(no subject)
We want to help teach him. Ginger is stretched out on a bookshelf in the library of the Governor's Mansion, tail dangling over the edge of the shelf as she watches Squirrel sort through a pile of junk mail on the floor.
"I know you do," he says, "and you'll get to. But he's not even born yet, and even when he is, it's gonna be a while before he can learn much of what you can teach him. You know how it is with newborn kits--blind and naked for a while, can't do much of anything? It's like that with humans too. Well, they're not blind, but it doesn't do them much good. They can't really focus."
Saffron bats at Ginger's tail, from the shelf below. He needs us teaching him. Teach him bird feeders and TV.
"You're just trying to get rid of me, aren't you," he asks with a chuckle, tossing a copy of some eco-product catalog in the general direction of the recycling bin, sending poor Pepper scurrying out of the way.
Not until he's old enough to drive. Saffron is mock-indignant, teasing. Unless she can drive, but she wouldn't understand.
"Coreen won't take you guys through the drive-through," he says. "She'd make you stay home. I guess you're stuck with me."
Bird feeders. Pepper had never been the smartest of squirrels, but he's been even less sharp since that electrocution incident. So he can get into the new one outside for us.
"New one?" Squirrel asks, turning to look at him.
New one, Pepper repeats. Big, up high. Can't get in, need thumbs.
Not a bird feeder. Saffron abandons playing with Ginger's tail, and bounds onto the windowsill. Out there. No food. Wires.
"Wires?" Squirrel frowns, setting the rest of the pile of junk mail down and rolling to his feet, to head for the window. "What wires?"
Saffron doesn't answer, just flicks her tail in the general direction of the tree outside.
And he can see something in its branches, though in the dark, he can't make out what it is. Generally speaking, this would be a job for his security detail, but he has reasons to suspect Queenie may be up to something, and wouldn't this be a good way--
So he opens the window, slides the screen up, and takes his shoes off. There's a branch about ten feet from the window that looks strong enough to hold him. He's made bigger jumps easily, back home. He takes a few steps back, giving Ginger a brief glance--Tell Nutkin we need to keep a lookout around the yard--before taking a running leap out the window and onto the branch.
One thing's for sure: the oddly-shaped metal and plastic thing strapped to a branch of the tree is not a bird feeder. It looks more like some kind of surveillance device. But in fairness to Pepper, it does smell faintly of corn chips; on closer inspection, he can see why. It's been baited, an open snack-sized package hidden inside a compartment he can almost get open--
The last thing to run through his mind, after he realizes that he has been shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart, but before an unpleasant collision with the ground, is why does this keep happening to me?
_______________________
He doesn't know where he is when he wakes up--everything is dark, and he can feel the cool metal of a cage around him, which isn't exactly reassuring. Neither is the chemical smell, nor his increasing feeling of weakness and hunger. He drifts in and out of consciousness, not knowing how much time is passing, until finally the lights come on.
"Took you long enough to get here," a woman says, as Squirrel's eyes adjust to the sudden bright, clinical lighting. "I had to send out for more drugs--his metabolism's faster than we figured. Why couldn't we just kill him? It would've made things so much easier."
"I told you, Sal," a man says. "I like my trophies to be fresh. They're easier to work with that way."
"You're paying extra for it," the woman says. "And not a word of this gets out. I had nothing to do with it, you understand?"
"Neither did I," the man says. "It's bad for business. But who could resist?"
Squirrel can't sit up all the way--there's not enough room in the cage for him to do anything but lie curled up--but he props himself up on his elbow and looks toward the door. The room is indeed a lab of some kind (or an operating room; it has a mad scientist feel to it). The man is thin, bespectacled, wearing a lab coat; the woman is tall, Amazonian, in an old-fashioned safari getup.
"He's awake," the man says, moving to the sink to wash his hands. "Drug him again, would you? Let's get this over with."
"What the hell's going on here?" Squirrel demands, though his attempt at sounding commanding is undercut by the unfortunate slurring from however long he has been sedated.
"They said you were mouthy," the woman says, taking a needle from a tray. "But you're not what I would've expected. Not like you are on TV."
"...what the hell?" Squirrel repeats. "Second time in the past year I've been drugged, stripped and stuffed in a cage. I don't know who thinks that's funny--"
"It's not supposed to be funny," the man says, giving him an annoyed glance. "It's just more efficient. Speaking of which, I need you to take your watch off. She couldn't get it off, and I can't very well skin you with it on. It's already left an impression on the skin and hair of your wrist, I imagine, but that can't be helped now."
"Skin me?" he asks, struggling to sit up as much as he can within the confines of the cage, trying to keep them both in his line of sight.
"It's what I do," the man says with a shrug. "The Taxidermist, at your service. You'll make quite a prize."
"You're sick," he says. "You can't put me on display, you know--I mean, people will see that you've killed and skinned the Governor of Pennsylvania. They'll ask questions."
"You'll be put in a private collection," the man says. "A perfectly lovely one, don't worry. None of the regular houseguests will mind--you've met some of them, so you know."
"Someone put you up to this," Squirrel says. "If it's money you want, I can give you more. If it's power--"
"It's nothing so tawdry," the man interrupts. "But the shame you've brought on your poor mother. And her husband, he has a lot of friends..."
"You are not," Squirrel says, "a taxidermy-themed superhero. What the fuck--that just doesn't work."
"Things were different in the Golden Age," the man says with a shrug. "Take your watch off. Sal, as soon as he does, stick him."
The watch. It's all he has. He doubts he can get close enough to use it on either of them--they would have to stick the backs of their heads right up against the bars of the cage, and what are the odds of that? But the cage is metal, and the table it's on is metal, and the shelves the table is up against are metal...
It's the only chance he's got.
He presses the face of the watch against the bottom of the cage and activates its secret weapon. The bass reverberations fill the room--it wasn't meant to be used this way, not out in the open, so who knows what its effects will be--
Ooooooooooooooh it's so good it's so good it's so good it's so good it's soooo gooooooood...
The music seems to have stunned Sal into inaction, at least. She stands near the table, staring in horror. The needle falls from her hands, its glass vial shattering on the floor.
"Take that away from him!" the Taxidermist snaps.
Ooooooooooooooh heaven knows heaven knows heaven knows heaven knows heaveeeeeen knoooooows...
"But it's--" Sal takes a step back, and then another.
It's now or never, is what it is. Squirrel braces his shoulders against one side of the cage and pushes the opposite side with his feet. He still feels weak, groggy, and stiff from being caged for however long it has been (days, it feels like), but eventually he can feel the bars start to give--
Ooooooooooooooh I feel love I feel love I feel love I feel love I feeeeeeeeeel looooooove...
Sal crumples to the ground, trying in vain to block the music out by covering her ears.
The bars snap, scraping Squirrel's legs as he breaks through them. He pulls his legs back in and scrambles around the other way in the cage, keeping his watch pressed to the metal all the way, until he can reach his arm out through the broken side of the cage and fumble round with the latch outside.
I feel looooooove... I feel looooooove... I feel love...
He falls more than climbs out of the cage, but he gets out, which is the important thing.
The Taxidermist approaches him, scalpel in hand, and he manages to haul himself to his feet just in time to duck out of the way of the blade. His reflexes are off, but in his experience scientists aren't that quick--
And don't always know how to get out of the business end of a punch. Between the impact and the music, the Taxidermist goes down pretty easily.
Squirrel looks around hurriedly, in search of his clothes, but doesn't find them, so he pulls the lab coat off the Taxidermist and puts it on. It doesn't fit, but it's better than nothing. He gives a quick rifle through the man's pockets, taking a magnetic keycard, and stumbles toward the door.
Outside is an unlit basement hallway, a set of stairs... and then an ordinary suburban kitchen, with a middle-aged woman who gives a startled cry as the Squirrel appears. But she doesn't intercept him as he disappears into the darkness of the warm summer night.