everything in the sky

I have to complete an English exam this weekend as part of an application for permanent residency in Canada.
It’s a serious exam that can take up to 4 hours. I have no doubt that among the other people taking it will be non-native speakers struggling with the vagaries and contradictions of the terrible bitch that is my native tongue. That has to be hard and somewhat terrifying. An exam to determine your entrance to a whole new country? Wow.
But. 
All I keep thinking is how amazing it would be to wear a monocle and top-hat throughout the exam and loudly and obnoxiously say things like, “OH ENGLISH YOU SCAMP” and “MOTHER-TONGUE, YOU FIEND, YOU ARE OUTDOING YOURSELF THIS FINE DAY.”
And perhaps at some point, when it’s clear the exam has reached its hardest part, I’ll go very quiet, before muttering, “Hmmmm, wow, this is actually pretty hard.”
And it will be then that I will produce from my lapel a second monocle.

We have a mouse.
Had, maybe. We had a party one night, see. I should’ve thought to tell him beforehand.
I caught a glimpse of him, once, in between the people talking and people drinking and people filling my space. He was in the kitchen, sat quietly on the table. He was watching a couple pour drinks, flirt, laugh. His head tilted left to right to left as he watched them talk in turn. Tilted down when the boy placed his hand on the girl’s arm.
When I thought to find him again the party was over.
I haven’t seen him since.

We have a mouse.
He’s sat on a chair in my lounge and he’s holding in his paws what I think is a Cheerio. He turns it over occasionally, stares at it.
I’m sat on the sofa and I’m playing on my XBox. We’ve been sat in silence for an hour, him with his cheerio and me with my game.
I finally pause the game and stare down at my controller. I pick at one of the controls with my fingernail.
“So, uh, do you have a name?” I ask.
He stops rotating the cheerio and looks up at me. I peer intently at my controller.
“Um.” He stares up, thinks about it. “…no?”
“Oh.”
I look up again to the TV. The mouse follows my gaze.
My game character is on a hill and is looking out over a field. The grass moves in the breeze and the snow is settling in and in the distance a figure is moving. I try to remember why I’m there, at this exact spot in this field in this unreal world, but I can’t.
“Oh,” I say again.

We have a mouse.
I wander downstairs in my boxers, bleary and tired, and into the kitchen. Pieces of carpet fluff stick to my bare feet. I scratch my head and yawn.
A rustling from the bin.
“You okay in there, buddy?” I ask.
The rustling stops. A pause.
“…’es,” comes the muffled reply.
“Cool,” I say. I pour myself a glass of cold orange juice and drink it down. I wash the glass, and try to rub the sleep out of my eyes.
“Gonna take a shower, buddy,” I say.
“…’kay.”
I pad toward the bathroom.
It’s quiet for a moment.
The rustling starts again.

They were called Lifetime Lifetime-achievement awards.
A small thing, usually, set upon a tasteful wooden base. It was generally something significant to the recipient, though not always. Sometimes it was simply a tiny statuette.

They were, the gray, bureaucratic men who delivered them were quick to point out, not awards, per se.
“Acknowledgements, really,” they’d say. “Of, well… life, I suppose. Or perhaps simply of a life.”
They gray men didn’t like to hang around once they’d delivered them. “Lots to do.” They’d smile ruefully, and the pair (it was always a pair) of them would climb back into their clean, sensible, second-hand car and drive off to their next assignment.

Tom received his Lifetime Lifetime-achievement award on a Tuesday afternoon. He’d just put down the phone. He was angry, his hands shaking, and made more so because he knew his anger was futile. Another fight with his father.
Tom stood and put some music on. Chopin. Chopin always calmed him down. There was a knock at the door and there the pair of them were.
“Tom?”
“Yes?”
“We have your Lifetime Lifetime-achievement award.”
They handed Tom a small plinth upon which sat a large, anatomically-correct glass heart. 
“Oh,” said Tom. “… thank you.”
They all stood quietly for a moment.
“It’s a heart,” one of them pointed out.
“Yes,” said Tom, mesmerised by the tiny glass veins. “Yes, I see.”
Quiet again. One of the the delivery-men coughed.
“We should probably go then, and-“
“Why? Why this, I mean.” asked Tom.
“Well,” said one of them, exchanging a glance with his colleague. “To signify a lifetime, I suppose. These things usually do. As to why the heart… well, we’d rather imagined you’d know.”
Tom could see the perfect glass chambers. Ventricles, he remembered. Atria.
“Thank you,” said Tom again, looking up. “Thank you.”
They smiled, tipped their caps, and left.
Tom closed the door and sat back down again in his armchair, the great glass heart on his lap. Quiet and calm now, he watched the sunshine sparkle through it, the sound of the piano lingering in the air. It was depthless and hollow and beautiful, he thought.

He sat there in his chair, still, for the longest time.
The heart-attack rolled through him quickly - thunder echoing through a distant valley. He didn’t have time to stand or move.
The music kept playing for a while longer before finally stopping.