny thing in a big dangerous world.” Scott’s flailing slowed. He was listening. “So, I don’t know what did this to you all, but from what I can see it started by shrinking you and taking away your ability to speak. Then your fake whiskers turned real--what’s it like having big sensory organs sticking out of your face like that by the way?” Of course Scott couldn’t respond, but I laughed at his squeaking as I left his bedroom and went down the stairs.

Derrick was where I left him, trying to fiddle with the latch on his cage but unable to manipulate it with his little mouse paws. I tilted the cage, sending him tumbling away from the door, and opened it, shoving Scott inside before slamming it shut. The two squeaked wildly and headed for the door, struggling with it for a bit before cautiously examining each other. I’m sure it was a shock to see your big buddy reduced to something so little and pathetic--even more so if the same thing had happened to you, too.

“So anyway,’ I continued as I headed out the front door and kicked it shut behind me, “far as I can tell, next the tails in your costumes became real tails. That’s why it hurt when I held you by yours, Scott.” Scott just squeaked, holding his bruised tail and looking down shamefully. “And your hands and feet started turning into paws. But clearly you’re still men--albeit, tiny men--in costumes. I can only guess that soon your costumes are going to turn to fur, and your hips are going to rotate until you’re on all fours… Pretty sure your brains will just turn into mouse brains by then. Who knows if you’ll even remember being people?”

I set the cage on my passenger seat. My two captives squealed as the car started. I can only imagine how helpless it must have made them feel as their entire world started to rumble. Wendell was on his porch smoking a pipe, stroking Styx and blowing thick smoke rings. Strange guy, that man. I’m sure he was happiest of all when these jock bullies suddenly disappeared.

Back at my house I headed inside with my two new captives. “Get ready for a reunion, boys. I bet you missed your old roommates!”

I’d put Zac and Bart into separate cages when I’d noticed them starting to “mouse out” more rapidly. The first couple of days they still seemed almost human, but the more they drank from the water bottle I had installed, ate the chunks of cheese I dropped in and squatted in the corner to squeeze out a pile of mouse pellets, the faster they seemed to shift. Bart was running on his wheel on all fours now. His face was still human but there was no trace of his thick burly body left. Tufts of white fur had sprouted on his head, across his chest and down his back.

Zac still stood on two legs but his solid jawline, dimples and sparkling blue eyes were gone, pulled out into a little mouse snout with thin clunky teeth. His brain seemed almost entirely mouse now. He had no shame about gnawing on crawling through his habitrail. He seemed almost happy.

It was only a matter of time before they were full mice. Derrick and Scott looked in horror, knowing that fate lay ahead of them. “Just think, guys,” I said as they squeaked and scurried around their cage. “You could have dressed as anything that night. I bet you wished you’d picked a different costume!”